The Screengrab : dracula

Remaking "Sideways" for the Japanese Market

Phil Nugent — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 16:00:00 GMT

Ari Karpel reports on recent developments in the field of remaking major feature films for foreign audiences. When talkies first came in, it was standard practice at many Hollywood studios to shoot foreign-language versions of new movies at the same time the English-language releases were being made, sometimes with the original stars babbling their dialogue in phonetically learned Spanish. In some rare cases, such as that of the Spanish-language version of the 1931 Dracula, directed by George Melford and starring Carlos Villar as the Count, these instant remakes have shadow reputations among cultists who hold that they're more cinematically inventive than the movies they were spun off from. But the practice died out as soon as some genius invented dubbing. But, writes Karpel, "As film industries in China, Russia, Japan and India have grown exponentially, particularly when it comes to homegrown fare, United States studios have taken the phrase 'Think globally, act locally' to heart. Nearly every studio has set up an international operation for producing and distributing original movies made in local languages. Now a handful of those studios are scouring their catalogs, seeking films (box-office smashes and middling performers alike) to remake for new audiences." For a start, the "Walt Disney Company is turning its High School Musical franchise into a cottage industry, redoing the teen song-and-dance phenomenon one country at a time." The real trick, though, is finding solid material that can be translated into something appealing to foreign audiences but that wasn't such a megaton international hit the first time around that seeing it again with a local cast would strike filmgoers as redundant. Taking that into consideration, a movie like Titanic is less tantalizing than something like the crackerjack 2004 thriller Cellular, with Kim Basinger and William H. Macy, which was recently turned into a a Chinese film called Connected. And then there's Sideways, Alexander Payne's much-loved, middle-aged road comedy starring Paul Giamatti as a failed novelist and alcoholic wine connoisseur and Thomas Haden Church as a TV actor hell-bent on enjoying one last fling before his wedding. A Japanese remake, still called Sideways but with the lead characters' names changed from Miles and Jack to Michio and Daisuke, is currently in production.

Interviewed by the Times about this development, Alexander Payne indicated that he can live with it: “I don’t know a damn thing about it, but I hope it’s better than the original. No, I’m really delighted. I got a check for it, and the check cleared.” Payne, who Karpel claims responded to the information that has an executive producer credit on the remake with the observation, "Oh, I do?", added, “I cared desperately about Sideways while making it, but now it’s behind me,” he explained. “So it has its own life, and if part of its life is having a twin in a parallel universe, then so be it.” The people who are currently making Sideways presumably care about it a lot right now, though some of the changes they've adopted serve as a window into the world of remaking other people's movies for a different culture. Although the film is being made on location in California, the heroes' getaway destination has been changed from Santa Barbara to the Napa Valley, because Japanese audiences are assumed to have heard of Napa Valley. This also accommodates the director Cellin Gluck;s theory that “You can’t do a road trip in California without going over the Golden Gate Bridge.” The filmmakers also tweaked the details of Miles's/Michio's wine snobbery, as a conciliatory gesture to wineries where they wanted to shoot on location: wine sellers blamed the original Sideways for a drop in merlot sales, and so the movie's hero no longer deliveries a savage tirade against the stuff. Gluck doesn't see that this choice, and the fact that "In the resulting scenes each location gets a plug that approaches parody... [with] signs visible in nearly every scene, close-ups of wine labels and real-life employees, in bit parts, stiffly reciting lines like 'Welcome to Old Faithful Geyser, Calistoga, California,' ” compromise the movie. “We didn’t set out to make a tourism film,” Gluck says. “If there’s going to be a benefit, let it be for those who helped us out.” He added, “When you’re a small film, that’s sometimes all you have to offer.” There, perhaps, is the most revealing change of all. The new Sideways is budgeted at $3 million; the original, the very model of an "indie" feature about grown-ups, made without big stars or expensive locations or special effects, cost $17 million.

Yesterday's Hits: Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991, Kevin Reynolds)

Paul Clark — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 19:00:00 GMT

What made Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves a hit?: As with other oft-filmed tales like Dracula and The Three Musketeers, every era seems to get the Robin Hood it deserves. The silent era got Douglas Fairbanks, in a role that highlighted his formidable athleticism. In the 1930s came The Adventures of Robin Hood (still the version to beat), in which Errol Flynn turned the classic hero into a dashing rogue. The elegiac seventies brought Robin and Marian, which starred Sean Connery as an older and somewhat sadder version of the character. And by the early 1990s, Robin had morphed into the sensitive-hunk archetype that was in vogue at the time, played by one of its biggest stars, Kevin Costner.

