In my last post about Rob Zombie’s Halloween remake I mentioned MTV’s report that Zombie wouldn’t be using John Carpenter’s theme music in his version. Well, on his MySpace Teen Friendship Page, Zombie reveals that the MTV writer misunderstood what he was saying about the theme music, and that he actually plans to use it.
But don’t let your guard down yet, Carpenter fans. While you were busy boarding up the windows in case of Zombie attack (get it, that is some kind of a pun I believe) Fast and the Furious producer Neal H. Moritz was planning a remake of another Carpenter classic, Escape From New York. As reported earlier by Bilge, the remake may star 300’s Gerard “SPARTAAAAAAA!” Butler as Snake Plissken. It would be written by the guy who wrote Black Hawk Down.
Now, I’m not gonna lie, I can see how some of the elements of the original movie could be juiced up and re-imaginated and what not. In fact, the idea of the government turning Manhattan into a maximum security prison takes on a little more punch in the age of Camp X-Ray and the USA PATRIOT Act, so they could treat the politics a little more seriously if they wanted to. And it would be interesting to see the dark model city world of the original given life by the bigger budget and the digital technology. (read the rest of this shit…)
Recently some joker spread a phony story on the internet about how Kurt Russell had tricked Paramount into greenlighting ESCAPE FROM EARTH, a third Snake Plissken movie, as part of a three picture deal. I knew it was too good to be true, but I also know that Russell always says Snake is his favorite character he’s ever played, and he clearly loves working with John Carpenter. Carpenter could use a return to the big screen, and I wouldn’t be surprised if after Tarantino’s DEATH PROOF comes out next year (starring Kurt Russell as a killer stuntman and scored by Carpenter) there is a rise in popularity and nostalgia for the classic Kurt Russell badass roles. I think it would actually be smart to make a new Plissken movie right now as long as it wasn’t a huge budget and it wasn’t a rehash of the other two. So, their loss I guess. And the world’s.
THEY LIVE is one of my favorite movies ever. It is probaly the very best version of a rare type of movie I love: the badass action movie that also works as a political statement. BILLY JACK may be more political, but it seems so self important and it has no sense of humor. THEY LIVE is kind of saying the same thing THE MATRIX is saying about a society brainwashed by media and advertising, but it’s saying more than that. It’s about the America of the Reagan years, when everything was geared to help the rich at the expense of the working class. Which for some reason seems awfully familiar today. Huh. Weird.
I don’t know if you remember this movie, it’s about a haunted car. In other words, it’s based on a Stephen King book. And that also means it’s a 50’s car that plays old Little Richard songs and crap while it kills people. I know the filmatists today are bad, they gotta put references to all the TV shows and movies from their childhood, but Stephen King is the original. This guy has been cannibalizing his childhood for decades. And also he’s been making up stories about inanimate objects killing people. Killer laundry machines and shit like that. Remember in the TV movie version of THE SHINING, there was a haunted fire hose that killed a guy? It’s alot like that only a car.
John Carpenter is one of the most controversial directors of our time. Not because he gets into touchy subjects, like he goes and does some movie about jesus doing somebody in the ass or whatever it is that offends people these days. But because of his actual work. Because no one can really seem to agree whether he sucks with a few brilliant exceptions, whether he used to be brilliant and now he sucks, or whether he is really one of the great masters of the horror and Badass Cinema and that some of these new ones are just an off day.
