witch mountain Tagged Articles at Cinematical

This week Disney opens Race to Witch Mountain 31 years after the last Witch Mountain movie, which, to give you a sense of the time, opened in 1978 and featured the top-billed Bette Davis and Christopher Lee as the bad guys! That's a long time ago, but there are lots of other belated sequels to consider. In order of waiting time:

1. Belle Toujours (2006)
Duration between sequels: 39 years
Luis Bunuel made Belle de Jour in 1967 and died in 1983. Lots and lots of years later, the 98-year-old Portuguese director Manoel de Oliveira picked up the story thread and re-united the two lead characters. Sadly, original star Catherine Deneuve was either unwilling or unable to re-create her role as the icy Severine, and so Bulle Ogier had to stand in for her. Michel Piccoli once again plays Henri Husson, who years earlier caught Severine in an awkward position -- secretly working daytime hours at a Paris brothel. Now the two elderly characters meet for an equally awkward dinner to discuss -- or not discuss -- what actually happened. Oliveria's work is far more austere than Bunuel's, but it has some delightful and thought-provoking moments.

2. Saraband (2005)
Duration between sequels: 30 years
Bergman created his final masterpiece with this film, re-uniting the now-divorced characters from Scenes from a Marriage (1973), played once again by the great Liv Ullmann and Erland Josephson. But as in real life, the drama quickly moves on to the younger characters. Bergman shot the film in 2003, but it was not released here until 2005.

Poor Kim Richards. The former child star wasn't in too many films, but already one of them has been remade (Assault on Precinct 13, in which she briefly appears before memorably being gunned down) and another is on its way to the recycle bin. It's her best remembered, too: Escape to Witch Mountain. Previously we heard that Andy Fickman (She's the Man) would be directing a new version of the 1975 Disney pic, which was already redone once, for television, in 1995, and that Dwayne Johnson (aka The Rock), who stars in Fickman's new movie, The Game Plan, would be starring as a cab driver who picks up a pair of siblings with supernatural powers. Now we've got at least one of the siblings, the one that Richards played in the original and its first sequel (but not its sequel, where she was replaced by Growing Pains' Tracey Gold). According to MTV Movies Blog, AnnaSophia Robb (The Bridge to Terrabitha) has been cast in the new movie, titled only Witch Mountain, though whether or not her character will be named "Tia" was not revealed. Also as of yet unknown: who will play her brother, Tony.

The most interesting thing that was clarified was that Witch Mountain is not really a remake. Fickman told MTV that he didn't want to mess with something he loved as a kid, so instead the new movie is more like another chapter in the story of Witch Mountain (sounds like Robb could be a new character after all). The director also regurgitated the usual line about how people who have seen the original and people who haven't can all enjoy this next installment. Fickman also said his movie will be more like Alexander Key's novel, meaning it will be much darker in tone, and that The Rock will be the one who helps the kids elude an evil millionaire who seeks to exploit them. He fills the shoes of the original film's Eddie Albert, who Fickman believes was a laughable protector for Tia and Tony. The director promises the not-remake will be "a pretty bad-ass ride." You know, just as you'd expect from a movie featuring The Rock and children.