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THE FAN GIRL NEXT DOOR: LET ME RETELL YOU A STORY
By Janet
Jan 26, 2008, 20:42

There are a few constants in my life. Good friends, wonderful family, the girl behind the counter at the coffee shop who doesn't seem to understand that people actually like their coffee served hot and the cute construction guy who looks like the drummer from 'blink 182' smiling and waving at me every morning from the endless construction mess near my house.

You know what else is becoming a constant? The long stream of useless, meaningless and for lack of a better word, stupid remakes that have been plaguing our movie theaters for quite some time now. As interesting as Clint Eastwood remaking "The Changeling" sounds, I would rather see him complete the "Every Which Way But Loose" trilogy.

Remaking and retelling movies seems to be a get out of jail free card when it comes to lack of creativity and new ideas. Can't think of anything yourself? Well hey, just grab some really awesome Asian horror flick 90% of the American movie going audience probably hasn’t seen and spoon feed it to them as brand new goods.

And while we are on the subject, I would much prefer the term “retelling”. I mean to remake someone else’s work implies that they didn't get it right the first time so some hot shot, ambitious director has to come in and save the day and show us what the story SHOULD have been like.

But hey, I'm a pretty positive person and I like to look at the good side of things and there ARE horror retellings  I feel actually work on some level or another. Rob Zombie's "Halloween" worked for me, when I first heard about it I was disappointed in Rob a bit, I felt a remake was almost beneath him. After seeing his edgy and disturbing retelling of the John Carpenter classic I was singing a whole other tune, I actually enjoyed it.

Also, and I catch alot of crap for this, I actually enjoyed Zach Snyder's version of "Dawn of the Dead". It followed the basic outline of the original but added it's own heart to it. It had the perfect mix of new and old. The homage’s and shout outs along the way had me leaving the theater satisfied. Snyder knew he was retelling something and he was smart enough to know the audience knew that too.

There will always be retellings; they do much too well at the box office for them to be going away anytime soon. All we can do is hope that the present and future storytellers out there can buffer all of it with some new, fresh and exciting ideas. Until next time..............

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