Monday, June 16, 2008

this blog post soon to be remade as a musical kung fu extravaganza

Be afraid.......be very afraid. Apparently lovable drunken anti-Semite Mel Gibson is due to star in a movie remake of the legendary mid-eighties BBC political drama series Edge Of Darkness. Given that this is one of the most celebrated TV dramas ever produced, and the sort of thing that makes grown men go all misty-eyed about the BBC's public service broadcasting remit, there may be some grounds for trepidation here.

Remakes of films that the great American public won't have seen because they were either a) made a while back or b) made in some wacky foreign language must seem like a good idea, and you can see why, I suppose, in that it saves you having to think up a plot yourself, but the omens aren't good. The first category would include such gems as the remakes of Get Carter, The Wicker Man, Alfie and Sleuth, and the second would include things like The Assassin (a remake of Luc Besson's Nikita) and George Sluizer's Hollywood-ised remake of his own The Vanishing. None of which are very encouraging, and they didn't have Mel Gibson in them. This article lists some more examples.

The George Sluizer incident shows that you can't even assume that retaining the original director will work, as they seem to be intending for the EOD remake. I haven't seen Michael Haneke's (director of Hidden which I mentioned a couple of posts ago) original Funny Games, but it's hard to believe some watering-down hasn't happened for the remake.

And I bet they don't include the scene where Bob Peck sniffs his daughter's vibrator.

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