God why?!

Oh man Steve "Had white hair since he was 12" Martin should be shot. I never found the guy funny at all...but I know some people did.

If they are going to ruin a classic, atleast do it RIGHT! (If that is possible). Martin looks NOTHING like Jacques Clouseau (Sellers), I mean, they could have atleast colored his hair for the movie or SOMETHING! Noone could EVER do a better job than Sellers did, and it's sad that this movie is being made.

The trailer makes the humor look forced. While some of the jokes seemed like they were right from an original Pink Panther film, most of them were too...cliche-hollywood-childrens-humor.

Oh well Atleast they have a good director .

Steve Martin jsut hasn't been making a lot of movies over the past ten years. That doesn't men he's not funny anymore. I have faith. Jean Reno's in the movie, and that never hurts.

He's been in 15 movies in the past 10 years. Plus I never found him funny before that, but like I said, that's just me.

Steve Martin is really funny, listen to some of his old comedy records from the 70's.

It seems like none of the great comedic actors from the 70's/80's have been able to score any great movies recently. Eddie Murphy is another perfect example of a funny guy in some really unfunny movies. ...Really unfunny.

Bill Murray, on the other hand, seems to be doing pretty well with his choices. I guess he's an exception.

(And, since I have a feeling I'll need to, I'll point out that this post has been 100% opinion.)

Steve Martin isn't funny? HAVE YOU EVER SEEN THE JERK???

What's next, Chevy Chase and Dan Ackroyd aren't funny either?

And something else. I don't here anyone chiming in about how Akira Kurosawa is spinning in his grave every time one of his movies is ripped off... Considering about every movie made since 1954 has ripped him off, you'd be doing alot of complaining.

Stories get ripped off, and movies get remade. Don't act like no one could ever do a classic movie better than the original. We have advances in modern film making technology that make contemporary film more streamlined.

The old movie might have more character to it and bla bla bla, but the fact is it's like saying a '69 camaro is a better car than a brand new honda. The '69 camaro might be more appealing to the nostalgiac crowd and all that, but that doesn't mean it's better. New technology has the ability to make things that were once great even better... Now granted this doesn't always happen. As a matter of fact it almost never happens, but sometimes a movie comes along which totally blows us away and it's a blatant ripoff.

I didn't hear you ringing Kurosawa's bell when Hero ripped off Rashomon to-a-t. But hey, it was still a good movie.

That said Bill, no one would re-make Casablanca its older than some of the movies that are remade but no one would dare try to do it again. (well maybe a massassian with a small camera and plastic men)

It seems to boil down to the fact that America's movie industry is just plain out of idea's. (which is good for other movies world wide)

Oh, one other quick comment I personally hate to see any old movie remade with lots of special effects to 'jazz it up' its just stupid:

"Oh look! This movie never had CGI, lets remake it".

Jean Reno rocks, but he's been in a whole bunch of crappy movies.

[/i]


A hundread bux to anyone who knows where thats from.*


* Prize is given in CoWBux

Yes, it might be better than the original, but experience teaches us that it usually isn't. I don't think I'm alone in getting really sick and tired of remakes of old movies or books. There seems to be a complete lack of original material. The 80s classics of the Back to the Future triology, Edward Scissorhands, or Beetlejuice - we don't have any films like that anymore. Instead we get a rehashed Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Dawn of the Dead, I Robot, and soon War of the Worlds and King Kong. I am looking forward to the new Willy Wonka film, simply because I like Johnny Depp, but I'd much rather see those excellent actors go on a new, original film. Part of the problem is that the classics they choose to remake were excellent films in their time, making it incredibly hard to match that quality. If they chose some really crap films to remake, they might stand a better chance.

They've remade Casablanaca twice.

Mort, you fail to understand three very important things.

1. War of the Worlds is directed by Steven Spielberg
2. King Kong is directed by Peter Jackson
3. Charlie and the Chocolate factory is directed by Tim Burton

Not only do I expect these remakes to be GOOD, but I expect them to be better than the originals.

#3 isn't a remake and Johnny Depp isn't directing.

That there should read Tim Burton, bub.

Oh yeah... please excuse... I just woke up.

EDIT: And yeah it pretty much is a remake. It's a slightly different version of the story told in Willy Wonka.

War of the Worlds will be slightly different than the old one, but it doesn't cease to be a remake, does it?

War of the Worlds is an adaptation of the novel by H.G. Welles. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is also an adaptation of the previous novel. A REMAKE would necessitate that the project is a remake of a previous version of the film. In both cases, they are not.

The Magnificent Seven is considered a remake of Seven Samurai. It doesn't have the same title, and it has cowboys instead of samurai.

Imdb considers War of the Worlds a remake.
Imdb does not consider Charlie and the Chocolate Factory a remake, but I still do.

