Xixax Film Forum

Matt Reeves: From 'Cloverfield' to 'Let the Right One In'
Source: Los Angeles Times

He reinvented the modern monster movie with "Cloverfield" and is remaking the cult Swedish vampire film "Let the Right One In" for American audiences.

After having directed the "Godzilla"-for-the-Twitter-generation known as "Cloverfield," Matt Reeves was in meetings in early 2008 trying to set up a small drama he had written. An executive at Overture Films asked him to take a look at a then-unreleased Swedish horror film, "Let the Right One In," a hauntingly touching film about a lonely 12-year-old boy who realizes the kind girl who moved in next door is a vampire.

"I was just hooked," Reeves recalled recently. "I was so taken with the story and I had a very personal reaction. It reminded me a lot of my childhood, with the metaphor that the hard times of your pre-adolescent, early adolescent moment, that painful experience is a horror."

Reeves signed on to adapt and direct an American remake of the cult hit, now called "Let Me In," the English translation of John Ajvide Lindqvist's original novel. He recently finished a second draft of the script, currently set in Reagan-era Colorado, and is scouting locations, looking to maintain the original story's chilly, snow-swept environs. The film is scheduled for a fall 2010 theatrical release.

Reeves is also working with casting director Avy Kaufman -- who previously found kids for "The Sixth Sense" and "The Ice Storm" -- to find the two leads, which Reeves vows will not be aged-up to make the film more of a smoldering "Twilight"-style romance.

"There's definitely people who have a real bull's-eye on the film," Reeves said, "and I can understand because of people's' love of the [original] film that there's this cynicism that I'll come in and trash it, when in fact I have nothing but respect for the film. I'm so drawn to it for personal and not mercenary reasons, my feeling about it is if I didn't feel a personal connection and feel it could be its own film, I wouldn't be doing it. I hope people give us a chance."

Well, as much as I'm against this remake (the original is probably in my top 10 of the decade) I gotta admit that everything I'm hearing so far is encouraging. I'm glad he's not going to make it  a romance and "twilight" it up.

I'm VERY curious to see who they cast for Eli and Oskar.

I haven't seen Cloverfield,  but the fact that Matt Reeves wrote The Yards with James Gray gives me a whole lot of confidence in him.

I'll give the guy a chance (as he asks for), but it seems like he likes the original too much to be redoing it. It leads to the potential problem that the remake will try to emulate the original when it should be looking for its own inspiration. I would have been happy with him talking about the original novel and speaking about the opportunities in drawing from that source, but he just talks about the greatness of the film and makes a "Yea, this will be its own thing" promise at the end. Not a confidence booster, but I can only worry for now.

Possible Let the Right One In Remake Casting
Source: ShockTillYouDrop

Nothing irks me more than stories about actors "taking a meeting" for a role, or actors "hoping" they get a particular part, yet this news item seems fit for print.

It concerns young Kodi Smit-McPhee, the actor sharing screen time with Viggo Mortensen in The Road this fall. Smit-McPhee tells "The Herald-Sun" that he's vying for a role in Let Me In, Matt Reeves' redo of Let the Right One In. The actor's involvement isn't a done deal but he believes things are looking good.

Hammer Films and Overture are developing Reeves' project. It's due to hit the screen in 2010.

Let Me In Teaser Posters Surface
Source: ShockTillYouDrop

Three sales one-sheets for Let Me In were snatched up by Slash Film and posted online today. The film is a remake of Let the Right One In and is being spearheaded by Hammer Films, Overture and writer-director Matt Reeves (Cloverfield).


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do they really do all this shit before they even cast anything?

let me in is a far far far far less interesting title. just sounds like a bad translation. nothing inspired. nothing new. just cruddy, abbreviated english translation. hopefully not a sign of everything else about this.

I really like that first poster. REALLY LIKE IT. I hope it's a sign that Reeves isn't going to have Eli and Oskar be played by actors in their late teens. Eli and Oskar need to be played by children.

