Culture: Movie: Derived Work
Generational remakes   (+1, -5)  [vote for, against]
Could be worse

Every 25 years, a panel of professional critics from the Oscars committee, supplemented by a popular vote, select the twenty best and five worst movies of all time.

These are then re-made with contemporary performers and script edits, special effects etc.

The public will then be able to compare the new version with the previous version(s).

The five worst are also remade to see if they can be improved by a new cast and director.
-- 8th of 7, Sep 30 2012

36 Options http://en.wikipedia...Dramatic_Situations
Depending on who you ask, there are only 36 plots, or 7, or 8, or 3 depending on who you ask. [zen_tom, Oct 01 2012]

Remaking old movies Re-shoot_20old_20mo...ith_20aged_20actors
Using old actors to reshoot the flashforwards [theleopard, Oct 02 2012]

Everything is a Remix http://www.everythi...o/watch-the-series/
[tatterdemalion, Oct 02 2012]

Biographers http://www.lifebookuk.com/
You can all have a biography, for a price. Even the boring ones among you! [theleopard, Oct 04 2012]

No, it's not. You need to consult some former British Rail catering staff, who are the holders of secret knowledge passed down from Pharonic Egypt.

Only with such arcane knowledge could they create mummified cheese sandwiches which were effectively immortal. On Tyneside, it was possible to purchase items with handwrittent paper labels marked, "Test Batch No. 1, G. Stevenson". And they were as good in the 1970's as the day they were made, which actually isn't any sort of a recommendation.
-- 8th of 7, Sep 30 2012


Movies are so lame these days. Can anybody think of a truly original movie made recently? It's pretty depressing to think that almost every single movie is a remake of another movie, or a book, or a comic, or something. [-] for making even more remakes.
-- DIYMatt, Sep 30 2012


// Can anybody think of a truly original movie made recently? //

9.

I can think of several others, but that's the one that jumped out at me when I looked up at the shelf.

This is already happening by itself. Remakes, inspired- byes, and reimaginings. Some of them are utter drek, but once in a while a gem re-emerges. The new Flight of The Pheonix was utterly missable, the new Ocean's 11 was quite good and spawned two sequels that were even better.

IMO, formalizing the process would not improve the current state of affairs. It would probably make things worse, as movies chosen by committee for remakes would be forced and overdone in a miguided effort to please audiences (for evidence, I cite the Star Wars Prequel Trilogy), whereas movies that are remade at the whim of writers/directors/producers can emerge organically and carve their own niche.
-- Alterother, Sep 30 2012


//Can anybody think of a truly original movie made recently?//

Inception?

Seriously though, even Shakespeare rehashed other people's work.
-- AusCan531, Oct 02 2012


They taught me at University, rather uninspiringly, that all the possible stories have been told, and what is created now is simply a mish-mash of the classics.
-- theleopard, Oct 02 2012


What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.
-- tatterdemalion, Oct 02 2012


That sounds oddly familiar …

<The Player>

Well, we can do you blood and love without the rhetoric, and we can do you blood and rhetoric without the love, and we can do you all three concurrent or consecutive. But we can't give you love and rhetoric without the blood. Blood is compulsory. They're all blood, you see.

</The Player>
-- 8th of 7, Oct 02 2012


Is that Stoppard, [8th]?
-- theleopard, Oct 02 2012


//all the possible stories have been told//

Opening credits
Things happening with or without music
Closing credits
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Oct 02 2012


// Stoppard //

Yes - Rosencranz and Guildenstern Are Dead.
-- 8th of 7, Oct 02 2012


Thought so. You'll be trying to unstir your jam from your porridge next.
-- theleopard, Oct 02 2012


Many literature types like to say there just seven stories in the world (man vs. man, man vs. nature, etc.), and originality is in the re-telling.

I prefer to think of it in a simpler way: there are only two kinds of stories, mine and everyone else's. As long as my stories are mine, they're original. If somebody else told the same story before me but I don't know about it, mine is still original.
-- Alterother, Oct 02 2012


You will notice that the really good movies aren't remakes. Inception, The Artist, The Man From Earth, etc. All original stories, all excellent. A few non-original stories have turned out to be good but why waste time making bad remakes of classic movies when there are still good stories to be told?
-- DIYMatt, Oct 02 2012


//Is that Stoppard, [8th]?//

//Yes//

Statement. One love.
-- DrBob, Oct 02 2012


// You will notice that the really good movies aren't remakes. //

But many of them are based on or inspired by really good books or short stories. For instance, 98.7% of the best sci-fi movies made made in the last 40 years are based on the writing of Philip K. Dick. The other 1.3% are, of course, Star Wars Episodes IV-VI, which even George Lucas himself admits were mostly derived from Kurasawa films.

Art does not form in a vacuum. All writers 'steal' from one another in some way. William Gibson attributes much of his talent to studying and working with Greg Bear, Bruce Sterling, and others. My own style is derivative of Chuck Palanhiuk, Neal Stephensen, and Joseph Heller, not by intent so much as 'organic'* influence. Writing an original story requires, in part, being clever and creative enough to not get caught stealing.

* for lack of a better term
-- Alterother, Oct 02 2012


[Alterother] which is very much the point of the posted link, Everything is a Remix - worth a look if you are interested in this sort of thing.
-- tatterdemalion, Oct 02 2012


... next up, Quentin Tarantino's new movie version of Aristophanes' "The Birds" …
-- 8th of 7, Oct 02 2012


// Everything is a Remix - worth a look if you are interested in this sort of thing. //

Been there done that bought the t-shirt. Thanks for providing the link, very interesting but ironically just a new take on a well-traveled subject.

I am always interested in reading about... well, anything, really, but essays and theses (Thesi? Thesae?) concerning writing and storytelling always draw my attention. When I started to pursue writing as a career, I began studying the craft obsessively. I even have a collection of interviews with various authors describing their processes (I'm running the plural form obstacle course today!). A writer's process is a fascinating thing to me; the environment in which they work, how they formulate a concept and structure, their outlining techniques and editing habits, etc. Every writer has a unique process, and while I have my own and have never tried to emulate another's, I still love to read about them. It gives me a different perspective when I'm studying somebody's work if I can imagine myself in their place and approach the prose from their point of view. Also, seeing that some other writers are as eccentric and demanding in their process as I am is somehow comforting.

Damn, I'm doing it again.
-- Alterother, Oct 02 2012


I saw "A town called Panic" recently. Despite the title, it really is an original film - it's very difficult to see how it might be derived from anything.
-- hippo, Oct 03 2012


The problem here is centralization and authority. Both are so passe. Yes pick the ones to remake, but pick them by remaking them, and remake them in a decentralized way, with snippets posted on some internet repository that allows easy cut and pasting (not youtube! argh). Some snips will be good for multiple movies. It might be good to have some agreement among creators about costume given that the actor might change from scene to scene. Perhaps standardized costumes: villain wears black hat and moustachios, hero with ginger wig and loose white shirt, and such. This is how pop hits are made these days, I recently learned. Rihanna is actually nine different people, two of whom have been dead since the 1980s and one of whom is a dude.
-- bungston, Oct 04 2012


Exquisite corpse remakes.
-- calum, Oct 04 2012



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