Remakes

[la_marquise]

As it's Bastille Day and as today's Writer's Bloc question is even more US-centric than usual -- "Subtitles please
What is your favorite foreign film? Do you think there should be an American remake?" --I think it's time to raise our own virtual flags of internet independence and ask you all WhatUS film is your favourite? Do you think there should be a non-US remake (with cultural tropes erased, history altered etc --, no Hollywood, you are still not forgiven for Sommersby?


Mine, I think, would be High Noon, which would make a great martial arts adventure, to be directed by Tsui Hark or Yuen Kwai. In the last days of the Ching dynasty, a retired martial arts' teacher -- Yuen Biao -- on the verge of marriage to the daughter of a local official, is forced out of retirement by his future father-in-law to resist the arrival in town of a group of anti-government rebels, led by Yuen Wah, Chin Kar-Lok and Ngai Sing (the latter of whom is the former fiance of our hero's beloved). Forced to chose between the woman he loves and his own anti-government principles, what choice will our hero make? Li Bing-Bing would play the love interest, the mighty Ti Lung her father, and we'll throw in some evil foreign trouble-makers for good measure, who're trying to trick poor Chinese labourers into indentured service on the US railways (including YB's idealistic brother, played by Daniel Wu Yin-Cho, who was once the best friend of Ngai Sing)...

Comments

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

Ah, the Americans. Me, I think The Dark Is Rising needs to be remade as an English film.

And I wonder what Star Wars would look like in Japanese.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

You beat me to it. I was going to say Dark is Rising too. The fact that it had the lovely Chris Eccleston and Ian McShane (both woefully miscast) and it was supposedly set in England did NOT make it an English film. Such a disappointment. One of my favourite books done to death.

[tj-dragon.livejournal.com]

Yes! I couldn't even tell in the first 10 minutes where it was supposed to be set. Did that school bus at the beginning cross the Atlantic?

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

I didn't see it: I couldn't face what it might be like.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

You were wise!

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

That film was such a waste of a good book.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Hee!
And yes, a Japanese version of Star Wars would be very cool.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

I think there should be a remake of The Magnificent Seven but set in feudal Japan...

[purplecthulhu.livejournal.com]

Curses - you beat me to it!

[saare-snowqueen.livejournal.com]

I would try to do this but even thinking about Amerian bull-pucky makes me tired.

OK, what about Barefoot in the Park - set in Rome?

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Oooh. Oh, yes. Though ideally we'd want the late Yves Montand in the lead, with Bardot, maybe?

[saare-snowqueen.livejournal.com]

Why not? Or Giancarlo Giannini and Sophia Loren....

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Also good.

[inamac.livejournal.com]

I'm with hawkwing on The Dark is Rising (and would also like The Eagle of the Ninth to be taken into account).

Also would like to see historically accurate remakes of Mel Gibson's entire Hollywood oeuvre (except for The Patriot in which the English would win).

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Works for me.

[much-of-a.livejournal.com]

I rewatched Dogma over the weekend. I think I'd like to see the Bollywood version (possibly with an appropriate change of religion, but perhaps it would be more fun with a slightly misunderstood version of all the christian arguments it contains).

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

That would be... odd. But intersting.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

I think my favorite US film is Barbra Streisand's YENTL with its three way, gender bending love affair, and its way-ahead-of-its-time ending. But it is so culture specific . . . yes, it might make an excellent Chinese film, actually.

No, Korean--with that actress who does such marvelous cross-dressing.

[saare-snowqueen.livejournal.com]

You could make it in Czech - the country origin of the stories.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

That could work: it would be a little like Farewell My Concubine, perhaps.

[purplecthulhu.livejournal.com]

How about The Manchurian Candidate as a film about CIA brainwashing victims infiltrating the Chinese communist party?

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Could work, though it might be better set in 1960s Russia -- more appropriate levels of paranoia about the US.

[saare-snowqueen.livejournal.com]

Yah, but then you'd have to make it as a documentary.

[aliettedb.livejournal.com]

I'm looking at my DVD shelves, and suddenly realised how darn few movies on it are actually American (possibly the most American is V for Vendetta, which was inspired by a British comic...).
I'd be up for a remake of Bandits as a Vietnamese road movie, with everyone escaping into lawless Laos (or Cambodia. Yes, I know Cambodia or Laos aren't that bad. It's just a common perception, especially in the older generations) at the end.

[aliettedb.livejournal.com]

Or Star Wars as a movie set in medieval France.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Oh, that would be excellent.

[klwilliams.livejournal.com]

I want to see "The Breakfast Club" set in an English boarding school.

[tj-dragon.livejournal.com]

I was thinking that most American high school films would be improved by being set in English schools (varied between boarding, public, state and comprehensive). Then I realised that a lot of those are based on Shakespeare and Austen any way, and the others wouldn't make sense in an environment not full of ridiculously OTT cliques.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Oh, the whole prom thing has been imported to many schools these days. And Mean Girls would translate easily, sadly.

[tj-dragon.livejournal.com]

Yes I can see that, but I don't think we're quite as bad over here. I think most British kids see Year 11 Proms/balls as a fun night out, rather than something one needs to focus one's entire attention on for most of a school year.
Watching all the American stuff I do (and it's probably too much) it always stikes me that they clearly know their school system is flawed, but yet nothing is done. I'm also alarmed by how bullying is treated as just part of the school experience.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Yes, that worries me, too.

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

I would say The Secret History would fit this perfectly exept that weirdly and annoyingly they haven't actually made a US film of it yet..

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

That is odd, isn't it? The closest they've got are things like Dead Poets' Society.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Eep. That would be... strange. Doable, but strange.

[woolymonkey.livejournal.com]

I seem to have lost my film brain, but my whole family wants a remake of Buffy where the Hellmouth is in Milton Keynes.

A German Babylon 5 would be good because it would surely explore whether the Rangers end up as a bunch of fascist vigilantes, not to mention what happens to all those telepaths, two themes I felt were skated over somewhat in the original. (However B5 dubbed into German is just confusing: what with the voices and and uniforms, it's like an American war movie without the good guys.)

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Those could be very interesting. And scary.

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

Re first para, wasn't that Torvhwood only er Cardiff?

it'd have to end with everyone dying of course

[cleanskies.livejournal.com]

I'd like to remake some huge epic disaster movies -- imagine The Day After Tomorrow but focussed around a bunch of kids on holiday in the Costa Del Sol. Could do for extreme weather films what 28 Days Later did for zombies...

Re: it'd have to end with everyone dying of course

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Oh, yes!

[anna-wing.livejournal.com]

Star Trek has already been remade as Blake's 7 so I would very much like to see all American high school movies remade as Hong Kong Triad flicks.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Hee! It's a shame Andy Lau is now a bit old to play all the bad boy leads.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

How about a version of Robin Hood set in actual England with an actual English cast...

Ah, that would be Robin of Sherwood, then...

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

I love that show.