The other two posters I can take or leave. They just look like the cover of a novelization of the movie. Bleh.

guess im the only one here against this remake, i mean, why remake a perfect film? to reach a wider audience? fuck that, i get why they do it but i cant agree with it.

ill pull a modage and call this let meh in

Quote from: Ghostboy on June 22, 2009, 03:26:07 AM
Matt Reeves wrote The Yards with James Gray gives me a whole lot of confidence in him.

so that's a good movie? ive always wanted to rent it but backed out in fear it could really suck...

Let the Right One In Remake Retitled Again?
Source: ShockillYouDrop

The Let the Right One In remake is building steam this week, generating casting rumors (Phillip Seymour Hoffman was a name bandied about yesterday).

Today, Production Weekly reports the Matt Reeves-directed redo is changing its name from Let Me In to Fish Head. Riiight, because that works so well.

This simply could be a shooting moniker, one that the production is taking on during principal photography. While Reeves was lensing Cloverfield, the film took a number of names to throw people off. But Let Me In isn't as secretive a production as Cloverfield.

Production Weekly adds that Reeves begins rolling cameras the first week of November in New Mexico.

sigh

lol@Fish Head.

Yeah, that ain't gonna happen.

spoils.

I wanna see who's playing Eli and Oskar. They better keep them young. Don't know who PSH would play since there wasn't really any adult roles in the original. Maybe the lady that gets bitten by Eli and gets attacked by cats, but they're taking that part out last I heard.

Quote from: Stefen on September 24, 2009, 02:40:13 PM
I wanna see who's playing Eli and Oskar. They better keep them young. Don't know who PSH would play since there wasn't really any adult roles in the original.

*spoils?*

'choo talking bout? Lacke! that's a great role. plus the guy who seeks revenge for his friends' deaths.

Yeah, I guess that could be a spoiler. Not a big one, but a spoiler none the less.

You'd think someone of PSH's caliber would be in a bigger role than any adult parts in the original. It';s a movie about kids and coming of age. I hope they don't change that just so they can have an adult star. Matt Reeves has clout right now after Cloverfield and can probably do whatever he wants, however he wants. I hope he does this right.

I really can't wait for it.

i don't think psh is above doing a smaller part in a movie he believes in. that's all he used to do.

theplaylist has reported it as fake news, though.

I'm so torn on remakes recently. I know they're terrible but some of them sound interesting to me! David Cronenberg remaking The Fly (again)! How can that not at least pique my curiosity? David Gordon Green (MAYBE) doing Susprira (MAYBE) with Natalie Portman! And this one, the original was perfect! But maybe we could make it more perfect by not having to find the blu-ray with English theatrical subtitles because there ARE no subtitles.  (Also: I contacted Magnet and the Blu-ray with theatrical subtitles does not exist. Only the DVD. There is no release plan for a corrected Blu-ray at this time :( )

Wow. I can't believe I forgot about one of the main roles, that of Eli's caretaker, the guy who gets her her blood. If that's who Phil Hoffman is being rumored as, then, best. casting. ever.

Quote from: Stefen on September 24, 2009, 04:14:56 PM
Wow. I can't believe I forgot about one of the main roles, that of Eli's caretaker, the guy who gets her her blood. If that's who Phil Hoffman is being rumored as, then, best. casting. ever.

Lacke!!

Yeah, him too. Wow, I forgot about all the adult characters. haha.

let me come inside

Yo, open up.

Allow The Correct Individual To Gain Access To Your Facilities

Just heard from an inside source that this is now going to be called "The Littlest Vampire"

Quote from: RegularKarate on September 24, 2009, 05:09:25 PM
Just heard from an inside source that this is now going to be called "The Littlest Vampire"

Really?
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How could they possibly replace Jonathan Lipnicki?!

And, honestly, I think the title would be a little misleading, cause I don't think vampires can get any smaller than this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dtBM9bHHmc).
Already, this has a lot to live up to.

