Talks of "Christine" remake

[Gregg Axley]

Silly me, I turned my wife onto it and now we've got every DVD they've released.
I hope Christine will be an older car, like the original fury it was written about.
Newer just takes all the mystique out of it.
BTW, I've found Atomic Tom's version, if he had his way.
http://fordimages.com/perl/magnify_popup.pl?imageID=66160&staticImage=C&ckon=image&alt=0
I tried to save it as an image, but it wouldn't...oh well.
With the Super Maurader engine pumping out 400 horsepower, this would be a very scary version!

 

[MissChloeCorville]

I totally agree with you C Dot! Keith gordon was perfect for the role!

I hate remakes.

The movie wasn't true to-the-letter to the book, but it was done admirably. They will probably have to change the make of the car altogether, because the Fury wouldn't be something 17 year old Arnie would find at the side of the road in 2011. If he did, he sure wouldn't have the money to buy it... Or to fix it up.

Keith Gordon was perfect as Arnie too, so I'm intensely skeptical of the new kid!

 

[Lady Day]

I'm not opposed to remakes. It's just now what is being remade isn't the source material, but the old movie that got made from said material. Thats quite inbread to me, but most people don't care because most people these remakes are aimed at have never thought of a movie being made from the book/poem/short-story. They don't care.

Read!? Whatever.

Remakes are being made for a built-in stupid audience that does not want to *think*, no matter the material. They watched the 'cheezy' original, and all they want to see is a modern version with better CGI and stars they know so they can go and yap about the wardrobe on TMZ or something.

Movie makers are getting built-in audiences and it used to be critics helped make or brake a movie. Who cares now, so long as stupid movie goer X paid that $15 for the 3D version. Will they see it again, or did they even like it, no matter. We have their cash. There is no art in it anymore. I think that's the real disappointing part of it all.

LD

 

[C-dot]

Movie makers are getting built-in audiences and it used to be critics helped make or brake a movie. Who cares now, so long as stupid movie goer X paid that $15 for the 3D version. Will they see it again, or did they even like it, no matter. We have their cash. There is no art in it anymore. I think that's the real disappointing part of it all.

Beautifully put. Modern films don't have the appeal of classic cinema anymore. You go to see a new movie, and you may laugh, or be scared. You may even recommend it to your friends. But you won't be transfixed by the actors, or moved by the storyline. You won't want to watch it again and again (Not that you'd have the money to anyway.) The art is gone, and so films are churned out, one after the other. It's sad.

I'm off to watch Christine, or better yet, read the book again!

 

[bunnyb.gal]

Silly me, I turned my wife onto it and now we've got every DVD they've released.
I hope Christine will be an older car, like the original fury it was written about.
Newer just takes all the mystique out of it.
BTW, I've found Atomic Tom's version, if he had his way.
http://fordimages.com/perl/magnify_popup.pl?imageID=66160&staticImage=C&ckon=image&alt=0
I tried to save it as an image, but it wouldn't...oh well.
With the Super Maurader engine pumping out 400 horsepower, this would be a very scary version!

Still building up my MST collection, buy a couple every Halloween. We used to have it every week on our Sci-fi Channel, before said channel went well south...

I totally agree with you C Dot! Keith gordon was perfect for the role!

I really liked him as well, a perfect combo of geeky creepy cuteness! I really enjoyed, though, the foul-mouthed, cigar chomping Robert Prosky character, funnily enough, as he actually turned out to be, well, a kind of a soft-hearted guy in the film(again, a bit different from the novel I seem to recall, where he was a bit more of a dirty dealer).

 

[C-dot]

I really enjoyed, though, the foul-mouthed, cigar chomping Robert Prosky character, funnily enough, as he actually turned out to be, well, a kind of a soft-hearted guy in the film(again, a bit different from the novel I seem to recall, where he was a bit more of a dirty dealer).

You're right! The film, I thought, created more sympathy for poor Darnell when he was bumped off. (Why he sat down in a smoking, burnt car is a mystery to me.)

I did watch it again today, and it occurred to me that Christine was 21 years old in 1978, when everything took place. That means today's equivalent would be (year and make) your 1990 Plymouth Acclaim...

...Or if that isn't cool enough, the same year's Sundance.

Somehow, the appeal isn't the same lol The producers of the remake had better get creative!

 

[Edward]

I haven't seen the movie but Christine is one of my favourite Stephen King novels. King has written some of the best horror and non-horror fiction but sadly most of it has not translated well to the screen (apart from the wonderful Shawshank Redemption which is naturally the first to spring to mind).

