For years, theatre directors have been co-opting the classics, most notably Shakespeare and Sophocles, and setting them in alternate realities. Macbeth becomes about mob hits, The Merchant of Venice is now the Merchant of Venus, or giving Titus Andronicus an all black cast and setting it in a backyard barbecue. Sometimes the dialogue is modernized or politicized, sometimes genders are swapped, sometimes characters are dropped entirely. Occasionally the gist of the original exists but the rest is completely overcast with unique touches. I would go so far as to deem the Coen Brothers' work, particularly the early efforts, as classics worthy of Shakespeare and Sophocles. For fuck's sake, Miller's Crossing is in iambic pentameter. So when I heard that Zhang Yimou, director of Hero and House of Flying Daggers, was remaking Blood Simple, I was taken aback, but it kind of made sense. After all, Hollywood has been repackaging Asian...
- 9/15/2010
- by Dustin Rowles
Perhaps I'm wrong in this assumption, but I've always felt that Joel and Ethan Coen's debut film, Blood Simple (1984), has a tendency to fall under the shadow of their later neo-noir accomplishments, most notably Fargo (1996) and No Country for Old Men (2007). While the film has popped back up into popular consciousness during the past decade thanks to the theatrical release of a Director's Cut (one that was shockingly shorter and leaner than the original theatrical version...make a note Judd Apatow) and Zhang Yimou's incredibly loose remake A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop (2009, unreleased in the Us), it still feels neglected, stranded somewhere in the mid-1980s. This feeling of neglect struck me when teaching American Film History in fall 2009 to a class of undergraduates. My traditional discussion icebreaker (which consists of asking the student for their name, major, and favorite film) yielded many students to throw...
- 8/11/2010
- by Drew Morton
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