Remakes and fakes: the side effects of digital cable.

Maybe I am trying to have it both ways when it comes to retro remakes. Starsky and Hutch (Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson's potentially funny, but possibly disastrous remake of the TV series in movie form) has got me thinking of this on my lunch break. I like Stiller in Flirting with Disaster and Wilson in Bottle Rocket, but is their talent going to do anything for this film? With Hollywood's track record on remakes, I'd probably guess that we are in for a world of pain. '70s culture came back strong if somewhat edited and more cleaned-up than anyone paying attention would have liked in the last ten years and hasn't really gone away. Hollywood's response has been to remake kitschy '70s culture a la Charlie's Angels for the contemporary market, with a combination of clumsy mean-spirited irony, sloppy stylistic update and empty-headed, cynical plotlines. Some remakes have been of critically-lauded films that never had a commercial breakthrough (an awful Get Carter, a passable Solaris) with results tending to edge toward the painful. Some, such as Tim Burton's unnecessary Planet of the Apes, should have come with a warning. This sh*t will piss you off. Trying to think of a remake that Hollywood has pulled-off that hasn't been some combination of torture and cringe will make you crazy. I'm coming up empty right now on that question. Admittedly, these films probably aren't made for me. I do like some Hollywood movies and there have been some amazing films in recent years. But remakes are somewhat different. They are made to build up massive hype with ad campaigns and a complicit film press, open big and quickly be forgotten except as further DVD options. They're usually jammed with stars, slicked up to the point of being weightless, and pushed so hard you can't avoid them. Teenagers see them, people make money. What really do these films do but hammer home that Hollywood is completely lost? There are only a few filmmakers capable of creating anything with any weight that attempts to define our time. '70s remakes tend to fail so fully because they reveal such an absence of anyone having any fun amid the cynicism. Charlie's Angels comes to mind. The original was innocent, dumb, eye-candy TV that was a contradiction that said a lot about the '70s. Were women now liberated and independent, or just so long as they could use their feminine wiles and short shorts to nab the bad guys? Did the sexual revolution apply to women? The Charlies movie was really not the baby of trash TV king Aaron Spelling and therefore lacked his owned unconscious but confused view of female power and sexuality. The movie instead decides that hey, dopey chicks kick ass but they look great. The Charlies movie is sexed up but in such a boring way that it plays like a long commercial. And I can't remember much else about it to finish the punchline. The other thing is that there's a difference in expectations between TV series (low) and movies (high). The TV series (like the SNL character or the Kids in the Hall) doesn't have the same timing when brought to the big screen. The simple, stupid premise of a TV gets drawn out in a film, to the point of being insulting to our intelligence. Anyway, how dare you bank on my memories of crappy pop culture stuff that we all love if we happened to grow up with it? I mean The Wash?!? Alfie? If you don't have the ability to go back in time, just control yourself. Part of me wants to say: Don't make these movies, please. After all (note to filmmakers) THEY ARE ALREADY MADE AND AVAILABLE ON VIDEO.

On the other hand, I sometimes like, even love, music remakes, cover tunes, bands that sound EXACTLY LIKE OTHER BANDS. Why? They are hard to get wrong (when they are right, they are still slightly wrong, but it's kind of okay... it's just music, and it belongs to everyone, eh?) and they aren't meant to supplant the original, so much as pay tribute. At least sometimes. I did just hear a cover of a Bob Dylan song, then a disgusting cover of a Joni Mitchell song on the local dingy commercial alternative station. Both made me wanna wretch. No wonder the White Stripes are huge, they sound like gold compared to that kinda garbage. They play so much crap like that on XRT in Chicago. Remember the year when everyone played "Heroes" by David Bowie. The Wallflowers and Oasis did a version of it. It was a bit annoying, but in a way it was kind of magical. Everyone suddenly saw what an amazing song it was, simply in it's form, not the original presentation, but it was still this Bowiesque artwork seeping into the culture because it was brilliant boundary crossing modern music. Perhaps that is the difference between music covers and these crappy filmic remakes. The song is a form that be endlessly remade in various styles with different singers, production styles, etc. and STILL BE RECOGNIZABLE, therefore having a bit of the integrity of the original. In the end, it is a kind of homage that's foolproof. If you botch it, at least you were just being a fan, not SPENDING MILLIONS OF DOLLARS. With that said, I want to see this remake of Raiders of the Lost Ark that I read about in Vanity Fair. Sounds so obsessive that it's gotta be about love.