If you’ve already checked out our list of directors who made great remakes of their own films, you won’t think it that strange that David Cronenberg is reportedly involved in a remake of his version of The Fly, itself an update of Kurt Nuemann’s 1958 classic of the same name. And few movie bloggers could argue that it’s a bad idea given Cronenberg’s talent as a filmmaker.
Still, nobody can figure out any kind of logical motivation behind the change of heart, given that Cronenberg has always been against the idea of a remake (despite the fact that he was okay with remakes enough to do one himself). And most of us would really, really, really like to see the Goldblum brought back for the lead, as redundant as that may seem.
Check out what the film blogs are saying about this reboot idea after the jump:
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Apparently three-time Oscar nominee Michelle Pfeiffer has been relegated to playing only “cougars.” The slang term has been used heavily to describe the actress’ latest character, a Parisian courtesan who has an affair with a pretty boy half her age (Rupert Friend). But just prior to appearing in Chéri, which reunites her with the Dangerous Liaisons writer-director team-up of Christopher Hampton and Stephen Frears, Pfeiffer starred in two direct-to-video releases in which she similarly ends up with a much younger guy. In Amy Heckerling’s I Could Never Be Your Woman she falls for Paul Rudd, while in Personal Effects she has an affair with Ashton Kutcher (ironic since Heckerling’s film takes shots at Kutcher’s marriage to real-life “cougar” Demi Moore).
The term “cougar” has some negative connotations, which is a shame given all the movies we see in which an older man romances a younger woman and think nothing of it. But it’s good to see Pfeiffer still getting work at her age (51), especially in roles celebrating the idea that older women can still be desirable. And in our opinion she’s every bit as desirable as she was at age 25, when she broke through with her sexy appearance in Scarface.
Below we spotlight ten other actresses/characters who’ve shown us that aging women can still be very attractive to young men.
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There’s always a moment of anticipation, of bristling, silent dread, in the great films about catastrophe. The bustle and noise of a film’s expository passages recede. Some of the house lights go out. A hush falls– and maybe even the crickets stop cricking. Don Delillo’s classic postmodern novel White Noise, far from a popcorn page-turner, nevertheless captured this sensation well: a prestigious college town menaced by a toxic cloud on its outskirts. We experience a grim awakening to distinctly modern terrors from the p-o-v of an insecure middle-aged professor and his over-educated, chatterbox family. Taunted by their equally motormouthed TV sets, this egghead clan reasons and dissembles its way around panic about as efficiently as a laborer shoring up a levee with paper towels.
Last week I witnessed a lot of folks reaching for the paper towels in New York City. At my day job, well-heeled co-workers and superiors fretted over their investments in the wake of a careening stock market but quickly cheered themselves up by noting that the financial panic was good for our company’s business (no, not pharmaceuticals or pawn brokerage). There was casual talk of pulling vast sums out of banks and stashing cash at home– then rumors about criminals, wise to this practice, going on burglary sprees in upscale neighborhoods. There was a lot of good humor, but it was definitely gallows humor.
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I honestly don’t mean to keep devoting time and blog space to Uwe Boll, but when the guy manages to say something hilarious or interesting every other day, what else am I to do? Write about serious issues like the future of film criticism? Karina’s got that covered quite sufficiently and efficiently, so I might as well stick to the fluff.
Of course, I can still relate the fluff to film theory, as in the case of Boll’s latest peer slamming, located at MTV Movies Blog. After criticizing the uneven work of Tom Tykwer (sorry, Uwe, but Perfume is a far better film than Run Lola Run), Gus Van Sant and Michael Haneke, he goes off again on his favorite nemesis, Michael Bay:
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In continuing to use his movie blog as a platform for Hillary Clinton hate wrapped in the thinest of pop cultural guises, is Jeffrey Wells doing some kind of brilliant, absurdist theater, or has the presidential election simply driven him insane? First, when Baby Mama was announced as the opening night film for the Tribeca Film Festival, Wells admitted “a certain part of me would like to see Baby Mama go down as a kind of karma payback for [Tina] Fey’s Hillary shilling.” I went to SXSW and ignored Wells’ blog for a week; when I came back, I discovered a post titled “Funny Games = Hillary Campaign.” Note the lack of prevaricating question mark in the headline: this is an unequivocal statement.
So what’s Wells’ evidence that Michael Haneke’s English-language remake of his own 1997 thriller has anything materially or spiritually in common with the troubled campaign of the first serious female presidential candidate? It’s specious, of course––amongst other things, he notes that the antagonists played by Michael Pitt and Brady Corbett “are clearly monsters, a term that has recently been used to describe Senator Clinton by former Obama foreign policy adviser Samantha Power”; they and Hillary also have “similar” haircuts!––but Wells’ balls-out committment to his own craziness is, as always, engaging.
Horror site Bloody-Disgusting is hosting a new clip from Funny Games, Michael Haneke’s English-language remake of his 1997 film of the same name. This go-round stars Naomi Watts, Tim Roth, Michael Pitt and Brady Corbet; in this clip, a ridiculously creepy Pitt goads Watts on an unpleasant scavenger hunt. Watch it here.
