smrt sequels

This is the summer of remakes and sequels - 46 of them at last count. Why don't the studios think up some new ideas? Ryan Gilbey reports

Chain of fools: how many remakes does a massacre need?
If you invented a time machine in the late 1970s or early 1980s, then used it to visit the first decade of the 21st century, you might have more pressing things to do than check out what films were showing. But should you stroll past a cinema, you couldn't fail to notice that the titles on the marquee were eerily familiar. The past year alone has seen remakes of, among others, The Hitcher, The Poseidon Adventure, The Omen, The Amityville Horror, The Hills Have Eyes, When a Stranger Calls and The Wicker Man. The 2003 remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was followed by a prequel, while this year's The Hills Have Eyes II was both a remake of the 1985 sequel to the 1977 horror, and a sequel to a remake in its own right. Variety magazine reported recently that out of 46 studio movies scheduled for wide release this summer, almost half are sequels or remakes. (And that's without "disguised" remakes, such as the hit thriller Disturbia, which rehashes Rear Window, or the current Are We Done Yet?, which is really a third version of Mr Blandings Builds His Dream House). Whether this is postmodernism at its most playful or cultural cannibalism gone berserk, one thing's for sure: we had better get used to it. For cinemagoers in their 30s or older, the deja vu is about to become even more intense. Some of the titles coming soon, yet again, to a cinema near you date from the 1970s or earlier - The Taking of Pelham One Two Three starts shooting later this year, with new versions of The Women, Bunny Lake Is Missing, Barbarella, The Heartbreak Kid, The Birds and Don't Look Now in the offing.

If that doesn't sound like a lot of remakes, that's because we have not mentioned the new versions of All of Me (with Queen Latifah in the Lily Tomlin role), Clash of the Titans, Creepshow, Dressed to Kill, The Entity, The Evil Dead, Fame, The Fly (itself a remake), Hellraiser, The Long Good Friday (transposed to the US), Near Dark, Piranha, Scanners, Short Circuit, The Star Chamber, Taps and Tony Scott's LA-set revamp of that quintessential New York movie, The Warriors. And let's not even get into Hollywood's mania for remaking foreign films.
from the guardian