I’ll explain why I liked the Manchurian remake. First of all, I doubt anyone can argue that the acting wasn’t top notch–Denzel Washington, Jon Voight, Meryl Streep & a very underrated performance by Liev Schreiber as the tormented hypno-freak. I assume your objections to the Manchurian remake are based on the heresy of tampering with the original.

Fair enough, but I think the point was to take a dated Cold War story and use it to say something topical about today. In particular, the latest political ‘evil’ in the world seems to be coming from corporations. Who knows if it’s true (much like the threat of ‘evil’ commies) but the fact is we’re becoming increasingly concerned & skeptical toward the Halliburtons, Blackwaters and miscellaneous oil companies that seem to be making huge profits from war.

The Manchurian remake did a great job of fitting this classic story into the new context I mentioned. It’s a reflection of the times, just like Cold War paranoia was a reflection of the Kennedy era.

OK, there were a few really stupid things, like the stupid “microchip” (why didn’t they throw in a “flux capacitor” while they were at it), and I thought the romance angle was a little out of place. But I think these were just minor distractions. The main idea was to comment on how vulnerable the political process is to big $$$. I think the remake did a bang up job about that.

Oh, one last thing… I also liked the Solaris remake better than the original, but that’s just me. I was never too keen on Tarkovsky’s indulgent, 20-minute closeups of pond scum and highways. I mean, we’re not that dumb–we get the picture Tark! Let’s move along with the story. The Solaris remake cut out all the fluff and gave us a movie which, true, wasn’t as artistically challenging, but at least it didn’t come across as extravagant.

OH DUDE… STOP THE PRESSES… I just thought of one you *have* to put in your list ASAP…
“City of Angels”
Wim Wenders is turning over in his grave, and he’s not even dead yet.

What really annoys me is that producers are starting to think this is acceptable and create more dogshit like SGU (Star Gate Universe).

re Alice in Wonderland, I agree that Tim Burton probably has the most hope of capturing the original book, except a) this isn’t the original book, it’s a free-wheeling “what came after” using the same characters, and b) Burton, like Terry Gilliam, almost never finishes what he starts. By that, I mean that *most* of his movies are so full of amazing ideas and amazing visualisations and amazing characterisations that he falls short of bringing them to a coherent whole, and we’re left with consoling ourselves for having seen something extraordinary that somehow left us short of being satiated. Or like Chinese food, where you realise you’re actually still hungry almost as soon as the plates are cleared.

re Robin Hood … well, I haven’t really been able to consider the dude in Sherwood Green tights without a snigger since Alan Rickman cancelled Christmas. For all that I like Ridley Scott’s work, if it’s going to be a “re-visioning” à la Antoine Fuqua’s “King Arthur”, then I might just give it a miss. (Why has no-one other than Boorman been able to tackle film versions of these mythic tales with anything approaching a mythic sensibility? This reinvention of ages-old tales to create some pabulum of modern relevance is just spoon-feeding the self-important 20s-something audiences; it does none of us any good, and isn’t the *only* way for a film-maker to go, so why do so many of them sell their souls to it?)

I’ve got pretty much zero interest in the games and old-TV-shows tie-ins, so there’s no anticipating going on here for those titles.

And for Harry Potter ,,, yes, I agree it seems like spinning money needlessly to drag the series out by yet another film. But on the other side of the argument, at least it brings them out from under the studio-imposed limit on running time that has reduced pretty much all the films so far to selected highlights of the novels they’re drawn from, turning into showreels what could (and should!) have been stand-alone films that lived, breathed, and told their own story. Since in every case I’ve read the novel before saying the film, I have no way of knowing what it would be like to watch these films and try to appreciate the story from them alone – pretty darned hard, I would imagine. It’ll be interesting to see if they can capture the philosophical nuances of the end of the film, without either sagging into a gabfest or having the numerous false endings people complain about so bitterly for “Return of the King”.

About “Robocop”, I can only ask “Why?”. (Yes, I do know the answer … it’s about money and cashing in on brand recognition. My question was meant to be rhetorical, OK? :p )

That’s it. I’m done.