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As much as I enjoyed the shaky-cam mayhem of Cloverfield, I'm pretty bummed about the idea of Matt Reeves helming a remake of the 2008 vampire film, Let the Right One In. Even before the original film had hit theaters stateside, there were deals in place for Reeves to remake the film for U.S. audiences -- and that's what has me worried. Whenever something is remade for North America, what it usually means is that a little 'sanitation' is in order. For better or for worse, audiences tend to react badly to seeing children in a decidedly non-childlike way, and that's what made The Right One so memorable. But I guess I better get used to the idea, because Reeves recently told the L.A. Times that he's been scouting locations and that a second draft of the script has already been completed and now has the new title, Let Me In.

Let the Right One In was the story of Oskar, a young boy living in the suburbs of Sweden who begins a friendship with a vampire child named Eli who has moved in next door. For Reeves' remake, he's kept the time period in the 80's, but relocated the story to Regan-era Colorado. Most importantly, he's promised that he won't be making his Oskar and Eli any older in an attempt to appeal to the 'Twilight Crowd', and the success of his remake will all come down to who Reeves casts for his two leads. The director has already started working with Avy Kaufman to try and find the perfect cast, and luckily, Kaufman has experience when it comes to casting 'creepy kids', having been the casting director for The Sixth Sense and The Ice Storm.

After the jump: the original film's director and screenwriter give their two cents...

Back in the VHS days, "direct to video" actually meant something. It meant something BAD, more often than not. The video marketplace allowed a lot of people to make and sell their own flicks, but uh, they were generally pretty terrible. So when someone says "Ugh, I don't wanna rent that. It went direct to video," they're probably dredging up memories of backyard horror flicks or Oliver Gruner action films. But in today's ultra-modern, mega-bandwidth, multi-distributive movie landscape, "direct to video" can mean a whole lot of things.

Take the recent French horror film Inside, which played at festivals all over the world, opened theatrically in several countries, and got a basic (but well-received) DVD release from The Weinstein Company here in the States. So as far as the U.S. is concerned, this is considered a "direct to video" title. Yet it's an awesome film. How can that be? Heard of a little flick called Special, starring Michael Rapaport? Probably not, but if it's a good flick, why does "DTV" even matter anymore?

When you think of DTV, you probably think of low-rent and generally atrocious sequels like American Pie 5: Down to the Crust, Bring It On 6, The Bringening, or Prom Night 2: Sudden Cat Noises. And that's because the video market is a great place to bring in a few bucks from the teenage weekend rentals -- but since when are rotten sequels the exclusive domain of the video stores? (I recall six different Police Academy releases before the seventh one was finally remanded to the video market.) A great example would be the pretty wretched Hills Have Eyes 2 (theatrical release) versus the unexpectedly entertaining Wrong Turn 2 (DVD premiere). I say we should be grateful to the video shelves for cataloging all the flicks we'd probably NEVER go see at the multiplexes -- even if they're movies that even I'd never bother to rent. (I'm lookin' at you, Lost Boys 2.)

You know what I call 18 consecutive days of horror, sci-fi, action foreign, indie, obscure, and generally weird movies? Well obviously I call it heaven, but most normal people refer to it as Montreal's Fantasia Film Festival, which runs every July and throws a couple hundred features and shorts to a very ravenous crowd of genre freaks. And with folks like Mitch Davis, Tony Timpone, and Todd Brown (among others) on the programming end, you could probably just book a flight to Montreal without even checking the official Fantasia website.

I'm still not sure if I can make the trek up north next month, but I have been invited and (based mainly on the recently-released full lineup of flicks) I can pretty much guarantee that the current registrants are in for one hell of a good time. Among their selected titles, I can very strongly recommend All the Boys Love Mandy Lane, Dance of the Dead, Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer, Let the Right One In, Mother of Tears, [REC], Stuck, and Timecrimes -- plus they're offering solid titles like Fear(s) of the Dark, The Objective, Red, Second Skin, and Spine Tingler. Among the stuff I'm still drooling to see: Babysitter Wanted, Dark Floors, Midnight Meat Train, Pig Hunt, Repo: The Genetic Opera, and (of course) a new Uwe Boll flick. Plus this festival seems to offer more "Asian weirdness" movies than you'll ever find in one place. At least a dozen that look and sound certifiably insane, unless you'd define Tokyo Gore Police and Negative Happy Chain as "mainstream."

For a complete schedule, lineup, trailer bank, and tons of geeky goodness (in your choice of English or French!), click here and then here. (Montreal's not all that far away...)

It can sometimes be a battle to get a book onto the big screen -- if you want to see just how ugly it can get, I highly recommend The Devil's Candy: The Anatomy of a Hollywood Fiasco. Juan Chang's Wild Swans: Three Daughters Of China was published over 14 years ago, but is finally making the transition to film.

Variety announced that Portobello Pictures have purchased the film rights to Juan Chang's award winning book. Chang chronicles the political and social changes in China through the personal stories of her mother, grandmother, and herself. Portobello Pictures' Eric Abraham acquired the rights with Christopher Hampton on board to write the screenplay. In the book, Chang's family stories are part of some of the most violent moments in China before, during, and after Mao Zedong.

Abraham plans to make the film in Chinese -- which can sometimes scare off North American audiences, even though the book was written in English. Chang has a personal connection to Abraham, which might explain why after all of these years she was finally willing to sell the rights. It's a dense book full of detail and history that might be hard to fit into one film. Abraham promises that while the film might be epic in scale, he would like to have the film ready for a 2008 release. We've already waited 14 years, what's one more?

While working the Rome Film Festival for his film The Departed, Martin Scorsese has announced a project with festival organizers to re-store and preserve 100 Italian cinema classics. First on the block is Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West starring Henry Fonda and Jason Robards. Leone's classic western has been hanging by a thread for a while now; few prints exist and those that do are in terrible condition.

Scorsese has always been one of the loudest supporters of maintaining and preserving classic films. At a festival event, Scorsese spoke to journalists about the project: "You can find that color (deterioration) can happen as quickly as within six years ... Millions of dollars goes into this industry and nobody thought about preserving the film. It's incredible."

So far, Scorsese and the National Film Preservation Foundation have convinced Sony, Warner Bros., and other major studios to start preserving their collections. The Rome Film Festival is promising to help finance the project and do a few films per year (with no word yet on how much this might actually cost). Film restoration is an incredibly expensive and time consuming endeavor but it's worth it when you think of all the amazing films that could have been lost. Being the classic movie junkie that I am, I'm thrilled that someone is leading the charge, and what better person than Martin Scorsese -- a God to film nerds everywhere.

Which movies would you like to see saved for posterity?

Related Scorsese:

Scorsese is Ready for a Break

Getting Up Close and Personal With Scorsese

Rutger, we hardly knew you.

Don't worry; he's not dead (his career, now, that's open for discussion ... but I digress). The actor who 99% of the population know as "the guy from Blade Runner" has had a documentary made about his life -- no, really, a whole movie!

Written and directed by Simone de Vries, (Kinky Friedman: Proud to Be an Asshole from El Paso) Blond, Blue Eyes premiered last week at the Dutch Film Festival, and follows Hauer through a bizarre array of locations ranging from a farm in the Netherlands to his personal yacht (Rutger Haur has a yacht? I guess residuals from Buffy the Vampire Slayer still come in after all).

Hauer is currently working on his autobiography, so here's hoping there's at least one anecdote from the set of Blind Fury. The man also plans to direct a feature about Dutch banker Wally van Hall who saved thousands during WWII. (Think of it as Schindler's List, but with windmills.)

[via Film Threat]