Instead of ruining the reputation of a good film, why not improve the reputation of a shockingly shit one?

 

The problem with remaking a good film, is that your audience consists of people who loved the old one and will be upset at any changes you make, and people who have high expectations of the film, having heard about the super-cool original.  If someone were to remake the Spice Girl’s film,  you could hardly fail to improve on the original.

 

Get 5 good actresses  who can sing, change the soundtrack completely and add a lot of jokes about the Spice Girls into the script.  In fact, change the script entirely and make sure there are many funny references to how dire the band really were.  Your audience will consist of:

· people who disliked the original and are looking forward to laughing at the new version.

· people who never saw the first because they new it would suck, but who would love to take the mickey out of the “band”. 

 

Nowhere to go but up and you could not possibly cheapen the memory of it could you?  Best yet, you could make it on a shoestring budget and get some

laughs out of that.  So who’s up for it?  I just need to find someone willing to actually read the original script… let me know if anyone finds someone.

 

 

   tealing From A Baby

             OK; this is my first rant and it’s loosely based on a theme we all know and love: censorship of films/music.  Please don’t leave - I know we’re all bored of this now and rightly so.  This fight has been going on for about a million years and at the end of the final round, there is almost nothing left to say that hasn’t already been repeated by ‘C’ list politicians, ‘D’ list celebrities and ‘E’ list deviants. Besides, with the bell still ringing it looks like we’ve reached a narrow victory by the technical death of Mary Whitehouse.  This one should be forgotten about now as we prepare for the next monumental pain in the arse.  Like at the end of a low budget vampire flick, her ashes have blown away in the wind leaving nothing but a wooden stick and a load of confused people trying to work out why they’ve been acting like a bunch of knobheads all these years.  Like the string of sequels to said vampire flick however, people still hold on to the old customs and superstitions and some idiot keeps on resurrecting her for reasons that are never fully explained. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                 et’s Remake The Spice Girl’s Movie

             Well why not?  Almost everything else has been remade.  At least, almost all the good films have been remade.  I think the only classic that seems to be immune from this wave of remakes is The Towering Inferno, although it can’t be that long until the taboo is weak enough to be broken by greed.

 

Let us not fool ourselves here: these films are being remade because it is a cheap, easy way of earning money for nothing.  The special effects and spoilt brats on screen might cost money, but that’s ok because Hollywood has plenty of that. Ideas and originality however… well those seem to be something of a rare commodity right now.  The annoying thing is that the brats, crew and director all seem to believe they are doing something worthwhile (or creating something fresh as they would put it.)

 

At the time of writing, The Wicker Man has been released in the cinema to a fanfare of indifference and

I am waiting for it to hit the bargain bucket of my local petrol station.  Well tried Nick, but you can’t

compete with the original cast, your writers can’t compete with the original script, I could go on but won’t just yet.  Hollywood is also apparently trying to make a remake of Battle Royale.  I’m sure many people will disagree with me here, but I think this really needs to stop.

 

Why the complete and utter bollocks does Hollywood insist on making crappy, half-arsed remake of

anything that was ever good? 

A crappy remake cheapens the memory of what was once a great piece of art.  It’s the same as

when a great TV show keeps on going on after it stopped being worth watching.  The rubbish

episodes ruin the overall show and even manage to taint the older episodes.  If you don’t believe

me, watch one of the first episodes of Married With Children and try to forget how awful it became.  Try as you might, a conversation about the newer episodes will crop up in your internal monologue.

 

Hollywood is not going to stop churning out remakes, because it is suffering an ideas drought.  There is a way to make this drought less painful however: 

 

episodes

Having failed to get modern day life banned, the Daily Mail crowd are now trying to sanitise our films by warning us

in advance of anything that might upset or shock.  Somewhere there is probably some jobsworth writing a warning onto the cover of Rampant Mud-Wrestling Sexaholic Nurses 14 saying “Contains extended nudity, coarse sexual language and a man with a thingy so big that it quite frankly scared the shit out of me.” Either that or he’ll be writing one for The Sixth Sense saying “Turns out Bruce Willis’s character was dead all along.  That scene at the start where he gets shot - that killed him that did.  If you look carefully you’ll notice that the little boy is the only one who seems to be able to see him. That’s because he can see ghosts that is.”  

The reason for all these warnings is of course, to help make sure that parents can more effectively censor what their children get to see.  Difficult to see a problem with that, isn’t it?  Whereas before, the rating sticker was the only warning as to the suitability of the film, now the parent can know if this “15” film is really a “PG” with one bad scene, or something that is pushing on for an “18”.  Sounds great, but like anything that the Daily Mail crowd approve of, it isn’t.  

In reality, the end result of these warnings is that adults are treated like children and “PG” films are made to sound as if they are subversive enough to warrant someone pouring a vial of blood over Mary Whitehouse’s ashes.

 

And now we get down to the point.  There is something that many adults seem to have forgotten.  Something they should be told:

                                       “Your children will not spontaneously combust if they see a scary film.”

They will also not turn into maniacs.  It’s a little bit like how you didn’t spontaneously combust when you saw a scary film that you weren’t allowed to watch. If you are still not convinced and think that perhaps you are a one-off, then feel free to lean out of the window of your Volvo and ask any adult the following three questions:

· When you were younger, did you ever see a film that you weren’t old enough to legally watch?

· Did the experience scar you horribly for life and leave you an emotional, unemployable wreck?

· Have you ever killed a man?

Expect the average response to be “Yes… No…” and the sight of the person walking quickly away.

 

At what point did we start to believe that children are made out of bone china and will shatter if exposed to coarse language, moderate fantasy horror or scenes of peril? Stop wrapping them in cotton wool - they are tougher than you think and will survive even if a film upsets them.

 

The thing is, is if you are over 8 years old, then I am willing to bet money that once upon time you deliberately watched something you shouldn’t have done.  I bet you enjoyed it as well. I will also bet you saw something that you found disproportionately scary, but can now laugh about it with your friends.

Hands up you now have an irrational fear of Pennywise the Dancing Clown, “Pipes” who lives under the stairs, the Incredible Hulk, the Daleks, Freddy Krueger or the Candyman.  All of us?  Well it isn’t the end of the world is it?  Kind of nice to have all individually had the same experience isn’t it?

 

Watching a film you aren’t allowed to see is one of childhood’s pleasures that you cannot recreate when you are older.  We all did it and we all enjoyed it, so why should we now try to take that pleasure away from the next generation?  It is literally stealing from a baby.