Posted on 12/12/2008 10:00:44 AM PST by steve-b
If you're looking for chuckles this holiday season, bypass the miserably unfunny "Four Christmases" and go where the real comedy is -- "The Day the Earth Stood Still," a clumsy, moronic remake of Robert Wise's brilliant 1951 classic about an alien invader trying to save the human race from its own self-destructive impulses.
What did poor Wise do, incidentally, to deserve such treatment? His chilling horror masterpiece "The Haunting" was already put through the meat-grinder with an effects-heavy 1999 remake, and his thriller "The Andromeda Strain" was revisited with ill results in a SciFi Channel re-do earlier this year. What next -- a hip-hop reinterpretation of "The Sound of Music"? (Granted, Queen Latifah could totally tear up "Climb Ev'ry Mountain," but still…)
The new "Day" can't be bothered to include the thought-provoking dialogue of the original, choosing instead to bury the audience with special effects that are visually impressive but no substitute for an actual script. And what words do remain are so exquisitely awful that they provide some of the season's biggest laughs....
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
-as was widely known at the time , it was a piece of anti-US propaganda--(the "good guy", Klattu of course to fix all the evils of the world lands in Washington, DC--center of the world's problems---
You’ve got some savvy kids!
and, yes, the original “Four Feathers” was a GREAT adventure film.
I saw it last night as well. A liberal propaganda flick if ever there was one.
Klatu reminds me of a cross between Jimmy Carter and Hans Blix. And yes, Algore=Gort.
Naive as execrement.
Howver, I DO like Patricia Neal. She played Dominique in one of my favorite movie classics, The Fountainhead.
She is still alive and active in pro-life causes.
God bless her!
The re-make of War of the Worlds with Tom Cruz was AWFUL.
Klaatu Theordore Logan, Neo-Esquire.
Bogus.
Most heinous!
Yeah, "We're going to destroy you because you are violent."
I used to like "The Abyss" as well, until I saw the director's cut about us being evil and bad, so the aliens were going to wipe us out until they witnessed one person willing to sacrifice himself for others... Didn't these aliens understand the history they were witnessing? Going to war to end tyranny, oppression, slavery, and the Holocaust was a bad thing?
The aliens never fought amongst themselves, got along perfectly with each other, never argued with neighbors? Yeah, right.
I agree. I watched it last night and thought the same thing.
I can only imagine what they have done in the remake to make it even more a leftist wetdream. Yeah, no thanks.
Oh, I don't know...Tim Robbins gets killed with a shovel. That was pretty good. :)
“I did not think the original was really all that brilliant.”
Agree.
The best sci-fi films of the 1950’s were “Forbidden Planet” and “Invasion of The Body Snatchers”, both released in 1956. The 1978 remake of Body Snatchers was one of the few excellent remakes in movie history. Let’s hope the same can be said of the planned 2010 release of the new “Forbidden Planet”!
That reminds me... what the heck ever happened to Alex Winter?
They changed John Carpenter’s name to Klaatu. Having a “John Carpenter”, who comes to earth to save mankind so close to the Christmas season would offend some people.
This is the Johnny Mnemonic of 2008.
given some time even “ishtar” will be declared a classic because some movie reviewer is a friend of somebody who can still make a dollar off that turkey.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Winter
In 2007, Winter returned to acting after a nearly 14-year absence to do a guest spot on the crime series Bones. Currently, he has a recurring role as the voice of 'King Mole Man' on the Adult Swim show Saul of the Molemen, which was created by long-time friend Tom Stern, and has directed the live-action adaptation of the hit Cartoon Network series Ben 10, which aired in November of 2007 and garnered the highest ratings in Cartoon Network history. He has reportedly been tapped to write the Howard Stern-produced remake of "Rock 'N' Roll High School".
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