I find the films are generally pretty entertaining, but the reality is that it's simply too different a medium to translate the full depth of the books, for the most part. It's a very modern thing, this notion that a book is a movie is a musical theatre show is another movie..... and it doesn't always work. Typically, though, films of King's work I find fun, just not quite so good as the books. Interestingly, the ones that seem to work the best are the ones that are based on his shorter works - less to condense, I suppose. Shawshank is a work of genius. If I remember rightly King considered it the best screen adaptation of any of his works, though he hated the scene with the opera record (the one scene in the whole film that was completely invented for the screenplay). The only real faux pas IMO was depicting a non-segregated prison prior to the mid Sixties, but Morgan Freeman's turn is so wndrful, I can easily forgive that. It's consdierably less of a boo boo that they made in Chicago in casting Mama Morton as a black lady.

As for The Long Walk, I'm surprised this wasn't turned into a movie a long time ago - such a fantastic story.....

It is ideal, but it has to be done right. I don't think mainstream Hollywood would be able to cope with it, but it will make a superb, low-budget indie-flick. I think were it to be made as a mainstream product, they'd attempt to explain far too much - like how the world in which it is set came about and so on. I hope the first indication of what being 'ticketed' really means is as sudden and shocking as in the book. I also hope they can pull off the ending on screen: I know what I think it means, but I hope they manage to do it in an equally obscure way so it doesn't push one single interpretation.

I hate remakes.

The movie wasn't true to-the-letter to the book, but it was done admirably. They will probably have to change the make of the car altogether, because the Fury wouldn't be something 17 year old Arnie would find at the side of the road in 2011. If he did, he sure wouldn't have the money to buy it... Or to fix it up.

And there's the thing. When the film was made, it would simply have been an old car, and at that one from Arnie's grandparents' days when they would have been the age of his parents. It was just a busted up old car that wasn't especially cool. His peers considered him weird for buying it and liking it so much - hard to imagine a cool Fifties car having that reaction in 2011. And, of course as you say there is the affordability factor. Maybe he'll buy it for buttons from somebody keen to shift it because of the curse, and he'll think it's cool because it's a cool car and not be able to see why his friends are all creeped out by it? I'm sure they'll find a way around it. Actually, though, reworking it with an Eighties car and having the radio flip to an Eighties station and so on rather than the fifties might actually make it different enough for a remake to have some entertainment value to those of us already familiar with the original.

 

[C-dot]

I haven't seen the movie but Christine is one of my favourite Stephen King novels. King has written some of the best horror and non-horror fiction but sadly most of it has not translated well to the screen (apart from the wonderful Shawshank Redemption which is naturally the first to spring to mind).

The Shining comes to mind also. Stephen King was unhappy with the original film translation (that bore little resemblance to the book), inspiring the 1997 TV mini-series, which was pretty spot on!

haha!! Wow! An 86' Taurus! I'll see the movie either way, Since they destroyed 21 58' Furys making the film maybe they'll pick a car that deserves to be destroyed like the new Chargers! hah

I wondered about that - It would have been too expensive for them to make replicas I imagine, but 21!? Gracious.
(Is it sad that I like the new Chargers? lol)

Actually, though, reworking it with an Eighties car and having the radio flip to an Eighties station and so on rather than the fifties might actually make it different enough for a remake to have some entertainment value to those of us already familiar with the original.

You may have something there! In the 70's, there was a big "nostalgia" wave for the 50's, just as today 80's style is cool. Also, if someone bought an 80's car these days, his friends would likely think it a pièce du merde, further helping the remake along.

I'm going to be so darned curious that I will probably have to see this film when it comes out.

 

[bunnyb.gal]

But dear lord, if I had to sit through a remake with a soundtrack of 80's music, I'd want to crawl into a burning car and be crushed! :eeek: I think at the time the original came out I was well into heavy metal and in no way into rock and roll, but I still bought that soundtrack, it was that good!

Perhaps I'd catch it on the telly, where I could use the mute button when Culture Club started to play...

 

[Gregg Axley]

A Sundance? Christine wouldn't get very far....
Let me get a view of the soundtrack from the original to recall the songs.
Iron Maiden in a Christine movie? I can see that. As long as it's not Nelson or Glass Tiger. Ewww

 

[C-dot]

Let me get a view of the soundtrack from the original to recall the songs.

My two favourites from the soundtrack were "Not Fade Away" by Buddy Holly and "Bony Moronie" by Larry Williams. I especially like the way the latter sounded over the old car radio.

 

[Gregg Axley]

I agree.
I think they chose the appropriate songs.
Not sure though if that will happen again.
How do you remake a classic, and try to hit gold again?

