Let the Right One In: How to Make an American Remake

"It's funny, but is it going to get them off their tractors?"
-Gammabot (of Futurama) evaluating a TV show

Oh, Hi there!

So, Let the Right One In, right? Like, fuck Twilight, right?

That's got to be the first thing lots of people in America thought upon seeing this movie. Unfortunately, that's only 5 words, not counting titles. I don't have any word limit, but, you know... Let the Right One In was a sweet movie. It's deliberately paced and has some wonderful acting and cinematography. But I do wonder if the movie would be so critically acclaimed if Twilight wasn't playing at the local multiplex down the road from it, its siren song like the world's loudest brown note.

Anyway, apparently an American remake is in the works, under the title Let Me In. From what I gather from interviews and shit (read: wikipedia), it's going to be based on the novel on which the original movie was based, but I don't know how different it will wind up. Obviously, it would be slicker in terms of production. Could they go for the Twilight crowd and tone down the gore? They could also make it gorier, too. Make its pace faster? Probably. This is all speculation on my part. It's being directed by the guy who helmed Cloverfield, so maybe they're going for more horror than Twilight-esque romance. All kinds of things can be done with this plot. It'll be interesting. They're at least changing the names of the names of the characters (instead of American-izing the spelling. Because why the fuck not, right?). But then, from wikipedia, I see this:

Producer Simon Oakes has made it clear that the plot of Let Me In will closely resemble that of the original, except that it will be made "very accessible to a wider audience".

Well, of course. Because this movie was so freaking impossible to understand. Let's see if you can make sense of it: a lonely boy (Oskar) is a social outcast, picked on by bullies. A girl (Eli) is lonely because she's a vampire. The two meet and strike up a friendship. Yadda yadda yadda, Eli's vampirism puts her in danger of being discovered and she must flee the town, but her mutual love with Oskar is deepening.

Sorry if I went too fast - those tweens get into so many complications! (Also, I yadda yadda yadda'd over some pretty cool shit.) But all joking aside, I understand why Hollywood insists on remaking any foreign film that isn't a European historical drama. A lot of America is averse to reading subtitles, and in other cases some places lack smaller cinemas that will show independent movies or indie flicks. I get that. For awhile, the trend of remaking Asian horror movies made some good bank, too. It makes total business sense, so I can't blame Hollywood for going to that well so often. (I actually think it's too bad the Battle Royale remake never came to fruition, because I would love to see how any American studio would handle that particular movie.)

So, with that in mind, here are some more ways that Let me In can changes things for an American audience:

• More slow-mo. Emotions are too fleeting - I need time to register my sadness
  
• One-liners. Eli should be making bad vampire puns every 3-4 lines in her scenes (Oskar: Would you like Twizzlers? Eli: No fang-k you!)
• Oskar should get into a kung-fu fight scene within the first 30 seconds of Let Me In, just to get your attention. He should lose, though, because his character's a wimp
• It takes place in the early 1980s. Each scene should be devised around a pop culture reference from the 80s - the failest decade! lmao!
• All of Eli's vampiric attacks should be more gory than anyone would imagine
  
• The amount of body glitter is indirectly proportional to how much your plot needs to make sense. (Not a suggestion, just some math to keep in mind)
• Can Oskar have a wisecracking (ethnic?) best friend to provide comedic moments? You damn well right he can!
  

With these suggestions in mind, I think America will get a Let the Right One In remake that plays to its sensibilities. Let the rest of the world have their subtitles or lips that don't match the words! This is America! We deserve better than that!

...this pretty much damns me into having to watch Let Me In to give it a fair chance, doesn't it?

Jan Svenkmajer's Alice: The Only Film I Like Dubbed

Oh hi there...

Lots of attention given to Jan Svankmajer's Alice is given to its visuals. As a stop-motion retelling of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, they should be. Here's a plot summary for the uninitiated: Alice encounters a White Rabbit and chases him. A bunch of shit happens, and the shit that happens is fucking crazy. This movie's dark, haunting, maybe not disturbing, but definitely strange and uncomfortable. When I first saw it, it was the first for a college film class, in an auditorium with booming loud speakers. At the time, I thought that was just the auditorium. Now, after rewatching it via Netflix on my computer, it definitely does not seem that way. This movie is loud, and that does so much for the movie's ability to get under your skin, it almost outdoes the visual aspects. Almost.