In addition to making adjustments to the title character to suit the era, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves also added some politically correct touches, including making Marian more fierce and less of a damsel, as well as keeping with the recent tendency to include a Moorish character in Robin’s Merry Men. Likewise, director Kevin Reynolds was able to juice up the action scenes using then-advanced special effects, including the famous shot in which the camera mimics the point of view of an arrow shot from Robin’s bow. And a full-out marketing blitz ensured that the film appealed to a wide audience, from kids who might be experiencing the story onscreen for the first time to adults who grew up on the older versions but were curious to see a new take on the tale. The strategy worked, and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves became the second-highest-grossing blockbuster of 1991, bringing in $160 million in the United States alone and another $225 million internationally.

What happened?: Audiences flocked to Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, but even on its original release, the movie was plagued by a good amount of negative buzz. For one thing, there was the issue of Kevin Costner’s accent- he begins the film attempting a British accent, but within the first reel it disappears altogether, and neither of these solutions proved especially pleasing to audiences. But a bigger problem was that the film was more violent than its advertising had led audiences to believe. Warner Bros. had pre-sold the film to the family audience with such promotions as children’s toys and a breakfast cereal that was heavily advertised during Saturday morning cartoons. But when parents took their kids to the film, they were faced by such scenes as a man’s hand being severed, a number of people getting burned alive, the possible hanging of a young boy, and the attempted rape of Marian by the Sheriff of Nottingham. Both of these factors, combined with the film’s middling critical reception, helped the keep the film from enduring in the public’s esteem.

Does Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves still work?: Not very well. There’s a popular adage that a blockbuster is only as good as its villain, but Prince of Thieves put that wisdom to the test. This isn’t to say that Alan Rickman isn’t a blast as the Sheriff of Nottingham. But while Rickman- who was given more or less full creative control of the character as a condition of taking the part- makes a sneering, perfectly odious bad guy, he’s so committed to making Nottingham evil that he ends up overwhelming the story. A little of Rickman’s Nottingham goes a long way, but Reynolds structures the story like a cross-cutting tennis match, volleying scenes back and forth between Robin Hood’s antics and Nottingham’s over-the-top reactions to them.

Not helping matters is Costner’s performance, in which his accent issues were the least of his troubles. More damaging is Costner’s laid-back persona, which makes Robin Hood feel something less than heroic despite his good lucks and gift with a bow. In his salad days, Costner’s appeal was that he felt like a working-class everyguy, like a character from a Bruce Springsteen song personified. But when called upon to play a leader of men, Costner doesn’t have what it takes. This quality also makes it difficult to buy Robin’s past as a spoiled rich kid, which is mentioned at several occasions in the film. Perhaps Mel Gibson, who turned down the role before Costner signed on, could have pulled off the character as written, while making him more charismatic and entertaining besides.

But then, entertainment value is in relatively short supply in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. The high spirits one normally associates with Robin Hood is largely absent from this telling of the story, replaced by- well, not much of anything. The Merry Men aren’t merry enough, Will Scarlet (Christian Slater) is too bogged down with a secret resentment for Robin Hood to function as a full-fledged character, and Marian (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) has no chemistry whatsoever with Robin, thereby making their romantic subplot less inevitable than obligatory. Practically the only good guy who makes much of an impression is Azeem (Morgan Freeman), the Moor who bound himself to Robin after Robin saved his life. And the battle sequences, ambitious and violent as they are, are neither exciting nor especially clever. In short, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves isn’t much fun. And really, shouldn’t a Robin Hood movie at least be fun?

SLIFR University Hails the New Flesh with a New Quiz

Paul Clark — Fri, 23 May 2008 22:00:00 GMT

For most students, the week of Memorial Day consists waiting for the school year to end, with plenty of last-minute review sessions and random movie screenings in class to fill time before the final. But within the hallowed halls of SLIFR University, it’s another story altogether. Yesterday, just before the crack of dawn, SLIFR proprietor Dennis Cozzalio dropped his latest mega-quiz on the blogosphere, in tandem with the announcement of the latest SLIFR faculty, the eminent Professor Brian O’Blivion (were you expecting someone else?). With his hiring, O’Blivion joins such distinguished faculty members as Professors Wagstaff, Kelp, Brainerd, Helsing, Jennings, Corey, Potts, and non-professorial types Messrs. Hand and Shoop.

