Wednesday 7 November 2007

I've simply got to, that's the whole thing.

If I would get the chance to ask Hollywood producers why they have this urge to remake almost every movie made within the last sixty years that ever made a profit, that (slightly altered) quote from "High Noon" could very well be the reply, as Hollywood's unwillingness to produce anything new and original hits another dubious milestone with announcing the plans to remake the aforementioned classic western "High Noon".

Most examples of the latest Hollywood remake-craze range from the utterly pointless ("The Omen", "Psycho", "Flight of the Phoenix", "Poseidon") to the self-destructively bad ("The Haunting", "Alfie", "The Pink Panther", "Last Holiday"), yet the powers residing in Tinseltown can't seem to get enough of butchering yet another piece of their own past.

The announcement to give "High Noon" the remake-treatment does not bode well for movie classics at all and the writer of this blog entry shudders at the thought of some Hollywood producer looking for profit having a go at such classics like "Citizen Kane", "Casablanca" or "Gone with the Wind".

I am not entirely sure what the motivations behind the current wave of remakes are, but I suspect it is a mixture of laziness, lack of ideas and the cost/risk factor that comes with big-budget productions.

Maybe the time has come for us, the audience, to collectively shun these remakes and by doing so sending the message out to the suits working in Hollywood, that it is about time for them to tighten their slack attitudes, rid themselves of their pot-bellies and get their lazy arses out of their comfortable chairs and do something original and new again. This movie fan would certainly appreciate a little less remaking and a little more originality.

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