BATTLE ROYALE

[matt35mm]

This had some cool moments... but having read just the first comic, I was expecting this to be a lot more graphic.  Also, the first comic alone had more emotional resonance with each death.  And, as mentioned by others, parts of it were confusing.

BUT, overall, a fun couple of hours at the movies.

[MacGuffin]

Inspiration From the Asian Screens
Japan's ultraviolent "Battle Royale" is headed for a remake. Here are other U.S. films first hatched in the East.
Source: Los Angeles Times

The Interweb is all abuzz with the news that the 2000 Japanese cult classic film "Battle Royale" is heading for a Hollywood remake. At this point the fan boys (and fan girls) have very little information -- all they know is that Neal Moritz ("The Fast and the Furious") and Roy Lee (the king of the Asian film remake) will be producing -- but they are already worried.

"Hell freezes over," writes the editors at battleroyalefilm.net.

"Let us pray for the best," writes Harry Knowles at Ain't It Cool News.

But really guys, wasn't this kind of inevitable? Hollywood has been stealing from the Far East for years. And it's not just Japanese horror films that have been feeding the remake machine.

"The Magnificent Seven" (1960) As anyone who ever took a college film class knows, "The Magnificent Seven," director John Sturges' cowboy classic, was an homage to the great Akira Kurosawa's masterpiece "The Seven Samurai." Sturges stuck pretty close to the themes in Kurosawa's film but took the characters out of feudal Japan and placed them in the American West.

"Shall We Dance" (2004) This film starring Richard Gere, Jennifer Lopez and Susan Sarandon added a big jolt of celebrity wattage to what was originally a tender and delicate Japanese movie about an accountant who finds joy in ballroom dancing. The original film was called "Shall We Dansu?" and was released in 1996.

"Eight Below" (2006) A 1983 Japanese film called "Nankyoku Monogatari" about two scientists who form a close bond with their sled dogs while on a mission to Antarctica was the inspiration for this year's Disney family pic starring Paul Walker.

"The Ring" (2002) Gore Verbinski's remake of the 1998 Japanese horror film "Ringu" opened the floodgates for what became a tidal wave of Japanese horror remakes including last year's "Dark Water," a remake of the film "Honogurai mizu no soko kara" (2002); "The Grudge" (2004) inspired by the 2003 Japanese film of the same title and "The Ring Two" (2005) inspired by "Ringu 2" (1999).

"The Lake House" (2006) The Keanu Reeves/Sandra Bullock vehicle "The Lake House," which arrives in theaters on Friday, June 16, is in fact a remake of the Korean film "Siworae" which was released in 2000.

"The Departed" (2006) For his most recent film (scheduled to come out Oct. 6), Martin Scorsese found inspiration in the 2002 Chinese film "Infernal Affairs," a thriller about two men --one a police officer who becomes a mole in the Hong Kong mafia, another a mafia member who becomes a mole in the Hong Kong police force. Scorsese recasts the story in Boston with the characters infiltrating an Irish American gang and the Boston Police force respectively. Scorsese's film has all-star cast including Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Martin Sheen and Jack Nicholson.

"The Eye" (2007) Tom Cruise is onboard to produce this film about a blind girl who gets a cornea transplant that allows her to see scary ghosts. The remake is based on the Chinese-Thai Pang brothers film "Gin Gwai" (2002) and was penned by Sebastian Gutierrez, whose credits include "Snakes on a Plane" and "Gothika."

[matt35mm]

Battle Royale has room for improvement.

That said, the American remake will suck.

[MacGuffin]

Battle Royale Remake News
Source: Cinematical

Last month, we reported to you about New Line's planned remake of the cult-classic Japanese film Battle Royale. It turns out that contrary to what was reported by our source, Variety, the studio has not completed acquiring the rights just yet. But otherwise the Americanized version is on its way toward production. So far, fans of the original are outraged at the idea and many people are baffled at how New Line is going to handle the violent story of a class of 9th graders who have to kill each other. Surely, they think New Line is going to screw it up by toning it down.

The New York Times talked with Roy Lee, who has produced remakes of the Asian films The Grudge, Dark Water, The Lake House and The Ring, and who is now producing Battle Royale, about the issues of the film's content and what we might expect from his version. It will take place in America (like all his remakes save for The Grudge) and will still be about high school students. Lee said that to tone down the story, he could make it so the students are in jail (or juvie?) at the beginning, but he sees that as pointless. He also assures that the film will be R-rated -- with a very hard R -- because the original would have received an NC-17 if released in the U.S. Finally he admits to being a huge fan of the original and has no intentions of ruining it with a bad film.

[MacGuffin]

Battle Royale Remake Update
Planned U.S. version affected by Virginia Tech massacre.

During a recent interview, Hollywood producer Roy Lee revealed that his production company, Vertigo Entertainment, hopes to produce a remake of the Japanese novel/manga/film/game Battle Royale, but that the project has been greatly impacted by the recent Virginia Tech massacre.

Lee was interviewed by The New York Times, which reports that "the killings have seriously shaken the prospects for his Battle Royale, based on a Japanese video game in which ninth graders imprisoned on an island are forced to kill one another."

The producer revealed that New Line Cinema has been pursuing the film rights to the game since last year but a deal has not been inked yet. A studio spokesperson informed the Times that there was "no news" on that front.

Lee is still willing to go ahead with a Battle Royale movie, but "we might be a little more sensitive to some of the issues" in light of Virginia Tech. He said that, had the film been in production before the shootings, "We would have been slaughtered by the press."

He also confirmed that active development on Vertigo's remake of the Asian revenge pic Oldboy -- which supposedly influenced the video that Virginia Tech gunman Seung-Hui Cho sent to NBC News -- had halted long before the campus killings occured.