In case you need more convincing to hear over to Dennis’ pad, his questions range from the classic (Hawks Western death match!) to the contemporary (yes, there’s a Herzog/Bad Lieutanant-related question), and from the universal (the ever-popular “last movie you saw”) to the esoteric (who else would reference both Jack Elam and Bulle Ogier?). So if you’re looking for an excuse to duck out of that family picnic a few hours early this weekend, tell ‘em you’ve got a take-home final and head on over to Dennis’ blog to take Professor Brian O’Blivion’s All-New Flesh for Memorial Day Film/TV Quiz. And remember, the password is “swordfish.”

The Hands Of Jack P. Pierce

Leonard Pierce — Wed, 14 May 2008 17:45:00 GMT

You may not know who Jack P. Pierce was, but if you've seen or even heard about the Famous Monsters of Filmland that made millions of dollars for Universal Studios in the 1930s, you know his work. Pierce, a Greek immigrant who ended up in Hollywood more or less by accident, was the head of the makeup department at Universal Studios from 1928 until 1947, and crafted, on conjunction with stars like Lon Chaney, Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff, some of the most memorable creatures in cinema history. In the days before CGI or even most photographic effects as we know them today, Pierce worked with theatrical equipment, padding, chemicals toxic by today's standards, and inventive use of costumes to create the visual hook of characters like the Hunchback of Notre Dame, the Phantom of the Opera, Dracula, Ygor, Frankenstein, the Wolf Man, and the Mummy.

When Universal merged with International after WWII, Pierce fell on ill fortune, and, after several decades working on television and for low-budget big-screen productions, he died in 1968, little-remembered outside of the people who had the good fortune to work with him. Still, anyone who played such an integral part in defining one of Hollywood's most famous and fertile periods wasn't going to stay forgotten for long. A DVD documentary about him was recently released focusing on his horror work; the motion picture industry's Makeup Artists and Hairstylists Union has named their lifetime acheivement award for him; and his hands, which crafted so many terrifyingly familiar faces, are featured on an American postage stamp, transforming Boris Karloff into Frankenstein's monster.

Curiously, though -- possibly due to a less than amicable parting with Universal and a combination of sloth and intransigence on the part of their current corporate partner NBC -- he doesn't have a star on Hollywood Boulevard. Considering that both Phil Collins and Jaime Farr have been thus honored, we don't think it's particularly outrageous to ask NBC/Universal to pony up the cash to sponsor a star for one of the men who made the studio what it is today, and while we generally doubt the efficacy of online petitions, we fully support the sponsorship of this one. (Oh, and before you ask -- nope, there's no relation.)

I'm A Sexy Vampire

Peter Smith — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 17:00:00 GMT

"Bela Lugosi!" Richard Pryor used to exclaim during his stand-up act. "I bet that guy got some weird fan mail." Indeed he did, but there's now a popular, if arguable, point of faith among some horror fans that nobody thought vampires were sexy until Christopher Lee first draped a cape around his six-foot-five-inch frame and started sinking his teeth into his demure co-stars' necks in the the 1958 Horror of Dracula. (It was his first time playing the Count but his second job for the British horror factory Hammer Studios; a year earlier, he played the monster opposite his frequent co-star Peter Cushing's mad scientist in The Curse of Frankenstein.) In the Guardian, Matthew Sweet discusses Lee, Hammer, and how their version of the classic bloodsucker fits into the vampire filmography. "Lee's performance convinced a generation of scholars that Dracula was a book about sex, and not about vampires." I'm not sure that it can't be a book about both, but Lee definitely put his stamp on the character; he went on the play him in six other Hammer films, as well as sending the character up in a cameo in the 1970 The Magic Christian. By the end, in the 1974 The Satanic Rites of Dracula, the studio, "looking for new ways to revive flagging public interest in fanged Transylvanians, had transplanted Dracula to the fag end of swinging London, where he hung out with a gang of hippie bikers — slaves of the dark side, of pot and of their taste in afghan casualwear." — Phil Nugent