Re: Total Remake

[Scott Roberts] "Throw in Colin Ferrell (never comes across as an action star to me, he's more of a prickish villain)

In Bruges is a desert island movie for me, and while far from an action movie, it really put Colin in a whole new light for me: a real live actor who loves making movies.

On the villain front, Fright Night was one of my favorite pure "pop" movies last year, and he was delightful in it. In my wife's words, "We'll go see 'Total Recall' because we owe it to Colin from how much we enjoyed him in 'Fright Night.'" I've watched crappier movies for crappier reasons, so yeah, I'm in.

And I CANNOT BELIEVE that NOBODY has mentioned Kate Beckinsale-Jessica Biel bimbo-fu! ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?! HOW AWESOME IS THAT?!?! Yes, my wife is up for that too. (Among the many, many reasons I'm thankful every day that she let me marry her.)


[Scott Roberts] in a movie that will likely fall victim to remake no-no #1: DON'T TAKE YOUR REMAKE SO SERIOUSLY, and I don't know if I'll really want to see this."

The fact is that neither Total Recall should be considered all that faithful to the original. The first one had Mars, but left out the politics. (Keep in mind that the sequel to Dick's version of Total Recall was The Minority Report.) I'm not sure why this one isn't going to Mars, but has the politics back in.

Not that I care about politics in movies -- I'd rather not, thank you -- but I also don't care about fidelity to ANY source material. In a movie like this, I really do prefer less thinking, more stuff blowing up. I agree that seriousness is a major hazard.

I like that Wiseman also did Live Free or Die Hard, which was a whole lot better than it had any right to be. Big budget mayhem galore, but nice attention to story and performance too, and frankly, a nice job not overreaching.

I agree that it's important to keep our expectations as the audience in line though. Even more than Arnold (Considah dis a dih-VAWS), take Michael Ironside and the mutant baby out, and you don't have a classic anymore. (Bill Nighy in the Quatto role this time, btw.) The best case scenario is that it's a good time, but I'm willing to bet $12 or whatever that it'll be at least that.


[Scott Roberts] "Kindergarten Cop (yeah, I went there... EET'Z NAWT A TOOMAH)"

Just enough to put it ahead of Twins, but I'm not sure it's enough to stay ahead of the second Conan movie or Predator.

And I forgot, I actually like Eraser, with Vanessa Williams and James Caan, quite a bit.

I'd definitely put True Lies on the list except for that horrifying sequence where he kidnaps his wife and interrogates her in an especially offensive way. It would probably stay dead last on my list of Cameron movies, but really only one scene away from being a top Ahnuld movie.

And seriously, if you haven't seen Pumping Iron, you really should. That version of Arnold really was quite an act. You can see that, yeah, he had a remarkable body and extraordinary charisma -- but not by any means ALWAYS the best body in the contests he won. But he used that shining light of his personality/persona to so thoroughly screw with his opponents that they never had a chance. Even at their best, they were sweating bullets, while Arnold made being superhuman look easy. Dynamite stuff.