if it aint broke

Two of my favorite movies of all time are being remade. I hate it. And yes, that makes me sound like one of those people who walked three miles to school in the snow and didn't know they were poor because everyone else was too, but you know what? I don't give a fuck either. Some things were done right the first time.

The Sci Fi channel decided to try and get all arty and 're-imagine' the Wizard of Oz. Yes, it's true.
It is also unutterably BAD.
How can I possibly describe how bad it is?
I ask you to imagine a genetic experiment involving televisions' worst writers gone horribly awry..beakers spilled, ham sandwiches dropped into the chronosynclastic protein accelerator...the misbegotten nightmare spawn of Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtman, Steven Long Mitchel and Craig Van Sickle staggers forth, wearing an Emily the Strange t-shirt from Hot Topic, only to be flogged through a steeplechase by Rob Tapert wielding a rolled-up copy of Moebius II.
It isn't pretty, folks.

The second is a deed that for sheer hubris takes my breath away. Some clueless shitweasel has decided that the best science fiction film of all time, notable not only for its brilliant writing and casting but for its gorgeous noir technique, needs an update.

SOMEONE IS REMAKING THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL.

The only thing I can figure is that it must be an investment loss scam.

First of all the film as it stands simply cannot be lifted from its cultural matrix. Remember what happened when some lackwit tried the same thing with The Manchurian Candidate a couple of years ago? No you don't, because it DIED.

'The Day The Earth Stood Still' was a parable based on the hopes and fears of a particular society in a particular frame of time...a technologically naive society pretending that they weren't facing a dark future that completely outstripped their ability to imagine.

Secondly, where in fuck are you going to find actors who can rival what Patricia O'Neil and Michael Rennie brought to the film? Without those two performances, the whole movie would have been just another forgettable pulp screamer.

The magical cinematography is another element that no remake will ever be able to capture. Black and white film making is a lost art, and this kind of black and white film making was an even more special use of the medium. Leo Tover, given the Lowey-esque mache and chicken wire creations of Lyle Weaver and Addison Hehr, turned them into something that loured with menace or glowed with benevolence by turns. Shadows as sharp as scissors or creeping like snowfall, a simple elevator turned into a suspended cell in one jarring instant, a man who moves from kindhearted stranger to malevolence merely by standing slowly, the light from a bedside lamp drawing the darkness blacker beneath the planes of his face and making his eyes glitter...no, this technique is so much a part of this film's impact that it becomes impossible to imagine the movie without it.

There's a reason I'm not giving links; and its because I don't want to inflate their hit stats. For heavens sake, do yourself a favor and watch the originals...the Wizard of Oz, and The Day the Earth Stood Still. Better yet, buy them. But give the remakes a pass.