a tale of two films: "Metropolis" and "The Day The Earth Stood Still"

Some people might be familiar with the classic film "Metropolis", and no, I don't mean the stupid version they did multiple years back where they added rock music to it to make it more "accessible". If you can't handle "Metropolis" as is, then you shouldn't be allowed to watch it. I feel that way about all black and white films generally anyway - if the original creators wanted to colorize it, that's one thing. Random person now doesn't get to. (And yes, Orson Welles was a genius in that respect, but I digress.)

Anyway, several years back, they did a picture-and-sound restored version of the film that I went to see, and it was just gorgeous and nice to see such a great version.

Well, I happened to run across this story the other day that some missing footage from the film was recently re-discovered in Argentina. OK, I studied "Metropolis" in college, and I don't ever remember hearing that it had been cut and that footage was missing. It doesn't surprise me that the film didn't go over well at the time, and the film isn't mainstream anyway, but at 2 1/2 hours, I can see why the producers wanted it cut. There are sections that are really slow and jumps that don't make a lot of sense, so maybe that's where the missing footage is from. I know it will take some time to restore the new-found footage, but I'm excited that sometime in the future, I'll be able to see the mostly-fully-restored version (since they say that 5 minutes is still missing, but 5 minutes is better than 30).



On a different note, I also noticed recently that the trailer for the remake of "The Day The Earth Stood Still" is available. (A friend who saw "Hancock" yesterday said it's playing in front of that film.) Yeah, I know, I asked the same question too - why did they feel the need to remake it?

Here's the trailer.




The trailer actually makes the film look interesting to me. It's been quite some time since I've seen the original, so I can't remember all the details, but this trailer seems to be showing a completely different movie. Maybe they've taken the original premise and used it as a stepping stone, which I'm ok with, but I hate the recent tradition of doing that sort of thing but then still calling it the title of the original work ("S.W.A.T." and "Miami Vice" come immediately to mind). I'm not dreading this film as much as I was when I first heard about it, especially when I heard that Keanu Reeves was in it. I'm not a particular fan of his - he was awful in "Dracula" and "Much Ado About Nothing", but he was spectacular in "My Own Private Idaho" (a sort of re-telling of "Henry IV" from Shakespeare), so I know he's capable of stellar acting. He looks ok in the trailer, and there are lots of other familiar faces - Jennifer Connelly, Kathy Bates, and the kid from "Heroes".

I'll have to watch the original again sometime soon, but I'm much more hopeful about this new version than before I saw the trailer.