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Everything Old Foreign is New Again
To the entertainment writers and movie critics who have grown cynical in the face of the seemingly endless stream of sequels, prequels, remakes, and reboots hitting theaters these days, the recent news that Charlize Theron will be starring in an English-language remake of Park Chan-wook’s Sympathy for Lady Vengeance is just another sign that Hollywood is fresh out of ideas. However, according to the writer of the adaptation, William Monahan — who took the already exceptionally good Chinese crime thriller Infernal Affairs and turned it into a script worthy of Martin Scorsese and the Academy called The Departed — that couldn't be further from the truth:
[Screenwriting is] the only popular literary form we’ve got left. Adaptation is a very traditional and honorable endeavor in writing for dramatic performance, and if people don’t know that it leads to a hell of a lot of originality and invention in the right hands, well, I’m not going to provide a reading list."
Monohan describes screenwriting as "drama in English" and said foreign movie remakes are the equivalent of Shakespeare taking foreign stories and doing his own "departures from the material." While we have a hard time comparing the vast majority of foreign movie remakes to Shakespeare, there have been several exceptional ones over the years and even a few that managed to surpass the foreign originals. Turn off the subtitles and help us choose the best English-language adaptations of foreign movies.
Rate the Top 10 Best Foreign Movie Remakes >>
Posted 12.03.12 by BrentJS -
When Takashi Shimizu remade his 2003, Japanese horror movie Ju-on: The Grudge into the 2004 American horror movie The Grudge, the Japanese director helped solidify the J-horror movement that started in the States with the 2002 remake of The Ring.
Shimizu followed his success with the Grudge by directing 2006's The Grudge 2, but chose just to produce (along with franchise producer Sam Raimi) the direct-to-DVD 2009 sequel, The Grudge 3. While the third installment was a financial success, critics hated it, with one review calling it "an underwhelming cash-in".
Rather than plan another sequel, however, Bloody-Disgusting reports that Raimi's Ghosthouse Pictures is planning another remake of the original Ju-on movie. Whether Shimizu will return for this Grudge is unknown as is whether the latest remake will go straight-to-DVD or have a theatrical run. A third question might be, does anyone want to see another Grudge?
a Flatliners remake and Scary Movie 5 gets screenwriters >> Posted 08.28.11 by Ryan -
Though Sam Raimi the director is currently unemployed, having just completed his DVD duties for Spider-Man 3, Sam Raimi the producer is quite the busy man, overseeing several high-profile projects under his Ghost House Pictures banner.
One such project, The Grudge 3, is currently in the scriptwriting phase. In an exclusive interview yesterday with Reelz.com, Raimi talked about what he'd like to see in a third Grudge movie:
"I'd like some new mysteries to be created around Kayako and Toshio. I don't think the audience just wants to see them come out and terrorize people. I think we want to know more about the secret dark histories those two had. Who were they as people and what magic were they involved in? I want to get into the good stuff behind their lives and the curse -- the stuff behind the curse."
Posted 10.17.07 by reelz