While we're on the subject, I think burton might be able to do the story a little more justice on the big screen, because, let's face it, while you might have watched Willy Wonka a billion times, it's not really a great movie. It might be a 'classic' according to you, but it's just not really great.

IMDb gets its information from its users, it's really unreliable.

Gene Wilder > Johnny Depp

YES!

Roald Dahl reportedly hated the Gene Wilder film, and I don't blame him. Even as a child, I didn't like it but I thought the book was great.

Gene Wilder is the only redeeming thing about Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Wilder made that movie a classic.

Are you counting Overdrawn at the Memory Bank?

eh. depp is much more what i thought of from the book alone. wilder is kinda close, but depp is perfect from what i had in my mind.

When I was in the cinema, I laughed out loud when I saw the War of the Worlds trailer. It really looks awful. It looks exactly like Independence Day, combined with any other generic action films. What was really the worst was how they 'simplified' the opening dialogue. I was quite irritated at that, because that dialogue was excellent in Jeff Wayne's concept album version of it.
Some books transpose really well to movie, Stephen King most notably, but not HG Wells. What makes War of the Worlds such a great book is not so much the storyline, but the beautiful language used. This is why it transposed so well to radio, quite famously causing a stir with people thinking it was a real news item. Similarly with Jules Verne and John Wyndham. There's been two movies of Day of the Triffids, and they were both hilarious awful. The BBC TV series was marginally better, but not much.

So, Stephen King or no, I really don't expect much from this War of the Worlds remake.

You think that steven king movies adapt well to movies? How many GOOD movies have come from steven king books?

The Shining, of course, but the screenplay was by Kubrik...

Other than that... there have not been many good ones.

The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile were pretty good. But then again, that has a lot to do with Darabont's work on it.

The Green Mile, The Shawshank Redemption, Tommyknockers, The Stand, Needful Things and Running Man are all really quite good adaptations.
I wasn't too pleased with Carrie, but the quality of the film adaptations tend to reflect the quality of the books originally - not all of them are that great. But Stephen King translates much better to movie than many other authors.

Ok I should have been more specific... the adaptations which actually INVOLVE king are horrible. It's almost like clockwork.

Also, all but two of Kubrik's movies were book adaptations... only one of them was a King novel.

The winner of the best picture academy award is almost ALWAYS a book adaptation, and it has never (to my knowledge) been a King novel.

I would not go so far as to say his books translate better.

...Then lets wrap him in copper wire and magnets and generate some electricity!

Oh...wow. Someone else has seen that.

Someone who isn't some vile anteater!

Poor Mr. Julia.

I've only read four King books so far: Carrie, The Dead Zone, Firestarter, and The Shining.

The Shining was drastically different from the book, but still an awesome film.

I liked Carrie, very close to the book too.

I rented Firestarter after reading the book. The book was alright, but the movie was rubbish.

The Dead Zone is a pretty good book, but the movie is supposed to be better, haven't seen it yet.

Shawshank and Green Mile are good movies as TimeWolf suggested. Haven't read either book.

Misery was very good also (surprised no one has mentioned it), must get around to getting the book at some point.



Heh. King hated what Kubrick did with The Shining, easy to see why with it being so different. Anthony Burgess apparently hated Kubrick's adaptation of A Clockwork Orange too, even though the film is actually quite faithful to the book (apart from the missing last chapter which no American print of the book contained at the time of filming).

I still get nightmares from that one. *shudders*

That might actually be GOOD...

"I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here..."
"Your winnings sir..."
"Thank you, now clear the room at once!"

I love that line...

That's one of my favorite lines.

I've seen the MST3k version of it...

In regards to Steve Martin's attempt to top a great comedic genius... the only reason I want to see the movie is because I love the humor that the old Pink Panther movies use. However, I was completely disgusted by Martin and the way he handled the character, even in the 1 minute I saw of it. And... no one has mentioned Kline playing Chief Inspector Dreyfuss. THAT is more of an outrage than Martin. At least I'm assuming that Kline is Dreyfuss.... cant tell.

From the trailer, I'd rather watch the Son of the Pink Panther movie 80x than this new one.

In fact, I'm going to Best Buy tomorrow to buy the PP box set... The only one I own right now is the Pink Panther Strikes Again.

I love Peter Sellers and I hate to see his work tarnished like this.

Steve Martin can be good, but he has just sacrificed any respect he had for money, by accepting such ridiculous roles as Big Momma's House or whatever, and that one with Queen Latifah, bringing down the house.

Hollywood sucks. A comedy movie nowadays is usually just a cool black character meeting an uptight white character and helping him come out of his shell and become a hip cool dad to his tweeny daughter and teenage son. Of course there is the obligatory scene of the white guy dressing in hip hop clothes and dancing like a fool, using ridiculously over exagerrated ebonics. **** I CAN'T STAND HOLLYWOOD!!