Good evening, reader-inos!
Let's begin by looking at the trailer for a non-horror remake, one that Warner Brothers appears to have sunk quite a bit of money into, Clash of the Titans.
I've seen the original; it was a semi-regular fixture for a tape we didn't have at home, and I remember having watched it several times as a youth and being generally entertained with it. The stop motion on Medusa and the Kraken was pretty cool, and the movie seemed dumb but entertaining.
The remake, on the other hand, really raises the question "This is what you wanted to make? Why bother calling it Clash of the Titans"? See for yourself.
Maybe it's the 80% yelling and fighting footage. Maybe it's the hilariously matched metal-to-footage combo. Maybe it's the scorpion. Somehow, the only thing I could do with that trailer was laugh. It's like Warner Brothers decided to take the original film and "turn it up to 11" in every possible way, and the end result is embarrassing for everyone involved.
Oh, and that tagline.... "Titans. Will. Clash." That's pretty clever, especially when followed by the title of the movie.
The best part is that you could make the argument that this is any movie other than a remake of Clash of the Titans and win. Avoid making nostalgic geeks angry and just call it something else, because to be honest, it probably is.
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Since I gave Warner Brothers so much grief over Clash of the Titans, let me make it up to them by suggesting all of you go pick up North By Northwest on Blu Ray. Before I laud the disc, allow me to remind you that nobody is paying me to do this (or anything else on this blog, although I am not opposed to being paid to write), so the solicitation is a genuine one based on watching parts of the movie earlier today.
Unlike Near Dark, which it turns out many of you have not seen, I feel more comfortable in presuming most of you have seen Alfred Hitchcock's North By Northwest. If you haven't, go rent it now. While I hesitate to ever choose one favorite Hitchcock film over another, I've probably seen North By Northwest as many times as Psycho and Vertigo, and maybe more times than Notorious, Lifeboat, and Rear Window. And that's still leaving out several other faves.
The Blu Ray for this movie was impressive. I put it on after the Near Dark Blu Ray (which is no slouch itself, to my surprise) and immediately felt validated in my purchase. After watching the opening again, I skipped around to the "crop duster" scene, and the clarity is a little astounding. While The Wizard of Oz has twenty years on it, North By Northwest looks pretty new for a fifty year old movie. If this is indicative of the way Hitchcock is going to look in High Definition, sign me up.
The big question here is how Universal answers the gauntlet Warners dropped with this disc. Warner Brothers has a handful of well known Hitchcock movies - Strangers on a Train, Dial M for Murder, The Wrong Man - but Universal has the "big guns" - Psycho, Vertigo, Rear Window, The Birds, and Rope. If I'm not mistaken, North By Northwest is the first salvo fired in the HD Hitch battle, and if we're lucky that means the rest will come soon and just as striking.
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Finally, I was pleasantly surprised at how well this works. It's from a Russian troupe and gives you a glimpse of The Matrix as a Charlie Chaplin short. I've seen most (if not all) of Chaplin's films, and this doesn't stray too far.
Honestly I was expecting not to like this. The only things that don't really work are the "laugh" track and the structure of the boxing gag. Chaplin would actually be the one doing the kicking, but I understand what they're trying to do. It's more impressive than I had hoped.
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