Hollywood has been remaking more classic films than ever before, and the trend is nothing new. Movie studios have been redoing movies since almost the beginning of the industry. In fact, some of our favorite films in recent years have been remakes of films produced years before. Here are five of the best remakes in recent years. 1. REMAKE: YOU’VE GOT MAIL (1998) ORIGINAL: THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER (1940) Most people are completely unaware that the very popular and successful 1998 romantic comedy You’ve Got Mail (Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan) was actually a remake of Ernst Lubitsch’s 1940 The Shop Around The Corner (James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan). The similarities between these films are strikingly familiar, only the settings are separated by an ocean and almost 100 years. Both films are about an unlikely couple. In The Shop Around The Corner, Margaret Sullavan and James Stewart play the couple while Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan play an updated version in You’ve Got Mail. In each film the couples can’t stand each other, but are unaware they are falling in love through anonymous correspondence. While The Shop Around The Corner uses letters (pen pals) to facilitate the pair’s correspondence, in You’ve Got Mail the updated plot used America Online's email for Ryan and Hanks’ characters. In You’ve Got Mail, Meg Ryan’s Kathleen Kelly’s small bookshop …show more content…
In both films, outlaws approach a rural village, but their chief spares the village in lieu of stealing their harvest. The plundering continues at every harvest for a number of years. Distraught about their inability to defend themselves, three villagers ask the elder of the town what to do? He declares they should hire gunslingers (samurai) to defend the village. Since they have no money to offer, the elder tells them to find desperate
In the 1959 Film Rio Bravo, a western, we see four men who stand alone in the face of adversity in the name of the law. In the 1966 film El Dorado, also a western, we can see this same scenario played out again. Both films were written by Leigh Brackett and directed by Howard Hawks. Although they are similar in there plot, there are some very obvious differences.
My analysis begins, as it will end, where most cowboy movies begin and end, with the landscape.Western heroes are essentially synedoches for that landscape, and are identifiable by three primary traits: first, they represent one side of an opposition between the supposed purity of the frontier and the degeneracy of the city, and so are separated even alienated from civilization; second, they insist on conducting themselves according to a personal code, to which they stubbornly cling despite all opposition or hardship to themselves or others; and third, they seek to shape their psyches and even their bodies in imitation of the leanness, sparseness, hardness, infinite calm and merciless majesty of the western landscape in which their narratives unfold.All of these three traits are present in the figures of Rob Roy and William Wallace--especially their insistence on conducting themselves according to a purely personal definition of honor--which would seem to suggest that the films built around them and their exploits could be read as transplanted westerns.However, the transplantation is the problem for, while the protagonists of these films want to be figures from a classic western, the landscape with which they are surrounded is so demonstrably not western that it forces their narratives into shapes which in fact resist and finally contradict key heroic tropes of the classic western.
The image created for the outlaw hero is the “natural man.” They are adventurous but also wanderers, and loners. Outlaw heroes are more likely to commit a crime, use weapons and carry guns. The outlaw hero represents self-determination and freedom from conflicts. On the other hand, the official hero is portrayed to be “the civilized” man. He often follows the norms of society, and has typical roles such as a lawyer, teacher, and family man.
In “The Thematic Paradigm,” Robert Ray explains how there are two vastly different heroes: the outlaw hero and the official hero. The official hero has common values and traditional beliefs. The outlaw hero has a clear view of right and wrong but unlike the official hero, works above the law. Ray explains how the role of an outlaw hero has many traits. The morals of these heroes can be compared clearly. Films that contain official heroes and outlaw heroes are effective because they promise viewer’s strength, power, intelligence, and authority whether you are above the law or below it.
If you said the words Wild West to someone, no doubt they would picture a mustached man sitting at a card game in an old saloon surrounded by cowboys and prostitutes. A player opposite him would be hiding an extra card up his sleeve, and soon enough he would be called on it and face off in the city square. Both players would step back and there’d be a long moment before the cheater moved for his hip holster, however he wouldn’t be fast enough. The gamer would draw his revolver and shoot the cheater dead between the eyes. Nonchalantly, the cowboys and prostitutes would go back to their drinks like it didn’t happen.
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) and The Wild Bunch (1962) are both critically acclaimed western films, regarded as some of the best in their genre. They are both different however in their portrayal of the western myth and the characters therein. This essay will compare and contrast these movies focusing on firstly their depiction of the national identity and mythology of the old west. Secondly, it will look at the differences of the portrayal of different character types, with specific reference to minority groups and women. Finally this essay will look at the two films comments on the development of America and American democracy in the civilising mission of the old west.
While the western frontier was still new and untamed, the western hero often took on the role of a vigilante. The vigilante’s role in the frontier was that of extralegal verve which was used to restrain criminal threats to the civil peace and opulence of a local community. Vigilantism was typical to the settler-state societies of the western frontier where the structures and powers of government were at first very feeble and weak. The typical cowboy hero had a willingness to use this extralegal verve. The Virginian demonstrated this throughout with his interactions with Trampas, most notably in the interactions leading up to the shoot out and during the shoot-out itself. “Others struggled with Trampas, and his bullet smashed the ceiling before they could drag the pistol from him… Yet the Virginian stood quiet by the...
