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Ikiru remake: finally, a better version of a bad film! (1 Viewer)

Nathan V

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I can't believe this. Dreamworks anounced they're remaking IKIRU, one of Kurosawa's best. No word on who's in it or behind it. This, btw, is just in from www.darkhorizons.com/news.htm, a reliable movie news site. I am not pleased.
Btw, props to Seth, who inspired me with the thread title, back when Seven Samurai was also anounced for a remake.
Regards,
Nathan
 

Bruce Hedtke

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Well, not a suprise, given that nothing seems to be out of line anymore. I guess there isn't one film that just can't be done better with more money and todays stars. :thumbsdown:
Example No. 2-
Breakfast at Tiffanys: Calista Flockhart and Harrison Ford are rumoured to be trying to buy the remake rights to this famed Audrey Hepburn flick.
If this is true, I pray that they can't buy the rights. Talk about pointless.
Bruce
 

Seth Paxton

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I thought it sounded familiar. ;)
As I have said before, I don't specifically have a problem with remakes because they can be good.
However, when putting your feet in the shoes of something so great you are just begging for trouble. Where is there to go with this artistically? What chance for improvement exists? In fact, the truth is that such greatness is often the result of a little luck in having everything just click the right way at the right time.
With Kurosawa I point out that Fistful of Dollars, Magnificent Seven, and even Bug's Life have been film remakes of his work. All worked very well. So it can be done.
And I can understand why an artist who is inspired by some classic work wants to do something with it themselves (which seems to be the case with Leone's film for example).
But for every Fistful of Dollars we usually see 10-20 Last Man Standings instead. And that just gets annoying. Why spend so much effort trying to get something right that someone else already did perfectly when you know that you will end up compared, and that comparison will NEVER favor you (at best it might appear equal to the original)?
BTW, something to note is that most good remakes involve changing the setting so that some reimagining is going on. To me the Ikiru setting is modern enough that any realistic remake (set now or within the last 50 years) will just be retreading the exact same turf.
The good news, this should get appreciation of Ikiru going all over again, especially since the DVD appears to be on its way sometime in 2003.
Citizen Kane and Godfather are just a matter of time.
 

ThomasC

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i wouldn't mind remakes of the star wars prequel trilogy movies...:D
of course, lucasfilm probably wouldn't let that happen, at least not for quite a long time...50-100 years. they'd probably have the original trilogy remade as well. maybe they would film them from 1-6, instead of from 4-6 then 1-3...
but i'll probably be dead by then, so it doesn't really matter. :)
 

Bob Cashill

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Pauline Kael pegged Tony Richardson's THE BORDER (1982), a thoughtful, action-driven piece with Jack Nicholson and Harvey Keitel, as an unofficial remake (or maybe more accurately, rethink) of some of IKIRU's concepts. It works...but a straight remake seems doomed. THE BORDER I'd like to see on DVD.
 

Rob Tomlin

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I love Kurosawa. I haven't even seen Ikiru yet, but that isn't necessary to know that this is just a bad idea.
Btw, props to Seth, who inspired me with the thread title, back when Seven Samurai was also anounced for a remake.
Seth was here when The Magnificent Seven was announced?! Wow! :D
 

Seth Paxton

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Seth was here when The Magnificent Seven was announced?!
Ha ha, very funny. ;)
I'm no spring chicken, but I'm no Jack Briggs either (sorry Jack, but you were someone I know is older than me :D ).
BTW, the real post if you will recall was in reaction to a NEW remake of Seven Samurai, apparently to be done as a remake and not a reimagining (which Mag 7 is). That was why I had posted that they were finally going to get 7 Sam "right". Not sure where that project currently stands. I sure hope they had some wire fu to it. (sarcasm surely is the medium of the 90's/00's :D)
I've never seen The Border. I'll have to look into it. But certainly the ideals of a man finding out he has only a short time to live and deciding to do something with his life is not restricted to Ikiru...which kind of makes the need to remake it all the more strange.
This time he videotapes himself for his grandchildren to see after he's dead, title of film - Ikiru's Life ;)
 

Brook K

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Feb 22, 2000
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I thought that American Beauty was a remake of Ikiru thought the eyes of a typically cynical self-centric hipster type.
Breakfast at Tiffany's, you can never replicate Audrey, but I might be able to actually stomach it again without that horribly racist Chinese caricature. I can forgive that kind of stuff in early Hollywood product, but by the 60's, everyone should have known better.
 

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