Remember how cute Disney's Alice in Wonderland is? And how distorted but still kinda cute (or at least "wow look at the bright colors!") Tim Burton's looks (from the trailers)? Svankmajer's version includes stop-motion, which is an inherently creepy form of animation. Objects are more dimensional than traditional animation, but are given an unnatural jerkiness that can be used to great effect, as it is here. It helps that there's so much death in this retelling. Not that characters die, but in their design. The white rabbit is a stuffed rabbit that comes to life; his friends are all made of bird and fish bones and doll parts. It's a combined creepy effect, with everything being somewhat jerky, yet remarkably smooth, like everything is played at only a couple frames per minute slower.

So, you get Alice in Wonderland, but told with dead animals. If that doesn't seal the creepiness, the narration will. All dialogue is delivered by Alice, with a closeup of her mouth ending each phrase (sample: "'I'm going to be late!' SAID THE WHITE RABBIT"). At first, the effect is intriguing. Then annoying. Then strangely unsettling. The version I've seen is dubbed in English, this intensifies this effect greatly. The lips in closeup clearly don't match what's being said, and it become surreal because you're forced to read her lips. This causes a mental dissonance, at least for me. It's the exact reason I can't stand dubbing. (and I've heard people insist that the only way to watch bad martial arts movies is dubbed. Can't do it. Sorry.) It magnifies how strange the film's world is.

This extends to the sound effects, too. The majority of the film takes place with clearly puppets, either among Alice or occasionally when she becomes a doll. Every crash and clang is mixed far louder than would be natural for the dolls. There's a dissonance with comes with these little objects causing such a racket. For example, there's the scene with the Mad Hatter and March Hare, which is driven by repetition of the Hatter ("'I want a clean cup!' SAID THE HATTER"), the sounds of the hare's cart, chairs scraping against the floor, butter slathering over clocks. In its extended repetition, the scene grates partially because of its sound.

In the end,talking about the sound of the thing is mostly just me trying to find a unique perspective on this movie, though. The striking animation of it - alive, yet unnatural, much like the White Rabbit who bleeds and eats sawdust constantly - is the real star here.

Still, I don't want to give too little credit to Kristyna Kohoutova, who plays Alice. She plays the role with the perfect mix of curiosity and bratty determination. The latter trait is probably magnified by her refusal to be intimidated by anything she sees throughout her journey, but it makes her reactions fascinating. She deadpans her way through being turned into a doll, being trapped inside a doll, being attacked by a bunch of dead animals, having her socks come alive, being nearly submerged in her tears, among other strangeness. In some ways, this is a dark comedy, and she is its straight man.

Overall, Alice is an interesting trip down some surrealist stop-motion animation. It's more a showcase of technique than a narrative film, given that there isn't a real plot to it. It's unforgettable, though, for its design and style, which deftly walks the line between horror and nonsense. There isn't much wonder here, just unending madness falling into itself.

SAID THE FILM BLOGGER

The Great-Bad Hall of Fame: Rocky IV

Oh! Hi there!

For years, I've been saying that there should be a hall of fame for movies that are so bad they're good. Then I realized I have a blog! I can be proactive and make this happen! So with that, I am going to write about Rocky IV. If you don't know which Rocky that is from the title, let me summarize it for you: Rocky ends the fucking Cold War -nay, the very USSR itself- via boxing.

