There are some stories that seem to be made and remade every couple of years. I'm waiting for yet another "gritty reboot" of Hamlet which I'm sure won't be too far off. Alice in Wonderland was adapted back in the silent era, got the all star treatment from Paramount in 1933 (which is worth the price of admission to see Cary Grant in a giant turtle outfit), the well known Disney animated feature, which is getting another re-release on DVD one day after writing this post. For my money, Jan Svankmajer probably did the best version of Alice combining live action and his trademark stop motion claymation with his 1988 debut feature. Although people who insisted on going to see Tim Burton's latest waste of time and money would probably revile in horror at seeing a film from Czechoslovakia. For accessibility reasons there is an English language version, and it's interesting that all the voices are Alice, which makes a connection to the subconcious world of our protagonist that is less subtly hinted at in other adaptations. Now I can give a resounding recommendation but well I'd like to think most of the people reading this are familiar with the film already, at least in reputation.To say that Hollywood's fascination with remaking films is a relatively recent phenomenon is ignorant to say the least. Sometimes Hollywood lets a generation go by as in MGM's versions of Ben-Hur which went from 1925 to 1959 (even though there is also a version from 1907 much less known and far shorter). In other instances they just try every couple of years until they get it right. In 1931 Roy Del Ruth directed a film based on a novel by Dashiel Hammett's novel The Maltese Falcon, which was followed about five years later by William Dieterle's Satan Met a Lady, and then five years later by John Huston's adaptation which is still the definitive version. So if you think they remake films too often, imagine three adaptations of The Da Vinci Code in a ten year span.
Every generation a new cycle of horror films seem to come around. A few silent precursors led to Universal's first great horror film cycle beginning with Frankenstein. After that studio bastardized their cash cow franchises making the plots more inane and substituting logic and reason for more monsters Universal finally put the monsters to bed after 1945's Horror of Dracula, which along with The Mummy's Ghost might help explain why the films began to fade in popularity. The Universal demise coincided with Val Lewton's low budget string of classics, but even they were getting stale and out of fashion around the same time as Universal's (1945-46). Lewton avoided the classic monsters, but Hammer Studios in England resurrected all of them with Horror of Dracula and The Curse of Frankenstein (and too many others to name). Although the next several decades saw numerous new adaptations of Dracula as well as numerous horror adaptations, it wasn't until Francis Coppola got a hold of Bram Stoker's novel in 1992 that a new cycle came to screens. I won't get too much into precedents, but perhaps this was the birth of the gritty reboot that seems so horribly popular these days. I'm sure most of us are cognizant to remember the films that followed but well every generation needs monsters. Of course they get a little gorier (or sillier if you follow the Mummy format) and they always cost more money.
Of course remakes very, very, very rarely get the critical accolades necessary to sustain long term classic status, but when has anyone made money just to win awards and praise (Miramax not withstanding). As we move into spring and soon summer the critically praised films will crawl back into those strange art house cinemas that cost about $10 a ticket for a matinee and require at least an hour of driving. It makes it hard for those films for obvious reasons. Movie theater ticket prices are so ridiculously high that if you're patient enough you can get the film on DVD cheaper than you can buy just one movie ticket. Take for example The Wrestler. Since it was pining for Oscar gold, it was in "select release" for several weeks. My brother and I went to South Barrington where one of their 30 screens decided to show the film (how gracious of them) and we went to see it. Like many theater chains AMC has gotten rid of their student discounts (last check I think it was still available one day a week), so being under 65 on a Friday night I had no choice but full price. At the time I paid what seemed like an astronomical $10 to get in, my brother not being special paid the same. So for two people you can do the math. About 7-8 months later I was in a Blockbuster that was soon to close. Every DVD in the store was $5, and what film did they have about 30 copies of? You guessed it, The Wrestler so for half the price of one movie ticket I could've owned the film just a couple months later. Which I hope explains why I went to so few films this past year.The economy of film going is disturbing to say the least. There are some bargains. The University of Chicago's quarterly pass runs you about $28, and every weekend they show two second run releases, as well as a wonderful variety of hard to find films the other five days of the week. Of course you can ask who the hell wants to drive to Hyde Park, and if you live in the city public transportation is not terribly convenient to get down there. However if willing to make the trek it's easily the best deal in town. I'm looking at the recent releases and I'd love to see The Mother but the closest theater playing it has recently raised their ticket prices to $11, and well I might spend 40 minutes trying to find a spot to park down there. So perhaps that's one destined to wait until DVD, a fate suffered by every other Bong Joon-ho film so far. Studios wonder why people are so ready to download copies of films in current release, well you can't tell me it has nothing to do with ticket prices. To be honest, I even looked for a torrent of Bong's film when it was released here this week, but to no avail. Sorry to say but as a matter of necessity, who can afford regular cinema attendance? Studios who are getting wise to this are using some of the same tactics that they used in the 1950's, and just like before they aren't really working. Yeah Avatar broke some box office records, but adjusted for inflation, it doesn't stack up too high. That film was certainly worth the extra $3 for the 3-D experience, but when the effects are added in post as they were with Alice it tends to be a bit disappointing. As a forewarning I was told Clash of the Titans was shot in 2-D as well with the extra effects done in post production, which is making me lean towards seeing that on the cheap without those goofy glasses. If film ticket prices are so expensive, its hard to ask people to shell out even more money for a 3-D or IMAX experience. As home theaters get better and better with Blu-Ray, HDTV, and even now 3-D TV it seems movie theaters might permanently lose the battle. People will always go to see movies (I see no shortage of cars on a Friday night at a multiplex) after all it is still the cornerstone of dating and offers at least one topic of conversation for the following dinner. However, the incentive to see quality films is getting to be less and less, and rather than scouring the earth like a scavenger to find one of two screens a film like The Last Station might be playing, it seems so easy to just wait until DVD and let Netflix send it my way. I don't worry for the state of the industry, just the quality of it.
So we go back to my problem facing me the last couple of years, playing catch up. At last count I was up to 48 films from 2009, which by my previously established benchmark would leave me two films away from being able to rank my top ten, even though there are a few potential contenders I haven't been able to find (I'm not even sure The Beaches of Agnes was screened in Chicago last year). It of course makes my list somewhat irrelevant, but at least my recommendations might help someone decide what to rent rather than what to catch in a theater.
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