 

[Edward]

I can see Eighties metal working for a soundtrack. The trend in remakes in recent years has been to give serious exposition, explaining exactly how the Bad Man ended up as he did - see, for example, the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake (or even the fact it spawned a prequel), in which they gave a whole back history to Leatherface and his family that was not necessary in the first one. Personally, I like the mystery, but there you go. I can well imagine a decent plot being built around an Eighties metalhead who died in the car, having dabbled with the occult or something along those lines. To be onest, I'd rather watch such a complete retelling than a straightforward retread of the original.

 

[MisterCairo]

With respect to the many comments along the lines of "movies today aren't like they used to be", I think we may be over glorifying the movie making past. A movie isn't inherently good because it's in black and white. In the 30s and 40s, hundreds of Hollywood films were churned out each year. Would half a dozen per year still be viewed today on video/DVD/theatrical re-release?

Then as now, MOST movies were tripe. Today I feel there is too much reliance on the movie re-make, the comic book CGI bonanza and the TV show to film routine. There are still some great films coming out though.

 

[C-dot]

With respect to the many comments along the lines of "movies today aren't like they used to be", I think we may be over glorifying the movie making past.

It might be a style thing, as well as the calibre of actors. Jean Harlow was 22 when she made Bombshell: Her comic timing and breath control are amazing. These actors in 90210 are the same age ('nuff said.) Also, you could never mistake Harlow for Joan Crawford, or Gene Tierney for Ginger Rogers... Lots of us have trouble deciphering between all the ingenues of today.

 

[RadioWave]

I'll take prolific CGI over them wrecking a perfectly good '58 Fury hardtop. Incidentally, in the book the car is a Fury sedan, which didn't exist in 1958. Probably an error, but it can be read to add to the supernatural nature of the beast.

Realistically, if they're going to update the setting from 1983 to 2011, the car should be a 1986 model instead of a 1958.

-Dave

"Christine" (both the novel and, as cheesy as it was, the movie) was one of my favorites when I was in high school. It looks like King is posing with a '57 in this photo, which appeared on the back cover of the novel.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_aqCjiYQXKAU/TEVZvbeOHZI/AAAAAAAABis/i4DgdgZArdM/s400/Christine_and_SK.jpg

I doubt they'll go through with production (or at least I hope, for the sake of the Furies), but you imagine how hilariously awful it would be if it was directed by Michael Bay?

Side Note: This was my favorite song from the soundtrack:

[video=youtube;4ZBSGaWrEn4]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZBSGaWrEn4[/video]

 

[bunnyb.gal]

A Sundance? Christine wouldn't get very far....
Let me get a view of the soundtrack from the original to recall the songs.
Iron Maiden in a Christine movie? I can see that. As long as it's not Nelson or Glass Tiger. Ewww

...or Judas Priest...

My two favourites from the soundtrack were "Not Fade Away" by Buddy Holly and "Bony Moronie" by Larry Williams. I especially like the way the latter sounded over the old car radio.

"Not Fade Away", my favourite Buddy Holly song, probably because of that. I also love that aggressive energy of "Keep a-Knockin'". Oh, hell, there's not a stinker on the whole soundtrack. Ooh, and "Harlem Nocturne"!

It might be a style thing, as well as the calibre of actors. Jean Harlow was 22 when she made Bombshell: Her comic timing and breath control are amazing. These actors in 90210 are the same age ('nuff said.) Also, you could never mistake Harlow for Joan Crawford, or Gene Tierney for Ginger Rogers... Lots of us have trouble deciphering between all the ingenues of today.

They had faces then... Another point of difference between the "stars" of today and the stars of yesterday, besides the cookie-cutter-ness of the former, is that the latter were products of the studio system and as such were required to have an array of talents besides showing off their breasts (although I know Jean Harlow was known for doing so, that was by no means the sum total of her talent) or having carnal knowledge of footballers. So many could sing, dance, pose and speak beautifully as well as act. Oh, and for the most part, they conducted themselves as ladies and gentlemen in the public arena, or at least their indiscretions were well hushed up...

 

[C-dot]

"Christine" (both the novel and, as cheesy as it was, the movie) was one of my favorites when I was in high school. It looks like King is posing with a '57 in this photo, which appeared on the back cover of the novel.

That's a great picture, thanks for sharing! Somewhat related: The car Harry Dean Stanton drove in the movie was a 6th gen Fury (1975-78, not sure what year) which were popular police cars at the time.

Another point of difference between the "stars" of today and the stars of yesterday, besides the cookie-cutter-ness of the former, is that the latter were products of the studio system...

It was a Machiavellian machine that controlled private lives and exploited professional ones... But gee, did it do a good job. Those stars gave everything for their art, and their legacy lives on for it.

 

[Travis Lee Johnston]

(OO)==v==(OO)

 

[MissChloeCorville]

(OO)==v==(OO)

haha! Awesome!