Rage against the Remake! (King WHO??) May 1, 2007
Posted by Cal in : Articles , trackbackUnless you are particularly unobservant, you will have noticed that over the last few years, the movie industry has thrown seemingly dozens of remakes our way. So much so that nearly every film you hear about these days is a remake of something or other. Even respectable filmmakers get in on the act, too: Peter Jackson, director of classics Bad Taste and Braindead (I think he also scored a minor hit with some kind of fantasy-based project) did King Kong and is now remaking The Dambusters. Even though no one seems particularly interested (the only publicity I’ve heard about the Dambusters film is people speculating what the dog will be called now), remakes are still being churned out at a massive rate.
However, nothing about the current trend has really, truly, wholly pissed me off until now. I hated the idea of a Dawn of the Dead remake (it ended up quite watchable, actually), I scoffed at the idea of a Wicker Man remake (I will never, ever sink so low as to watch that one), but I took it all with a pinch of salt.
That was until I heard that last week it was announced that Quentin Tarantino is to helm a remake of Come Drink With Me. Now don’t get me wrong, I like Tarantino up to a point. Both Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction were bloody brilliant. Some of his scripts are good to great. But Jackie Brown left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth (but then again, I’m not a big fan of Elmore Leonard) and I’m still not sure about Kill Bill – it seemed to me as if he was deliberately trying to get bad performances out of the actors most of the time.
Tarantino’s credentials as a Hong Kong film nut are without question – he used City on Fire as a template for Reservoir Dogs and much of Kill Bill is in the Shaw style (including the logo at the start and a tell-tale shaky face zoom). But King Hu’s Come Drink With Me? I’m sorry, but it’s too polite to be given the Tarantino treatment. I’m surprised he even likes the film – I would have thought Chang Cheh would have been closer to Tarantino’s style, and The Five Venoms more his speed. Plus, aren’t the public starting to get tired of Tarantino wearing his grindhouse influences on his sleeve? Kill Bill was not well received, and I’d imagine this will fare even worse.
What I want to know is how is he going to handle the scene at the Inn where the Golden Swallow and the bandits are pretending not to fight each other? I certainly hope she’s not going to just burst in and shout, “Any of you f*ckin’ pr*cks move and I’ll execute every one of you motherf*ckers!” And are we going to be treated to a Twisting competition between the Golden Swallow and the Drunken Beggar Fan Dapei? What about Smiling Tiger’s lifeless body in the boot of a car (or the back of a horse-drawn carriage in this case) after being accidentally stabbed in the face by Jade Faced Tiger?
I suppose I shouldn’t be too judgmental at this stage (at least he’s calling it by its proper English title and not the abominable Girl with the Thunderbolt Kick), but it doesn’t bode well. One possible upshot of all this could be a long overdue release and remaster of King Hu’s catalogue. To date only this, Legend of the Mountain and Sons of Good Earth have got proper DVD releases with nice remastered visuals and audio (Swordsman doesn’t count). Some of his other films are practically impossible to get hold of (I only managed to get my hands on Raining in the Mountain when I visited a dubious shop on a visit to New York) and some are impossible to get hold of. Hopefully, Tarantino will raise awareness of King Hu and we’ll see the rest at last. At least we should get a remaster of A Touch of Zen out of it. And for that, I would be thankful.
Comments»
Actually, The Girl With The Thunderbolt Kick is the alternate title for Golden Swallow, Chang Cheh’s sequel to Come Drink With Me
Another King Hu film on DVD is Dragon Inn. There is a German DVD with English subs and (non-anamorphic) widescreen picture - http://www.hkflix.com/xq/asp/filmID.536324/qx/details.htm
Don’t forget Dragon Dynasty are releasing Shaw titles soon and I belive Come Drink With Me is among them
Since many of the actors are still living, I’d rather see a big reunion pic with Tarentino producing it for marquee value. That’d be something. Cheng Pei-pei has contributed to some of the HK DVDs of her work.
The big question is: whatever happened to Lu Feng?
I agree that there’s too many remakes coming out of Hollywood lately. It’ll be interesting to see what Tarantino does with the film but the likelihood is some kind of nostalgic homage.
I too wrote about the issue of remakes and sequels at the beginning of 2006: http://www.dvdtimes.co.uk/content.php?contentid=59875
That’s a good article, Daniel. Very interesting. I too noticed the War of the Worlds/Jurassic Park similarities…
Sorry, Jason, your comments got caught up in the spam filter for some reason…
You are right: Girl with the Thunderbolt Kick was the alternate name for Golden Swallow - don’t know how I got that mixed up! I’m hoping that Cheng Pei-Pei at least has a cameo in the remake - that seems to be the custom nowadays.
That version of Dragon Gate Inn (great film, by the way) looks interesting - is the picture quality good?
I was tempted to bitch about this in my own blog, especially in light of Tarantino’s ridiculous “orientalist” photo spread in GQ (http://ampha.org/2007/04/lair-of-villainy-quentin-tarantino/) that can’t even be called “ironic” in light of what we know about Tarantino’s cherry-picking attitudes towards the culture, but you’ve pretty much summed up my thoughts. Not sure if it’s opened there yet, but wait til you see his contribution to GRINDHOUSE. You won’t be able to THINK of a worse high-profile director to tackle a remake of a classic Hong Kong martial arts picture. I can just picture yet another camera dolly around a table of people making pop-culture references (olden days pop culture, of course!) and dropping hints/justifications of the plot that lays ahead. And probably lots of shots of female feet. His car chase in GRINDHOUSE is quite good, but the slog that proceeds it is excruciating and very derivative of Tarantino’s older films. Guy’s even ripping off HIMSELF now!
The problem with him just producing such a film would be that in the west, his likewise orientalist pals at Dragon Dynasty (and we know they’ll be the ones) would slap his name on the DVD sleeve in a font bigger than the title itself, so that no matter who really directed it, the common rabble would think HE did.
Yeah, the “Quentin Tarantino Presents…” thing has always made me wince. I’d hate to be the kind of person that would be impressed with a company sticking that on the front of a disc. Horrible.
No, Grindhouse hasn’t made it here yet, but it’s already received a bit of a panning from the press. I do feel a bit sorry for the guy in a way as he can clearly do nothing right these days. He should probably just do Pulp Fiction 2 and maybe the public will forgive him.
But I still don’t want him going anywhere near CDWM. And that photo shoot is probably not the best way to start.