It seems to be open season on the films of Akira Kurosawa. The Bayside Shakedown crew have their remake of Sanjuro releasing later this year and now word has broken that The Sinking of Japan director Shinji Higuchi will be remaking The Hidden Fortress with Hiroshi Abe and Masami Nagasawa starring. So there you go. It's not just Hollywood that cannibalizes its own.
Kurosawa's films have been remade all over the world for decades and some of them are classics. It's just when Americans remake something that people put up a fuss.
I love A Fistful of Dollars, and who's fussin'? I even preferred The Departed over Internal Affairs. I think people put up a row over American remakes because of the usually shoddy work they've done with them. But then again, it could be personal.
The only classic Kurosawa that bored me.
Best remake ever - David Cronenberg's THE FLY. 'nuff said.
Yup. What the above have said. Actually, some classic Japanese films are remakes. The Toshiro Mifune Chushingura is a remake, for example. I don't know how many times that story has been translated, remade, and re-imagined for the screen.
Seven Samurai has seen The Magnificent Seven and A Bugs Life in the US, but also Pink film and anime incarnations in Japan.
And didn't Ozu remake his own Floating Weeds?
Remakes on their own aren't entirely bad. It's just that American remakes tend to be crappier than original crappy American films.
remakes can only make things better, there is no need to bash the idea of remaking.
i mean, if a remake sucks, you have still the original.
and if a remake rocks, well, it rocks!
"remakes can only make things better"
It just happens to be very few remakes who actually do it better. Remaking movies is usually an exercise in dull repetition and pointlessness. There's a reason so few remakes are actually good, why tell a story already told, and much better told anyway?
Have the Bayside Shakedown folks had any duds yet? I still haven't seen the shows (w/out subs), but all the movies have been first rate imo.
Haven't seen all the Bayside stuff myself, either, but have enjoyed everything I have seen.