Overture Announces Cast for Let Me In
Source: ShockTillYouDrop

Overture Films has issued a press release confirming the official cast members of Matt Reeves Let Me In, the remake of Tomas Alfredson's beloved Let The Right One In. (That Fish Head title seriously has to be just a shooting title)

Kodi Smit-McPhee, Chloe Moretz and Oscar®-nominee Richard Jenkins (The Kingdom) will headline the cast of Let Me In, when principal photography begins this fall in New Mexico. The announcement was made today by Hammer Films Co-CEO's Simon Oakes and Nigel Sinclair, as well as Overture Films CEO Chris McGurk and COO Danny Rosett.

Director Reeves (Cloverfield) has cast Smit-McPhee (The Road) and Moretz ((500) Days of Summer) in the two lead adolescent roles of Owen and Abby for the eagerly awaited horror feature. Jenkins will play the lead adult character known as Hakan in the original film.

Based on the bestselling Swedish novel, Lat den Ratte Komma In, by Swedish author John Ajvide Lindqvist, Let Me In is a contemporary vampire tale about a young boy who befriends a girl new to his neighborhood.

I'm okay with that casting but wasn't the little boy from The Road that is cast in this a handful? I remember there being issues with him.

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Let the Right One In Remake Rolls Cameras
Source: ShockTillYouDrop

Here we go... Overture Films and Hammer Films announced cameras are officially rolling on Let Me In, an American remake of Tomas Alfredson's Swedish vampire film Let the Right One In and a new take on the novel "Lat den Ratte Komma In," by Swedish author John Ajvide Lindqvist,

Writer-director Matt Reeves (Cloverfield) is lensing in New Mexico with young stars Kodi Smit-McPhee (The Road) and Chloe Moretz ((500) Days of Summer) were among those on-set as filming commenced at Albuquerque Studios.

McPhee will play the alienated 12-year-old boy who befriends a mysterious young newcomer (*cough* vampire *cough*), played by Moretz, in his small New Mexico town and discovers an "unconventional path to adulthood."

The filmmakers note that while the new film will pay respect to the original Swedish version, they intend to forge a unique identity for Let Me In, placing it firmly in an American context.

"This project is very personal to Matt as it is to the many passionate fans of the original story," says Simon Oakes, President and CEO of Hammer Films. "The brilliance of that story deserves to be seen by audiences on a wide scale and we are excited that the pieces are in place to make that a reality."

Elias Koteas, Cara Buono, Sasha Barrese, Richard Jenkins also star.

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amazing.

Elias Koteas is amazing. i hope they do this one justice

Let Me In Coming October 1st
Source: ComingSoon

Overture Films has announced an October 1st release date for Cloverfield director Matt Reeves' Let Me In, starring Kodi Smit-McPhee, Chloe Moretz, Richard Jenkins, Elias Koteas, Cara Buono and Sasha Barrese. The film is based on the Swedish novel "Lat den Ratte Komma In" ("Let the Right One In") by John Ajvide Lindqvist and the movie of the same name. The following is the synopsis released by the studio:

An alienated 12-year-old boy befriends a mysterious young newcomer in his small New Mexico town, and discovers an unconventional path to adulthood in "Let Me In," a haunting and provocative thriller written and directed by filmmaker Matt Reeves ("Cloverfield").

Twelve-year old Owen (Kodi Smit-McPhee) is viciously bullied by his classmates and neglected by his divorcing parents. Achingly lonely, Owen spends his days plotting revenge on his middle school tormentors and his evenings spying on the other inhabitants of his apartment complex. His only friend is his new neighbor Abby (Chloe Moretz), an eerily self-possessed young girl who lives next door with her silent father (Richard Jenkins). A frail, troubled child about Owens's age, Abby emerges from her heavily curtained apartment only at night and always barefoot, seemingly immune to the bitter winter elements. Recognizing a fellow outcast, Owen opens up to her and before long, the two have formed a unique bond.

When a string of grisly murders puts the town on high alert, Abby's father disappears, and the terrified girl is left to fend for herself. Still, she repeatedly rebuffs Owen's efforts to help her and her increasingly bizarre behavior leads the imaginative Owen to suspect she's hiding an unthinkable secret.

