Fuck off hollywood!

[gbranton]

Blade Runner

Either you Google or useless shit sticks in your mind like it does mine, LOL.

One of my best friends collects science fiction books and some of the Philip K Dick stuff is quite sought after now, including the basis for Total Recall "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale". Like many authors, he saw very little money from his works while he was still alive, though he wrote over 40 books.

I'll make this one tougher:

One of my favorite stories involving an author who fell into that category saw the the author in question living in his car when work commenced on making his first full length novel into what I feel is easily one of the best movies ever made. The director and producer felt sorry for the author and gave him a screenwriting and executive producer credits to cut him in on the profits. Sadly he was later sentenced to a six month jail term for stealing some books, where his health became poor, he lost forty pounds and later died at the all too young age of 46.

[Terry]

What about The Thing?

Yeah...definitely a quantum leap over the original The Thing From Another World.

Then again, Carpenter wasn't afraid to take the basic premise of the original and use that as a launching pad to do something completely different. Plus, Carpenter assembled a fucking killer cast of character actors.

[Terry]

Either you Google or useless shit sticks in your mind like it does mine, LOL.

One of my best friends collects science fiction books and some of the Philip K Dick stuff is quite sought after now, including the basis for Total Recall "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale". Like many authors, he saw very little money from his works while he was still alive, though he wrote over 40 books.

I'll make this one tougher:

One of my favorite stories involving an author who fell into that category saw the the author in question living in his car when work commenced on making his first full length novel into what I feel is easily one of the best movies ever made. The director and producer felt sorry for the author and gave him a screenwriting and executive producer credits to cut him in on the profits. Sadly he was later sentenced to a six month jail term for stealing some books, where his health became poor, he lost forty pounds and later died at the all too young age of 46.

My old man took me to see Blade Runner when it first hit the theaters, then he bought me the Dick book Electric Sheep. I was too young to really understand most of what I was seeing (I was only 12) in terms of the subtext...things like Gaff's matchstick and tinfoil figures...all that shit blew right by me back then. Electric Sheep was also very different in terms of tone than what ended up onscreen. But I love that fucking movie...always have.

[gbranton]

remakes work never.

at least I've never seen one that wasn't abominable

Sure you have, though you probably didn't realize it was a remake. The movie is a Hong Kong action flick called Infernal Affairs, which tells the story of a police officer who infiltrates the triads, and a police officer secretly working for the same gang. It was so successful in Hong Kong it generated a prequel and then a sequel. All three movies are available on DVD here in America.

Martin Scorsese then went on to remake the movie under the title The Departed, which I though was a fanfuckingtastic movie.

[gbranton]

My old man took me to see Blade Runner when it first hit the theaters, then he bought me the Dick book Electric Sheep. I was too young to really understand most of what I was seeing (I was only 12) in terms of the subtext...things like Gaff's matchstick and tinfoil figures...all that shit blew right by me back then. Electric Sheep was also very different in terms of tone than what ended up onscreen. But I love that fucking movie...always have.

Very cool. I do think that Dick was quite mad, but I think the most successful authors range from being a little touched in the head to being quite mad.

[sadaist]

It's a remake of the original.

Lame. The Arnold one was perfect. It had a lady with 3 boobs!


I'm considering getting into science fiction a little and need a couple of starter books. Do I go Heinlen or Asimov? I want to start with some thinner books. Which author & any particular ones I should seek out?

[gbranton]

Lame. The Arnold one was perfect. It had a lady with 3 boobs!


I'm considering getting into science fiction a little and need a couple of starter books. Do I go Heinlen or Asimov? I want to start with some thinner books. Which author & any particular ones I should seek out?

Wow, that's hard to say Heilen and Asimov, along with Arthur C. Clarke, are considered to be the "Big Three" of science fiction literature. Heinlen was more controversial for his day (and maybe still) and his books have some political/racial/sexual themes in them. I find Asimov's style to be rather direct and simple but quite effective. He was also QUITE prescient about things such as computers and was credited with inventing the term "robotics".

I love to collect books which spawned movies, so I could recommend Azimov's "I, Robot", which is a series of nine short stories.

[gbranton]

One of my favorite stories involving an author who fell into that category saw the the author in question living in his car when work commenced on making his first full length novel into what I feel is easily one of the best movies ever made. The director and producer felt sorry for the author and gave him a screenwriting and executive producer credits to cut him in on the profits. Sadly he was later sentenced to a six month jail term for stealing some books, where his health became poor, he lost forty pounds and later died at the all too young age of 46.