The thing that makes Rocky IV stand out as a great bad movie, for me, is that it's the continuation of a film series that began with a great film. It's a perversion of all the things that made the first one great. The Hollywood rule for sequels is "like the last one, but more of it!" Much like a game of Jenga, though, the base erodes until it is unstable as you add sequel after sequel. So, eventually, you get a series of events that reads like this:

Rocky: Rocky, a fighter around 30, is drafted to fight the Heavyweight Champion, an undefeated Ali-esque character. He doesn't win, but his ability to stand toe-to-toe with the champ inspires the nation.
Rocky IV: Rocky, a multimillionaire who must be nearing 40 now, must avenge the death of his best friend who was killed in a boxing match against a hulking Soviet, a probable steroid user with double the punching power of an average professional boxer. He wins against the Russian, and also inspires the all-Russian audience to look at themselves and realize their government is wrong. The audience includes the government.

Of course, Rocky wins the fight. That's fine. This movie was produced in America, after all. But who would have guessed that Rocky would end the movie with a rousing speech about about, well:

During this fight, I've seen a lot of changing, in the way you feel about me, and in the way I feel about you. In here, there were two guys killing each other, but I guess that's better than twenty million. I guess what I'm trying to say, is that if I can change, and you can change, everybody can change!

Because when it comes down to it, wasn't the Cold War just a bunch of pansy-ass "feelings?" The thing is, this speech barely makes sense in the script's dramatic continuity as "change" appears as a theme multiple times. Apollo and Rocky talk about "changing," with Creed claiming that he and Rock are always fighters and will never change. Meanwhile, Rocky says things can never be the way they were before. Later, Rocky insists that he can't change, which is why he has to fight Drago. Which makes him a hypocrite. But then Rocky wins - as a fighter, without changing his core nature - and insists that the entire USSR can just switch over and we'll find world peace. Even on its emotional axis, it's an astounding, hilarious failure.

Speaking of emotional axes, how about that Adrian? In every movie, she goes from "Rocky, you can't fight!" to "Go get 'em, tiger!" Except in this one, it literally happens over the course of two laughably perfunctory scenes.

Really, it's an abomination against everything that was good about the original movie. From the opening shot in this movie - an American flag-decorated glove punching a Soviet flag-marked glove and EXPLODING - you can tell something's amiss (and not just the fact that the Russian glove falls down before the explosion happens. Or was that symbolism?). At 91 minutes, it's the shortest Rocky movie. Let's look at that running time a little more closely, though.

• After the gloves go off, the movie spends the duration of "Eye of the Tiger" summarizing Rocky III. Then, we see the last scene of Rocky III in whole. So it's probably about seven minutes until we get to the actual movie.
  
• Later, Apollo Creed fights Drago, and his entrance is an entire James Brown song and performance ("Living in America," the "Batdance" of the James Brown discography). That takes up another six minutes.
  
• After Creed dies, Rocky drives in his car to reflect on life and friendship, or love, or something. The movie switches here to another montage. This one summarizes the entire Rocky series up to that point. And when I say "up to that point," I mean from the original Rocky to the the events of Rocky IV as of a minute ago. This also includes Rocky III, which you just saw in a montage that started this movie.

So this movie is actually less than 80 minutes long, which is the perfect length for a good bad movie. Then you have the obligatory training montage, where Drago trains with the latest technological advances (and implied steroids). Because using technology is cheating, and if you're going to use computerized gym equipment, you might as well be on steroids to boot. Meanwhile, Rocky is outrunning a KGB car and running up a mountain in the snow. Because all Americans need is some elbow grease and good old-fashioned (and revenge-driven!) determination. It's an impossibly heavy-handed moment that winds up being hilarious. Again, if you keep stacking the odds, you're gonna get Jenga'd. And Jenga is at its most fun when the thing falls down.



Can I just mention that this movie also has a robot? In 1985? And it has some advanced AI, even by today's standards? Did you ever notice that Rocky's kid watches the fight (the one with a high likelihood of his father dying live on international TV on Christmas) from home, and in the background, the Robot is in a Santa outfit, with beard? Just thought I'd mention it.