The gifted cast of "Let Me In" takes audiences straight to the troubled heart of adolescent longing and loneliness in an astonishing coming-of-age story based on the best-selling Swedish novel "Lat den Ratte Komma In" ("Let the Right One In") by John Ajvide Lindqvist, and the highly-acclaimed film of the same name.

Hammer Film's Simon Oakes Promises Scary, Accessible 'Let Me In'
Source: Cinematical

Film producer Simon Oakes knows the challenges he faces in remaking the cult film Let the Right One In, the 2008 vampire tale about two lonely kids who turn to each other in 1980s Sweden. Fan skepticism aside, his English language remake (titled Let Me In) isn't just aiming to become a successful mainstream genre film – intended, as he says, to make the core story by author John Ajvide Lindqvist more accessible to a wider audience – it will also effectively relaunch the renowned Hammer Films, the iconic British studio once known for '50s Gothic horror classics like The Curse of Frankenstein, Dracula, and The Mummy that all but disappeared during the '80s.

Speaking with journalists in Los Angeles, Oakes spoke at length about Let Me In, the lead-off film that will inaugurate this new reboot of the genre-focused studio. While he suspects that Let Me In will probably garner an R-rating ("I think this will be an R-rated picture," he said, but also noted that he'd like it to reach the widest possible audience), Oakes emphasized that story, rather than gore, is what's truly key to the Hammer philosophy. Despite Let Me In's mature content and boosted effects and scares, don't expect director Matt Reeves (Cloverfield) to go overboard like many modern horror flicks do. "The only thing on my watch that we won't do," Oakes promised, "is we won't make slasher pictures."

So why was Reeves the right director for the job? Which story elements have changed, and which remain the same? What made young actors Chloë Moretz and Kodi Smit-McPhee right to portray Owen and Abby, the Americanized versions of Let the Right One In's Oskar and Eli? Most importantly for fans of the original, why did anyone need to remake Let the Right One In at all?

Did you feel like the public at large is not familiar with Let the Right One In, and that's why it needed to be remade in an English-language version?
Simon Oakes: That's a very good question, and the right one to ask. We saw [Let the Right One In] very early; I'm English, I'm European, and I see a lot of pictures coming out of Scandinavia, France and Germany as you can imagine. So we saw it very, very early on and we thought it was astonishing because it was a love story -- Stand By Me meets The Exorcist -- and we thought it was just special and wonderful. We never in a million years could have guessed it would get the critical acclaim that it did, particularly in the United Kingdom, where it was actually a hit movie. It did great grosses. But at the same time, the reality is that only 22-23 percent of its entire box office in the U.S. came from one theater.

I was always of the view that this was a beautiful story. I knew the original book, which was a lot harder as you guys would know, a lot more risqué if you like, more controversial. But the story was so great, so beautiful, that it should be seen by a bigger audience. So I was always saying to myself, people in Manhattan have seen it, guys like you [genre journalists/fans] because it's in your wheelhouse, in New York, in Chicago, in Chelsea, in Notting Hill, in London... but no one in Glasgow or Edinburgh or Bristol or Idaho or Pittsburgh have seen this film. It's a story that needs to be seen by a wider audience. Then it came down to [the question], how do you achieve that? By paying homage to the original. Number one, get a very sensitive, smart director -- we got it in Matt [Reeves]. Frankly, [you must] not muck about the basic tenets of the story, which is important. More than anything else, stay true to the imagery and mystique and the mythology of the original, and set it in the right time as well, not update it in terms of its timing. Set it in that [early '80s] era.

So it's still going to have the Rubik's cube?
Simon Oakes: Yes, exactly! [The film will include] the Rubik's cube, which is great. And then, find kids who can stand up to -- and, I hate to say it -- be as good as or better than the wonderful children that were in the original. And we did do that. It's quite interesting; had we not done that, it would have been a very difficult thing. Could two kids pull it off with the sort of knowingness that those two children had, that sort of quiet knowingness that Oskar and [Eli] had? Chloe Moretz and Kodi Smit-McPhee are absolutely amazing.

