improving upon the already improved upon

hollywood has this penchant for doing remakes of films, even of their own products of yore. while that works well for other projects, i don't quite get it for the others.

for instance, it worked well when sydney pollack remade the billy wilder film SABRINA with the classic audrey hepburn. watching the original 1950s film and the 1990s remake with julia ormond (whom we last saw in THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON), i was happy about several narrative loopholes and nonplausible scenarios in the first one that were corrected and given better logic in the remake. and please, harrison ford is way dapper than humphrey bogart, camownaw!

latest example i saw of this is the batman remakes. but it was just too early to do remakes of that! the memory of all of tim burton's BATMAN films in the 1990s (and the subsequent sequels directed by others, like joel schumacher who did the most homoerotic version, i swear) are still fresh in my mind. so there's not enough gap for it, i think, to have chris nolan helm his THE DARK KNIGHT and BATMAN BEGINS chronicles. add to that that i am not too keen on christian bale as bruce wayne/batman -- he doesn't quite cut it. kulang pa ng 14 pogi points. but hey, i thoroughly enjoyed THE DARK KNIGHT because of nolan's filmic innovations, not because it was a batman flick and i was keen on seeing one this early in my life.

so for hollywood to announce another remake, that of TOMB RAIDER naman, na i really really really remember pa attending the premiere night / press preview (since i was the entertainment editor of a dyaryo pa when it was first shown) and being given the token tokens (press releases, movie still photos, and a tshirt (woot! i still have this!), sana naman e palampasin nila ang at least isang dekada man lang (or more, for more) bago sila gumawa ng remake. or bago nila gawan ng rehash daw ang whatever na ire-rehash nila dito, sabi nga sa balita.

but then, my point is, what's the point kung wala si ex-angelina my love sa remake? luz. it's like BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S without audrey hepburn. or GILDA without rita hayworth. or ALL ABOUT EVE without bette davis (can you imagine that being remade with, uh, er, say, julia roberts? ew.). yes, ormond had huge, huge, huge shoes to fill in that SABRINA remake. but she made the remake role her own, at bow ako sa kanya. love her.

teka, napanood mo ba ang mga pelikulang ito? luz ka kung hindi! classics ito.

so what i'm saying is, lara croft ain't lara croft kung di si angelina jolie ang title role. ang boobs niya ay ginawa ng diyos specifically for this role. bow.

read:


‘Lara Croft’ to return – without Jolie

Agence France-Presse
First Posted 08:33:00 01/29/2009

LOS ANGELES -- Lara Croft is set to return in a new movie based on the "Tomb Raider" video games but Angelina Jolie is unlikely to reprise her role as the gun-toting archeologist, reports said Wednesday.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, studio giant Warner Bros. is in the early stages of developing a third film in the franchise following movies in 2001 and 2003 derived from the 1996 video game.

However the report in the entertainment industry journal said Oscar-nominated actress Jolie was unlikely to return for the role.

The new project was expected to revamp the character of Croft, the report said, with the film bearing little resemblance to the earlier movies.

The first two "Tomb Raider" films grossed roughly $430 million worldwide.

LUZ!