The soul-sucking sounds of the remakes

Posted at 8:49 PM on May 10, 2007 by Euan Kerr

I am a little behind on this, but I am truly despondant at news that a) Ron Howard is developing a Hollywood remake of Michael Haneke's "Cache," and b) Sydney Pollock is looking into doing the same with Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's "The Lives of Others."

It's sad for a couple of reasons: first that these movies weren't swamped by eager audiences when they ran in the theaters ("Cache" pulled in a massive $3.6 million during its US run,) and second because with all the resources that Hollywood has at its beck and call, it can't find a way of regularly producing quality scripts.

Of the two films the remaking of "Lives" is the more perplexing. How will they do it? Go to Germany and shoot the film in the same locations, maybe even with many of the same actors, but perhaps put Cruise under the headphones, and Travolta in the apartment? What's the point? Or maybe as one blogger wrote, they'll just move the story to North Dakota.

Pollock has been quoted as saying it's a shame that US audiences have missed out on the story. It's more of a shame that so many people are incapable of watching a subtitled film.

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