Fellow Alabamian Gustav Hasford, whose book "The Short Timers", along with Michael Herr's "Dispatches", is the basis for the movie "Full Metal Jacket". Hasford's book introduced the Private Joker character and is mostly responsible for the first half of the movie, including the ABSOLUTELY EPIC bootcamp sequences. Herr's book was a non-fictional account of his time as a correspondant for Esquire magazine during the Vietnam war and was the basis for Pvt Joker's experiences in the second half of the movie. Herr also co-wrote the script for the movie.

Hasford did write a second book concerning Joker and his Vietnam experience, called The Phantom Blooper. If you like to read and liked the movie Full Metal Jacket I HIGHLY recommend this one. It shows the Vietnamese as real people and not just props for the hero to knock over like so many Vietnam War novels have. It has to be one of the most interesting books I have ever read.

[Nitro Express]

sequels work sometimes.


remakes work never.

at least I've never seen one that wasn't abominable

That's the truth. George Lucas proved that by remaking and ruining all his classic Star Wars movies.

[sadaist]

Wow, that's hard to say Heilen and Asimov, along with Arthur C. Clarke, are considered to be the "Big Three" of science fiction literature. Heinlen was more controversial for his day (and maybe still) and his books have some political/racial/sexual themes in them. I find Asimov's style to be rather direct and simple but quite effective. He was also QUITE prescient about things such as computers and was credited with inventing the term "robotics".

I love to collect books which spawned movies, so I could recommend Azimov's "I, Robot", which is a series of nine short stories.

Thanks dude. Im gonna pick it up.

I already read all the classics. Hemingway, Steinbeck, London, Stevenson, etc... So I wanted to try something else. Checked out westerns and got a Loius L'Amour book but it just really didn't do it for me. So I'm gonna give this genre a try.

[Seshmeister]

The shitty thing is when a remake or sequel actually kills the original.

For a while for me Highlander 2 did that by being so fucking terrible it also managed to kill the original movie.

In the long term that wasn't so bad. I challenge anyone to watch the opening fight scene in Highlander in the car park now as a grown up person and not be appalled...

I'm not saying that Total Recall was a legendary film it had Arnie in it FFS but it's hard not to feel that Hollywood from paralysed fear of failure is selling a shitty xerox copy of our history to the kids today and that is a fucking disgrace. No originality, no support for original writers, it doesn't give the kids their own history and worst of all for us is that it kills our version for ever.

If these dickholes aren't careful Hollywood is going to go the same way as Detroit...

[sadaist]

Totally Sesh. No fucking originality any more. Umm....I can't even remember a good movie that had any amount of freshness to it at all. Look what they did to Indiana Jones. FUCK! Harrison was still a awesome as could be in the movie. but what a horrible script. And Shia Lebouef? Man............way to fucking ruin it.

[chefcraig]

There is a rumor that the clueless, thought-free and completely uninspired nitwits that work in Hollywood came up with a country music-themed remake of Footloose sometime in the last year or so. I say rumor because no one I have encountered while walking the planet can lay claim to having ever seen the remake, plus the fact that anyone who may have been involved in it's production is denying it ever took place.

Seriously, what sort of drugs are these producers using, and where can I gain access to them? You know, the sort of stuff that after it's been smoked, inhaled or swallowed while watching an old, syndicated rerun on tv, brings you to the stark realization that Cedric The Entertainer and some nitwit you've never heard of would be perfect in a re-do as these guys?

[jhale667]

There is a rumor that the clueless, thought-free and completely uninspired nitwits that work in Hollywood came up with a country music-themed remake of Footloose sometime in the last year or so. I say rumor because no one I have encountered while walking the planet can lay claim to having ever seen the remake, plus the fact that anyone who may have been involved in it's production is denying it ever took place.

Seriously, what sort of drugs are these producers using, and where can I gain access to them? You know, the sort of stuff that after it's been smoked, inhaled or swallowed while watching an old, syndicated rerun on tv, brings you to the stark realization that Cedric The Entertainer and some nitwit you've never heard of would be perfect in a re-do as these guys?

I know it exists because it's listed on PPV this month, but I've never seen the first Footloose, FFS - zero interest in the remake.

[sadaist]

The absolute worst thing I saw advertised for a movie that made me literally sick to my stomach. Comparing this...




to this....






THE HORROR!