So yes, Rocky IV is the first entry of the Great-Bad Hall of Fame. I can't think of another sequel that does so much to piss all over a great film. Even the Rambo sequels have the benefit of First Blood being only okay. What's one more thing that's definitive about Rocky? The theme. You know it. This one scraps that for pop songs. So fuck you if you liked the original. The thing is, I love the original. When I worked at Hollywood Video, before opening the store, I'd pop it in while I counted the money and did all the opening duties. Damn near every week, I'd half-watch and listen to it. So this movie holds a special place in my heart as the most wrong-headed sequel possible, even compared to the much-maligned Rocky V, which is just a depressing mess. No, this one is deserving of being in the Good-Bad Hall of Fame.

Chaplin: A King in New York (and very nice guy)

Hello there!

It's probably fortunate that Charlie Chaplin's A King in New York did not get released in the USA until 1973 because of accusations that its maker was a communist. It wouldn't have been well-received at the time, anyway, with a key character being a child (played by Chaplin's son) who's unusually well-versed in Anarchist and Communist teachings. As it is, it's cult item for enthusiasts of the silent film greats, who, at this point, are probably a pretty small group. It's not even given much respect as a DVD: In the The Chaplin Collection Vol. 2 box set, it's packaged together with A Woman of Paris, while the rest of the movies in the set are given the double-disc treatment. Once you get past the feeling that Chaplin then looks like Mel Brooks five years ago, though, it's a worthy addition to the man's canon, especially among his underrated later works.

The vibe that I get most from A King in New York is that Chaplin must have been a really, really nice guy. Here's a guy who is exiled from a country without trial, based on rumors (truthful or not). He's making a movie about a foreigner who finds himself lost in America, culturally. Yet the movie doesn't strike me as bitter at all; everything is taken with the same light, comedic tone of his more famous works, parodying American film, music and especially commercialism. But, all of the gags are light teasing, rather than barbed swipes. Or maybe not. Offhand, I can't think of anything comparable from the time period with a similar anti-advertising bent.

The majority of it follows a pattern one would expect from a director whose work began in the silent film era. There isn't much of a plot to speak of; the king needs money and winds up doing commercials. This leads to the episodic structure that Chaplin did so well in his prime, and  even during his last starring role, showed a great amount of inventive spark. A scene featuring the king with a heinous amount of plastic surgery goes off perfectly: he attends a comedy show, unable to laugh in order to avoid "stretching it too much." The show he observes is an homage to his own silent comedies, and Chaplin's lone face, struggling not to smile amid a sea of laughter, is hysterical.

Then Chaplin's character, King Shadow, meets a young boy, Rupert at a school (long story). Shadow tries to engage in a conversation with Rupert, who fires off on a long tirade about the futility of all forms of government. The gag is that kids off-screen fool with the king, flinging soup at him while he tries to offer a rebuttal to the kid. It's not a great joke, but it shows a conscious decision to stand up to the accusations that banned him from America. Rupert also gets another showcase later in the movie, and troubles with his parents (staunch Communists) become the emotional center of the movie. Most telling, though, is when Rupert declares himself a communist after previously being an anarchist. Shadow asks him why; Rupert replies: "I'm so sick of people asking me if I'm this, if I'm that! So if it pleases everybody, I'm a Communist!" That's the sound of Chaplin throwing his hands up, and likely his reason for summarizing Marxist screeds in his comedy film about America that he made from Europe.

These moments really deaden the momentum of the movie, and they'd be a confusing choice without knowing the director's personal issues. At the same time, so much of the movie is joyfully sublime. The king performing the angriest "To be or not to be" speech in recorded history is a standout. Similarly, a (surprisingly spry!) 68 year-old Chaplin and his assistant peeping through a keyhole to see a woman bathing is some inspired silliness. Also, while many sometimes deride Chaplin for being mawkishly sentimental, this is probably the least sentimental movie I've seen with his name attached (except maybe Monsieur Verdoux, but I need to rewatch that to remember it better). It seems like he found freedom in his exile, to poke fun at his contemporaries (jokes specifically referencing Ed Wood and the declining western genre). Its energy buoys is well, and it's not nearly as slight as I'd expected. It's a little slower than City Lights and not a Great Film, but if you ever wonder if man who was once The Tramp ever lost it, this movie answers "No."