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Mel Gibson To Co-Write & Direct ‘Wild Bunch’ Remake At Warner Bros.
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39 posts in this topic

7 hours ago, F For Fake said:

You know, I think everyone has to go with whatever suits their moral compass. I certainly don't think it's WRONG for anyone to watch or enjoy Mel Gibson movies, or Woody Allen movies, or Roman Polanski movies, etc. I used to be a big proponent of "the art, not the artist", and I think that's still a valid viewpoint. 

But in recent years, I just feel like my tolerance has changed. Personally, for many years I struggled with my feelings about Roman Polanski's catalog in particular. I just love "Rosemary's Baby" and "Chinatown", you know? But I finally decided that, for me, the thing which made me feel best was to not support artists that I am ethically opposed to, because there are SO many movies out there I haven't seen by folks that don't have that cloud over them, I'd rather just check out something new. Again, not passing judgment at all on anyone who wants to see this. Hell, I love Mad Max and The Road Warrior more than I can say. Ugh. But yeah, that's the right choice for me. Everybody has to do their thing.

Chinatown is even more disturbing a movie when you think of Polanski's crimes. And yet it's still a great movie that I watch once every few years. But it is creepy.

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10 hours ago, Larryw7 said:

Chinatown is even more disturbing a movie when you think of Polanski's crimes. And yet it's still a great movie that I watch once every few years. But it is creepy.

Yeah, it definitely took on different dimensions once I learned about what had gone on. But there's no getting around the fact that it's a classic film.

There are a lot of problematic figures in cinema, like in any other field, I'd think. Recently, one of my best friends, who happens to be black, was angry because there is a portrait of D W Griffith in one of the houses at our local art-house theater. (Each house has two portraits of important filmmakers: Welles, Kurosawa, Bunuel, Eisenstein, Truffaut, etc.) I tried to have a conversation with him about it, not trying to justify it, but just trying to basically explain his role in film history and why a theater would include him in that context. "Birth of a Nation" may be an ugly piece of pro-KKK propaganda...but it also created a lot of the language that has been used in cinema ever since. (And for what it's worth, Griffith spent a lot of his career afterwards trying to right that wrong, particularly with his follow-up "Intolerance".) The same could be said about Leni Riefenstahl, the reprehensible Nazi propagandist, who also contributed greatly to the evolution of film editing and technique. 

Not trying to infer at all that Gibson (or even Polanski) are on that level, just citing examples of how difficult it can be to separate the art from the artist. And so, at this point, I'm just saying no to both. (For the most part...I mean, I gotta watch The Road Warrior a couple times a year.)

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21 hours ago, Buzzetta said:

I dunno... I see it as comic / superhero related.   Cowboys and westerns were superheroes before Superman with the Western genre as almost having eradicated superhero comics from existence during the 1950's.  The western has always involved very similar concepts that our modern day spandex tales often relate to.  They usually consist of an ordinary person being put into an extraordinary circumstance or a person with a special skill (fasted gun in the west) being put to the test.  The original Magnificent Seven could be considered a movie not unlike the Avengers where you have seven people coming together to help fight injustice.  

I'm cool with westerns being included in this as a genre. 

 

I don't mean the thread, I mean the movie. 

The original Wild Bunch is pretty much perfect as it is. More importantly, I think it's still extremely modern. It influenced so much later cinema that it has never really gotten outdated. 

I don't have an issue in general with remakes, but I don't see what can be added here, only what can be subtracted. Maybe I'm not giving Gibson enough credit, but this one, I just don't see a justification.

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38 minutes ago, Crimebuster said:

 

I don't mean the thread, I mean the movie. 

The original Wild Bunch is pretty much perfect as it is. More importantly, I think it's still extremely modern. It influenced so much later cinema that it has never really gotten outdated. 

I don't have an issue in general with remakes, but I don't see what can be added here, only what can be subtracted. Maybe I'm not giving Gibson enough credit, but this one, I just don't see a justification.

Ohhhhh  I misunderstood you.  Sorry.

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3 hours ago, Crimebuster said:

 

I don't mean the thread, I mean the movie. 

The original Wild Bunch is pretty much perfect as it is. More importantly, I think it's still extremely modern. It influenced so much later cinema that it has never really gotten outdated

I don't have an issue in general with remakes, but I don't see what can be added here, only what can be subtracted. Maybe I'm not giving Gibson enough credit, but this one, I just don't see a justification.

