Reviews of MIchael Winterbottom’s TRISHNA, Len Wiseman’s TOTAL RECALL and DIARY OF A WIMPY KID: DOG DAYS. The latest Production News and the Fustians will give their individual Top 6 Selections for “WE LIKED IT BETTER… WHEN IT WAS CALLED….” Definition: You shameless bastard, your film is clearly a RIP-OFF and a SUB PAR one at that.
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Evidently you needed to listen very carefully to get the correct TOP 6 FILMS I LIKE BETTER WHEN THEY WERE CALLED… list on last night’s show. In case you do not have the software to slow down the podcast, that list follows…
Too often filmmakers take the short cut of being OVERLY influenced by other material… I will exclude all of Tarantino’s films as they are famously greatest hits, also excluded is Brian “Hitchcock” DePalma (Max, he is an American Filmmaker) and finally I will exempt Woody “Woody Allen” Allen who has remade just about all of his own films…
and now I will point out a few… in the order in which they occurred to me…
1988’s HEATHERS is a cleverly disguised version of the Rene Daalder 1976 MASSACARE AT CENTRAL HIGH, a fun little romp where the outcasts realize they outnumber the cool kids and set out to settle the score…
Ivan Reitman’s 1981’s “STRIPES” is a beat for beat remake of John Landis’ 1978’s “ANIMAL HOUSE”, it’s bascaiily the same creative team, however Reitman moved from producer to director hence the film qualifies for this list…
1987′s “FATAL ATTRACTION” looks an awful lot like 1971′s “PLAY MISTY FOR ME”; enough so that Misty director Clint Eastwood is noted as telling Fatal producer and William “Hurricane Billy” Friedkin wife Sherry Lansing, she owed him a beer for this one…
1998’s “TRUMAN SHOW” is almost as clever as Paul Bartel’s 1968 “SECRET CINEMA”, where a seemingly paranoid woman ultimately discovers her life is being filmed and shown at the Secret Cinema. I am sure the Truman writer Andrew Niccol cool enough to be aware of the original, fortunately Paul Bartel reprised his film as an episode of mid-eighties TV’s Amazing Stories
In 2005, Ang Lee rolled out “BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN”, I am sure the pitch went something like, “Think Neil Simon’s 1978 “SAME TIME NEXT YEAR”, but with gay cowboys”
A lot of people saw 1999’s “GALAXY QUEST” but in years early a Mexican village hired a band of cinema cowboys to save their town in 1986’s “THE THREE AMIGOS”. In a much campier take, Bruce Campbell jumped into this genre with a fanboy version 2007’s “MY NAME IS BRUCE”. I was lucky enough to see this at a Director Q&A where Campbell hilariously spent the Q&A insulting the audience.
from Hiatus, just saying
Payback isn’t a ripoff of Point Blank because they’re both based on a book called The Hunter. Therefore, Payback doesn’t have to acknowledge Point Blank; it only has to acknowledge The Hunter, which it does in the opening credits. Saying Payback is a ripoff of Point Blank is like saying Red Dragon is a ripoff of Manhunter. The reason why it’s not is because both screenplays were adapted from the novel Red Dragon.