movie violence Tagged Articles at Cinematical
Shocked By Sean Connery! ...and Other Retro Upsets
Filed under: Classics », Celebrities and Controversy », Fandom »
I constantly worry that I'm becoming desensitized to violence and horror thanks to watching so many damn movies, and having a penchant for those that are riddled with explosions and coarse language. (If Scott Weinberg has his way, I will have a healthy appreciation for the slasher flick as well. Speaking of which, have you read Horror Virgin yet?) As a kid, I was always sternly brought up to know that movies were fiction, and that violence was very real, and to know that guns, knives, grenades, etc. were no cheering or laughing matter unless Mel Gibson was using or running away from them.
Like much of the civilized world, I've been following the protests in Iran, and while I empathized with what was going on, I felt curiously detached from seeing images of real violence. I read comments from people who said they were shaking and vomiting from seeing people die on camera, and I wondered if I was a terrible person because I wasn't. Is it because I watch so much of it onscreen? Or am I saturated by it thanks to the real world -- I watched Columbine happen on television while living a few blocks away from it, to say nothing of the trauma of 9/11, and documentaries about Darfur and the Holocaust.
Like much of the civilized world, I've been following the protests in Iran, and while I empathized with what was going on, I felt curiously detached from seeing images of real violence. I read comments from people who said they were shaking and vomiting from seeing people die on camera, and I wondered if I was a terrible person because I wasn't. Is it because I watch so much of it onscreen? Or am I saturated by it thanks to the real world -- I watched Columbine happen on television while living a few blocks away from it, to say nothing of the trauma of 9/11, and documentaries about Darfur and the Holocaust.
Peckinpah's 'Straw Dogs' Getting Remade by Rod Lurie
Filed under: Classics », Drama », Thrillers », Sony »
As movies continue to get more and more violent -- and as filmmakers keep defending the violence -- it makes sense that one of the most controversially violent films would get a remake. Yes, Sam Peckinpah's disturbing classic Straw Dogs is being redone, and this time it will of course take place in America. The original, for those who haven't seen it, took place in the English countryside, where a couple played by Dustin Hoffman and Susan George are terrorized by locals. Screen Gems is still in the process of acquiring the rights to the film, but they already have a screenwriter (Reed Steiner) and a director (Rod Lurie). The project definitely appears to be more on track than the proposed remake of Peckinpah's Wild Bunch we heard about awhile back. Considering Peckinpah's Straw Dogs is pretty sick even by today's standards, Steiner and Lurie will have to up the violence to possibly NC-17 levels. Personally, I can hardly stand the graphic nature of the raping and murdering that occurs in the 35-year-old original, so I don't know what more I could take in a redo. Fortunately the new version won't be made by someone like Eli Roth. I have hopes that Lurie, who made The Contender, one of my favorite films of 2000, will be concentrating on the themes of violence more than the actual depiction of violence, since the director tends to work with more political material. Certainly the more interesting aspect -- and one of the more controversial aspects -- of Straw Dogs is the how Hoffman and George react to the violence committed against them as well as by them.
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