This.

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5 hours ago, Crimebuster said:

 

I don't mean the thread, I mean the movie. 

The original Wild Bunch is pretty much perfect as it is. More importantly, I think it's still extremely modern. It influenced so much later cinema that it has never really gotten outdated. 

I don't have an issue in general with remakes, but I don't see what can be added here, only what can be subtracted. Maybe I'm not giving Gibson enough credit, but this one, I just don't see a justification.

Yup, 100%. It's pretty timeless.

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On 9/28/2018 at 9:47 PM, nearmint said:

A new cast can breathe life into an old property.  Next week we get our 4th version of A Star is Born, and the reviews are fantastic. 

Yep. And each version has focused on a different type/genre of music and how it relates to that point in time. I assume that Lady Gaga's character's experiences will be totally different to those played by Barbra Streisand, Judy Garland and Janet Gaynor.

That's completely different to remaking a near perfect western. Now, if they're going to do something which better reflects the reality of those times, that's great, but either don't call it the Wild Bunch or don't say it's a remake of WB. Maybe they will do one of those things, we'll have to wait and see but I wouldn't hold out too much hope.

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On 9/29/2018 at 2:46 PM, Comicopolis said:

Yep. And each version has focused on a different type/genre of music and how it relates to that point in time. I assume that Lady Gaga's character's experiences will be totally different to those played by Barbra Streisand, Judy Garland and Janet Gaynor.

That's completely different to remaking a near perfect western. Now, if they're going to do something which better reflects the reality of those times, that's great, but either don't call it the Wild Bunch or don't say it's a remake of WB. Maybe they will do one of those things, we'll have to wait and see but I wouldn't hold out too much hope.

There are millions of people who’ve never seen The Wild Bunch, and have no motivation to do so.  A remake with actors they recognize and enjoy brings the story to a new generation.  I don’t see a negative here.

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10 hours ago, nearmint said:

There are millions of people who’ve never seen The Wild Bunch, and have no motivation to do so.  A remake with actors they recognize and enjoy brings the story to a new generation.  I don’t see a negative here.

Then there's no need to call it the Wild Bunch.

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7 hours ago, nearmint said:

Why not call it The Wild Bunch?  Since it's a western, little to no changes to the --script may be necessary. 

If you're going to try and be original you might as well go with an original title.

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10 minutes ago, Comicopolis said:

If you're going to try and be original you might as well go with an original title.

 

It' s in the title of this thread 'remake', or re-imagining of the original movie. 

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There was this guy once that said he was going to remake the Seven Samurai but adapt it for US audiences.  That was pretty funny wasn't it? 

We usually don't know how good a movie is until after it has completed it's box office run.  Then there are some movies that we do not realize are great until after they have already left the movies and have been replayed one hundred times a week on TBS like the Shawshank Redemption. 

 

Edited by Buzzetta
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16 minutes ago, Buzzetta said:

There was this guy once that said he was going to remake the Seven Samurai but adapt it for US audiences.  That was pretty funny wasn't it? 

We usually don't know how good a movie is until after it has completed it's box office run.  Then there are some movies that we do not realize are great until after they have already left the movies and have been replayed one hundred times a week on TBS like the Shawshank Redemption. 

 

Several of Kurosawa's best films were remade as Westerns:

Seven Samurai- Magnificent 7

Rashomon (my personal favorite Kurosawa film)-The Outrage

Yojimbo-A fistful of dollars

 

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2 minutes ago, jaybuck43 said:

Several of Kurosawa's best films were remade as Westerns:

Seven Samurai- Magnificent 7

Rashomon (my personal favorite Kurosawa film)-The Outrage

Yojimbo-A fistful of dollars

 

I was almost going to include the Hidden Fortress / Star Wars connection as a Space Western... 

I still have to see Yojimbo... which is odd since I view the Dollars trilogy as some of the finest Western films ever made. 

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2 hours ago, Buzzetta said:

I was almost going to include the Hidden Fortress / Star Wars connection as a Space Western... 

I still have to see Yojimbo... which is odd since I view the Dollars trilogy as some of the finest Western films ever made. 

Really??? The main character is actually the basis used by John Belushi on SNL 

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1 hour ago, jaybuck43 said:

Really??? The main character is actually the basis used by John Belushi on SNL 

Hey, it took me ten years after it left theaters to see Good Will Hunting...

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