Remaking Kurosawa? People Have Been Doing It For Years

Akira Kurosawa's Centennial last spring is still causing ripples. Splendent Media extends the celebration in a potentially controversial way. They have the rights to an enormous part of the Kurosawa catalogue should anyone want to purchase them for a remake. Kneejerk reaction is NOOOOooooooooo. But then you realize that Rashomon, The Hidden Fortress, and The Seven Samurai (and to a lesser extent many of his other films) have already been ripped off hundreds of times for movies and television. Hell, I've even seen an Off Broadway musical based on Rashomon!

So why would a straight up remake be any different? 

Here are the 26 Kurosawa directed pics (of the 32 he made) that they're offering rights to:

Sanshiro Sugata (1943)
The Most Beautiful (1944)
Sanshiro Sugata Part2 (1945)
The Men who Tread on the Tiger’s Tail (1945)
No Regrets For Our Youth (1946)
One Wonderful Sunday (1947)
The Quiet Duel (1949)
Stray Dog (1949)
Scandal (1950)
Rashomon (1950) -- Honorary Oscar Foreign Film
Idiot (1951)
Record of a Living Being (1955)
Throne of Blood (1957)
The Lower Depths (1957)
The Hidden Fortress (1958)
The Bad Sleep Well (1960)
Yojimbo (1961)
Sanjuro (1962)
Red Beard (1965)
Dodes’Ka- Den (1970) -- Best Foreign Language Film Oscar Nominee
Dersu Uzala (1975) -- Oscar Winner, Foreign Film
Kagemusha (1980)  -- Best Foreign Language Film Oscar Nominee
Ran (1985)  -- Best Director Oscar Nomination
Dreams (1990)  
Rhapsody in August (1991)
Madadayo (1993)

QUESTION: Wouldn't it be strange to buy the rights to remake Ran or Throne of Blood when you can get their source material (King Lear and Macbeth) for free?

What's your favorite Kurosawa? Sometimes I wish I'd seen them all -- since I've yet to be disappointed -- but it's so daunting given how prolific he was.

Posterized: Marilyn Snapped, Cronenberg Triangulated, Puss Entranced

New(ish) Posters! Let's discuss (aka judge harshly).

It's actually nicely stylized. But note that the big sell is not Michelle Williams but Marilyn Monroe herself, whose font size towers over her pretenders. I wonder what this movie will mean to Michelle Williams career though? If it flops does Hollywood assume she can't carry a film, even though it's less a Michelle movie than another Marilyn nostalgia exercize? 

I swear to god that tagline for Footloose irritates me like little else. It can't be your time, when you're robbing the previous generation of one of their quintessential identifiers. Saying that Footloose represents "our time" (i.e. today's teenagers) is like seventies teenagers pretending that the 1950s (Grease) were their ti... oh wait... uh...

Meanwhile you can't tell it here but the Puss in Boots motion poster is brilliant. You simply must click over if you love cats like I love cats. 

Finally here are two European posters for David Cronenberg's A Dangerous Method, which each put the three star faces all in each other's headspace -- one of them literally -- as their guiding design principle. You can see what they're going for but don't the faces need to be more level and more obscured by one another to achieve that psychological note. It's a little pedestrian, right? May the movie be anything but.

What are you, some kind of Astronaut?

Your challenge for the day should you choose to accept it is to use the following in conversation at some point:

"Pappy told me about Poon but he never

said anything about Poonanny, Pippy."

Do it! Because today is the 10th anniversary of Bubble Boy of course, and such an occasion demands reverent observation. Where would we be without Bubble Boy? Would the world have ever learned to love all things Gyllenhaalic without it? Oh sure some might say that Jake Gyllenhaal owes his career to the cult of Donnie Darko, a film that flopped in theaters just two months later (perhaps a movie about planes falling out of the sky didn't stand a whole lot of a chance right after 9/11) but eventually went on to coil its little bunny-shaped permanent place in a distant corner of the cultural imagination all the same, but those in the know... well those in the know still credit Donnie Darko with Jake's career. 

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But Bubble Boy is fun! In the world of guilty pleasures I don't rank this one as all that guilty - it's actually funny! Swoosie Kurtz is a riot! It has a young Marley Shelton as the love interest! John Carroll Lynch for god's sake!

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"...and the prince climbed up Rapunzel's hair to the top of the tower and said, 'Come with me, and we'll live happily ever after.' Then Rapunzel left her plastic bubble and died. The end."

And then of course there's Jake, indulging his goofiest side with wild-eyed aplomb. Why he doesn't make more comedies I really don't understand - anyone that's seen him on a talk show can agree, the boy's an endearing goofball. He was a great host on SNL. Love and Other Drugs was a terrible mess but lit up whenever he got to shine that sexy wicked grin (or, okay, any of his other two-thousand body parts).

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Have you seen Bubble Boy?