Somewhere out in the Old West wind kicks up dust off a lone road through a lawless town, a road once dominated by men with gun belts attached at the hip, boots upon their feet and spurs that clanged as they traversed the dusty road. The gunslinger hero, a man with a violent past and present, a man who eventually would succumb to the progress of the frontier, he is the embodiment of the values of freedom and the land the he defends with his gun. Inseparable is the iconography of the West in the imagination of Americans, the figure of the gunslinger is part of this iconography, his law was through the gun and his boots with spurs signaled his arrival, commanding order by way of violent intentions. The Western also had other iconic figures that populated the Old West, the lawman, in contrast to the gunslinger, had a different weapon to yield, the law. In the frontier, his belief in law and order as well as knowledge and education, brought civility to the untamed frontier. The Western was and still is the “essential American film genre, the cornerstone of American identity.” (Holtz p. 111) There is a strong link between America’s past and the Western film genre, documenting and reflecting the nations changes through conflict in the construction of an expanding nation. Taking the genres classical conventions, such as the gunslinger, and interpret them into the ideology of America. Thus The Western’s classical gunslinger, the personification of America’s violent past to protect the freedoms of a nation, the Modernist takes the familiar convention and buries him to signify that societies attitude has change towards the use of diplomacy, by way of outmoding the gunslinger in favor of the lawman, taming the frontier with civility.
When one looks at a reboot of a movie, it is essential to seek a balance of staying true to the old story, while giving it a breath of fresh thoughts. For the story Robocop, the stories being made thirty years apart, it would have a different audience in 2014 than it did in 1984. This audience would require different aspects from cinema, such as flashier effects, more intricate costumes, and a simpler plot. While these changes appeased the younger audiences of the age, the changes left the older crowd as well as the people with different tastes betrayed. Although the new movie had more grandiose and flashy effects and costumes, it lacked charm and had mediocre script writing.
Silly poems and deep, dark truths are the world of Shel Silverstein. The lights in the attic always seem to be on; however, if one takes a hard look at Silverstein’s work, one must look beyond the lights in the attic to delve through the rest of the house to come up with a whole picture of who Shel Silverstein was. As with most authors, the face put forward in public for consumption rarely matches the behind-the-scenes person who keeps personal secrets away from society. All understand this concept because everyone holds “secrets” close, never to be revealed to the world at large. As one reads Silverstein’s books, his Chicago upbringing becomes apparent. Not only are his poems timeless; his poetry delves into the world of what was important
Many have heard of A Christmas Carol, a famous book by the author Charles Dickens. Charles Dickens wrote the short novel in 1843 in the mid years of his life. Long after his death in 1870, a live action film was made to tell his story to the eyes in 1984. Recently, my classmates and I watched this live action film and recorded the changes and similarities between the two. What are some of these differences and similarities between the novel and the movie, which were made over a century apart?
Karl leister was born on June 15, 1939 in Wilhelmshaven Germany. Just like him his father was also a clarinet player. His father was the one who taught him how to play the clarinet at a very young age. Karl Leister studied in the school of Hochschule fur Musik in Berlin. When he was a teenager he was accepted as a clarinet soloist. He joined the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra in 1959. He stayed playing in this Orchestra for thirty years. Karl Leister in this time was recognize as a big major soloist and chamber musician.
Men With Guns is not so much a film about economic processes as it is a film about the effects of a certain economic system - feudalism. It is more a film about cultural and political processes than anything else, a film that deals in depth with the grave consequences of a country in Central or South America whose Indians are subjects to the knights - the “men with guns” - who control and terrorize their existence.
The storyline is normally about a hero who comes to a town to bring peace and drive the villains out. A hero is usually seen as a vigilante as he is not told to come to help but does anyway. The hero often appears as a quiet, secretive, mysterious person who may make the audience admire him one minute and dislike him the next, he is also a very smart, cunning and adaptable which are all good values in a hero. The villain is usually fixed to one idea he thinks it is a smart cunning person but in the end is always defeated. Many scenes are set around the Saloon (bar) and there is quite often a romance involved with the hero and a local girl, the villain competing for her affections! There are two different types of villains in typical westerns Native Americans and white villains (cowboys).
Few Hollywood film makers have captured America’s Wild West history as depicted in the movies, Rio Bravo and El Dorado. Most Western movies had fairly simple but very similar plots, including personal conflicts, land rights, crimes and of course, failed romances that typically led to drinking more alcoholic beverages than could respectfully be consumed by any one person, as they attempted to drown their sorrows away. The 1958 Rio Bravo and 1967 El Dorado Western movies directed by Howard Hawks, and starring John Wayne have a similar theme and plot. They tell the story of a sheriff and three of his deputies, as they stand alone against adversity in the name of the law. Western movies like these two have forever left a memorable and lasting impressions in the memory of every viewer, with its gunfighters, action filled saloons and sardonic showdowns all in the name of masculinity, revenge and unlawful aggressive behavior. Featuring some of the most famous backdrops in the world ranging from the rustic Red Rock Mountains of Monument Valley in Utah, to the jagged snow capped Mountain tops of the Teton Range in Wyoming, gun-slinging cowboys out in search of mischief and most often at their own misfortune traveled far and wide, seeking one dangerous encounter after another, and unfortunately, ending in their own demise.