(Before I get down to me real complaint o' the day, I must commend Bad Ronald for his excellent and incisive article on James Cameron's claim that Piranha 3-D is cheapening the medium of 3-D. Seriously...how do you cheapen 3-D, Mr. 7 foot tall blue cat people?)
On to the rant of the moment. They're doing it to me again. They're remaking a movie that I love, a movie that was already perfect, or at least as close to perfect as a film can get.
They've started on a remake of Arthur, the classic early 80s gem that starred Dudley Moore, Liza Minnelli, and John Gielgud.
To be fair, not all remakes suck. And they have gone the British acting royalty route once again when casting the role of Arthur's servant-cum-caretaker. Now, rather than a stodgy butler, the character is a stodgy nanny played by the great Helen Mirren. The title role will be played by Russell Brand, who's about as far from Dudley Moore as one can get, at least if we're discussing height. Greta Gerwig, an actress mostly known for her independent film work, takes over the Liza Minnelli role.
As I said, not all remakes suck. But it seems that, in the past few years, an overwhelming number of them have. Granted, this one comes from a script by Peter Baynham, who has previously been nominated for a screenwriting Oscar...but that nomination was for Borat. Granted, the script also passed through the hands of the writing staff of the acclaimed, Emmy-winning television comedy Modern Family thanks to the fact that Jason Winer, the director of this remake, was also a primary director on the first season of that show. But then the script went back to Baynham.
I want this to be all right. I want to believe that Arthur can be reimagined and remade into a film that will be both undeniably modern and a loving remembrance of the original.
Who'm I kidding? I have almost no faith in the Hollywood machine anymore.
No comments:
Post a Comment