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Go L*nk Yourself

Gabby Sidibe snapped by Terry Richardson on 08/23/11 at the Our Idiot Brother premiereSome Came Running "The Trouble With Movie Stars" the distraction of stardom in The Tree of Life and other films.
Funny or Die Dave Franco in "Go F*ck Yourself". (I know he's James Franco's brother but he looks to me like the offspring of James Franco f*cking James Marsden.#amiright?)
Awards Daily has some words about Oscar's history with black actresses. This topic is about 200 times as complicated as anyone will ever claim it is but I am horrified to realize that there are still people trying to say that Gabby Sidibe just played herself in Precious. Anyone who has spent more than two seconds watching her on a talk show versus seeing her in Precious would have to be braindead to not notice the difference. Night and day.

Boston Wesley Morris on The Help. I sometimes feel like a fanboy when reading Morris's reviews . He's just great: anecdotal when it benefits the piece, funny without congratulating himself for it, and critical without being mean-spirited; his scalpel is sharp, his hand steady and he never accidentally lops off the joy of movies, while carving a fine point.
New York Times tennis rivalries and Andy Samberg portraying them. Fun!
Form is Void "5 from Dorothy Parker"  
Cineuropa Joachim Trier's Oslo August 31st up for another prize. It seems more and more certain that this will have to be Norway's Oscar submission. 
Film Drunk choice quotes from Ryan Gosling's Esquire profile. 

Look, Helen Mirren arrives at the premiere of The Debt

I'm guessing she makes grown women half her age weep. Look at that bod! She is 66 years old.

Finally... I don't know how I keep missing the big stories but I didn't even know about the eastern Earthquake yesterday until after the fact when people kept asking me if I felt it? Felt what? This is what I tweeted about it.

Speaking of... so then I find it that everyone is talking about Ryan Gosling breaking up a fight here in NYC and I didn't know about that either. I'm in a fog!

Q&A: Hitting the Wall, Moving to France, Dreaming of Sofia

You asked so I'm answering. Not all the weekly questions of course. If I did that I'd be typing for a whole week with only your questions to guide me. I've selected a dozen questions to answer and here they are. 

Tyler: Do you think Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet give good performances in Titanic?
Nathaniel: Hmmm. Define "good". I didn't expect this question to give me pause but it did. I'll try to keep this short. I adore Titanic (1997) and not ironically. I have a certain level of teary devotion to instantly iconic performances like those, to movie-movie performances that maybe aren't nuanced or perfect but serve their movie in a seismic way. I think of Leo's floppy bangs or Kate's fiery curled tresses and I go all mushy inside and have a sudden desire to draw hearts all over notebook folders with a ball point pen. *Ahem*. So, I love Leo & Kate in Titanic, especially as a unit, but I think they both have kind of rough moments in it. (Seriously. That was the best take?). Still, if I'm on the ship and in charge of divvying up the lifeboats, Leo & Kate get one first. Women and children can fend for themselves. " Ladies Movie stars first!"

Kin: Pick a country to live in besides America, but base your reasons only on movies.
Nathaniel: France, bien sûr. Do I even need to explain? It's the birthplace of cinema and the auteur theory, the Eiffel Tower is key to a million famous movie scenes, the French New Wave still fascinates, and the list goes on. Also they have Deneuve so this win be landslide.

Matthew: How do you feel about acclaimed actresses who seemingly play themselves or variations of the same character in every film? I'm thinking of, in particular, Mary-Louise Parker and Zooey Deschanel, among other actresses whose overall versatility leaves something to be desired. Do you think they are deserving of accolades for their overall body of works when compared to say an actress like Kate Winslet or Julianne Moore.
Nathaniel: Many of the most beloved actors of all time did just this, particularly before The Method took over. Cary Grant is genius but always Cary Grant. Mae West wouldn't be Mae West if she wasn't Mae West. And so on. So as long as we like that core person they're playing and they're versatile enough to spin it or smear it or mess with it in small ways a little from role to role, we're good. That said, Mary Louise Parker needs to get the hell off of Weeds.  WHAT IS SHE STILL DOING THAT SHOW FOR? She's calcifying. That is way too long to play the same character when said character is already so close to who you've always played. 

SoSueMe: Which actors have hit a wall creatively and have pretty much shown us all that they can do?
Nathaniel: Ding. Ding. Ding. Other than Mary Louise Parker. I am pretty sure that Johnny Depp has misplaced his entire once-prodigious well of creativity and is on perma-auto-pilot for the past six years.

I worry a little bit about Leonardo DiCaprio, too. I'm willing to be proven wrong in J. Edgar but I absolutely don't believe that directors challenge or control him enough. He's so talented but I think his career has been too easy for him. If you never have to struggle -- and his struggling ended abruptly when he was only 23 --  don't you lose the hunger that leads people to ravenously attack their role as if this is the one, the best chance to prove their gift? His performances feel too samey and not just because of the furrowed brow and The Dead Wives Club. But when he's "on" he's really something (see The Departed, key passages in The Aviator and ⅔ of his pre Titanic output.)

Manuel: IF Winona Ryder was not burned out at the time and did The Godfather III, do you think the movie would have been better with her?

my answers and the Question(s) of the week after the jump

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