Hollywoodification

[shoei_mike]

Once upon a time there was this beautiful movie, Der Himmel über Berlin (Wings Of Desire). It had a great otherworldly feel, stark backgrounds, scenes in goth clubs (featuring Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds), a beautiful French trapeze artist in a run-down circus, and Peter Falk as himself. This film won an award for Best Director at Cannes. The LA

Comments

[mattmatt]

The US version of Godzilla, which removed the anti-nuclear message that sat so nicely at the heart of the original.

Or maybe George Lucas's 1977 remake of Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress, only he changed the title and made some of the characters robots.

[shoei_mike]

Absolutely. That wasn't a a movie of the Godzilla sub-genre of monster movies. It was just a monster movie. Where was the little boy who loved Godzilla? You've got to have him.

Now I must see The Hidden Fortress.

[morbid_curious]

My favourite recent one was The Departed. I got around 20 minutes into watching this new "Martin Scorsese Blockbuster" before realising that I'd seen the film before when it was the Hong Kong cinematic hit Infernal Affairs, starring Andy Lau and Tony Leung instead of Matt Damon and Leonardo DiCaprio.

I must admit, though, this is one of the few films that seem to have survived Hollywoodification - perhaps Scorsese got his "Best Director" Golden Globe award for not mangling it badly like so many remakes before :-)