Steven Spielberg has been signed to produce (and hopefully direct) the upcoming remake of "When Worlds Collide"
As reported on scifi.com..... "Following the success of Paramount and DreamWorks' War of the Worlds, Paramount has awarded another SF movie to Steven Spielberg: the remake of When Worlds Collide, Variety reported.
Spielberg steps into the producer role left vacant by The Mummy's Stephen Sommers, who opted to direct and produce Fox's A Night at the Museum instead. Sommers had come on to Collide as director, writer and producer earlier this year, the trade paper reported.
No decision's been made yet on whether Spielberg will direct Collide.
The original When Worlds Collide was directed by Rudolph Mate and released in 1951 and served as inspiration for the 1998 films Deep Impact and Armageddon. Spielberg was an executive producer on Deep Impact, which Mimi Leder directed."
Actually that's the real problem - Hollywood takes a true classic - gets original - that is screws it up to make it relevant to today - adds a bunch of unnecessary special effects and - you get Crap. we could hold a contest for worst rework of past movie and have a hundred winners. Like they took Invasion of the Body Snatchers and moved it from a isolated little town where the story worked to downtown San Francisco. Invaders from Mars - now those under the Martian's control suddenly start eating live frogs. War of the World's - They've been hiding here for years - the bacteria must have developed patience. Starship Troopers - The MI stand grouped like a Civil War formation in the Movie - in the book they're spread out but linked into a single team........................
"Francis X. Kranick, Jr." wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@uofs.edu:
direct) the
Hollywood?
Are you just now noticing? It's pathetic, either they remake a good movie and muck it up by updating it or they substitute special effects for plot, character development and dialog.
A personal pet peeve of mine is regular humans (not super heros or otherwise enhanced beings) doing things that either a human couldn't do or the actor/actress couldn't do if they worked at for a year.
Characters are flat and one dimensional, plot is nearly nonexistent, pacing and stroy is an after thought. How many times are you watching a movie and it's clear they just couldn't figure out how to end it and they just do something truly stupid. My wife and I saw Mr and Mrs Smith recently. It's mostly an interesting movie, if a little silly in spots. But in the end they didn't know what to do so we have this enormous firefight where noone reloads, the "bad" guys, though supposedly professionals can't hit either him or her and our heros manage to bang out a large number of baddies shooting true, not relaoding and being graceful and almost ballet like in the process. We looked at each other and groaned.
I always come back to Casablanca. Made in a week for next toi nothing, a throwaway movie (studio was cranking 'em out 1 a week at the time), based on a dopey song. But what did it have. Good characters, a story that went from A to B, excellent pace and editting, cheesy but effective FX, a genuine tough guy hero, a truly beautiful heroine and a supporting cast that were pros.
Even a movie like "A Walk in the Sun". Kinda cheesy, definitely period. But the characters were interesting and I really loved the dislog, the interaction between the characters. It's witty and reveals how fearful they really are and thier efforts to overcome or coverup thier fear.
Hollywood has mistaken thier wealth for brilliance and importance.
The other week in 'Parade' someone mentioned Robert Taylor and asked Walter Scott who would be his equivalent today. Scott replied, "No one, because movies are made for teenage boys." I thought that was spot on.
Sorry E, have to disagree for once. Both (in a combined bound set) were among the first "Classic" (i.e. "Old") sci-fi that I read back in the day. They're dated, sure, but for 1930 writing, they were top notch. Or so ~I~ thought. But then I also liked Burroughs, Howard and Welles and see what Holluwierd did to ~them~!!!
Seems to me I also read in the Intro to the hardcover they were serialized in one of the Pulps and proved very popular. According to the intro - they stopped the presses after an initial run so the excited employees could read the next chapter, True??
they were top notch entertainment, just not the best from that duo. i would add to your list ee smith, otis adelbert kline and most of the campelldonians. oh yeah, haggard to.
Agreed. And Hollywierd hasn't done justice to ~any~ of them. The closest (and still a long way off) was the Stewart Granger from the early 1950s (there was one from 1935, but I haven't seen that one). Some of the best reading (and most underrated for the most part) are ~any~ of the pulps from the late 1920s and early 1930s. You'd be surprised at what pops up in some of them.
They weren't all bad. And exactly how do you define bad? 'Once Upon a Time in the West' is supposed to be a great Western but I wouldn't care to ever sit through that dreary thing again. Once was more than enough. I'm not even too crazy about Eastwood's 'Spaghetti Westerns'. Give me goodies like the original 'Stagecoach', 'She Wore a Yellow Ribbon', 'The Searchers', 'Winchester '73', 'Rio Bravo'/'El Dorado', 'The Naked Spur', 'The Sheepman', 'Whispering Smith'.... well, I could go on, and on. I'd sure like to see 'She' again. I last saw it when I was a teenager and I don't remember who played the hero in it. There was one rendition of 'The Prisoner of Zenda' that starred Granger. I also recall one with Ronald Colman. Parts of the story ended up in 'The Great Race' and led to Natalie Wood in a corset involved in a big pie fight. Mmmmmmmmmmm!
I felt the same way about OUATITW most of my life. It just didn't fit into my concept of a western. I heard the hype, heard the good critical press - just didn't see it when I tried to tune into it on a Sat or Sun afternoon. After about age 20 I quit trying. If it came on I skipped it the minute I recognized it was OUATITW. That's how much I disliked it.
A couple of years ago I caught the tale end of it on cable one afternoon. I was surprised that the movie looked a lot better to me than I could ever recall. My curiosity peaked, I got ahold of the DVD and sat down one afternoon and watched it. A long movie, by any standards. But I was suprised how much I fell in love with it. It made me wonder if I might want to look up some old girlfriends and see if I had a change of heart there too!
Like so many times before when something caught my interest I caught the bug and logged online reading and watching anything and everything I could get my hands on about the making of the movie and its history. What I learned is that the movie suffered all these years first by being editted for its American theatrical release and ultimately in its TV versions. In many versions for instance, the film ends by editting out the death of Jason Robards' character Cheyenne. Aparently Hollyweird thought that was too much of a downer. Other parts of the story were fiddled around with as well - most to the detriment of the film and the story.
The point being, most of us haven't seen the film as it was intended - at least not before the DVD release. I kind of doubt it would change your mind about it, but if by chance you come across the widescreen remastered version you might judge it more favorably on some boring Sun afternoon with a little time to kill. It still suffers or benefits as the case may be from some of the Leone quirkiness and tedium - remember this was back when people were dropping acid and grabbing cameras, we're lucky OUATITW wasn't really fracked up like some psychadelic Jim Morrison poetry reading video - but cinematically the visual impact of the movie is unmatched by most of the Ford and Hawks outtings that Leone was emulating. The one that comes the closest to me is "The Searchers", probably the all time greatest western, greatest John Ford film and my personal fave John Wayne flick.
I could ramble on about OUATITW for kbs of bandwidth, but I'll just finish with a couple of pieces of trivia I learned in my travels.
Leone originally wanted to cast Wallach, Van Cleef and Eastwood as the three gunmen that confront Charles Bronson's character in the opening gunfight sequence. Sort of a passomg of the baton from the earlier spaghettis. The plan didn't pan out because Eastwood's star took off. I'm glad it didn't - I think the gimmick would have changed the movie for the worse. It's the sort of gimmick they could hardly resist in Hollywood today.
One of the three gunmen that did appear in the opening committed suicide during production. I believe he may have even been in costume when he killed himself. Don't recall his name, but it was neither Woody Strode or Jack Elam, so.... ;-)
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