It was interesting that you found a counterpoint in the Southwest setting in the U.S. to the desolate landscape in the first film. But then, as you mentioned, there's a quietness in the two leads; one thing that's intriguing about Chloe is that she seems to be a different take, because she's known for the screen persona she generates for being a little [bold]...
Simon Oakes: Not when you see her in the film. If you think about her in Kick-Ass, of course you'd think that quite naturally. But she has the same stillness, the same quietness, the same control. When it comes to the setting, the outskirts of Stockholm, we thought about that town from nowhere. Do you remember the scene in E.T. when suddenly this quiet environment has been shattered, when the government guys come in their suits and suddenly this small little house has got this huge white tunnel they're all coming in? It's the juxtaposition of the strangeness of that and the very ordinariness of the home environment that the kids lived in. We wanted to create the same idea that within this very ordinary Southwest situation, extraordinary things are happening. This girl, this vampire, comes into this world and affects a kid and his daily life and relationship with his peers, or his bullies. We tried to find what that match would be; rather than just setting it in some snowy environment somewhere, we'll try and place it in that juxtaposition.

You mentioned the provocative elements of the original. What adjustments did you have to make in adapting it for this version?
Simon Oakes: [We had to do it] without being so pretentious in English, for a start. But frankly, not that much to be honest with you. If you call it a faithful remake, I think that's true to say that's what it is. It's not a re-imagining; the same beats [are there]. Maybe the scares are a little bit more scary. We haven't been able to ramp that up quite a lot, obviously, for budgetary reasons. We've played a little bit with some of the chronology, without giving too much away. Fundamentally, that's what. High production values. [Let the Right One In director] Tomas Alfredson did a phenomenal job; I have actually no idea what his budget was in Sweden, but I can imagine what it was, so go figure. [We had a] longer shooting period, more coverage, more effects.

Was there ever any thought to put back in some of the more challenging elements of the book?
Simon Oakes: I think I know what you mean, and absolutely not. I think in the book it's very disturbing, the implications, and I think they should be left in the book, which is astonishing. John Ajvide Lindqvist is an amazing writer. I don't know if you've read Handling the Undead, which is the book following this; he's an original thinker. But I don't think it actually lends anything to the movie. In fact, it detracts from it. I mean, I think there are implications and suggestions [in the film]; the famous line, "Will you go steady with me?" "I'm not a girl." Well, that could mean a million things. What does she mean? Does she mean she's not a girl, she's a vampire? Does it mean she's not a girl, she was a girl? Or was a boy? I think you leave ambiguity there. I think also, you don't talk down and spoon feed the audience that is going to see this movie. You, in a sense, are the bellwether for fan boys and so forth and you've had a lot of inbound on this film. And I think to start with, a lot of people were sort of quite negative about this happening because they love the movie so much. Gradually, as Matt came onboard, and Kodi and Chloe, people started to move towards the middle saying, you know what, this is good, this is great, let's see what happens. Let's reserve judgment until we see the final product. I think that's what's happening now. There's a bigger audience out there as well who will never see the picture anyway. So I'm not too worried about that.

What made Matt Reeves the right director for Let Me In?
Simon Oakes: Sometimes in the process of making movies and producing and financing movies, you can get what we call in England, "our knickers in a twist" by having 17 options and going round in circles, going back to the person you thought should do it first. We immediately fell in love with Matt and his take; he loved the original, so we felt that he was going to honor it, which is very important. Secondly, I think there's something, and I don't know if he'd like me saying this, quite autobiographical of his own life in the life of Owen, in some respect -- where he came from, and his background and so forth. That was important. We didn't go out to get multiple takes from people because this movie did not need a "take," if you know what I mean. It needed someone to say, I love this film, I want to remake this film now, and I want it to be seen by a bigger audience. And I know how I'm going to do it. I have a feel for the material. He's astonishing. He has a fantastic intellect, a great imagination.

His pedigree, obviously because of Cloverfield, has that sort of found footage aesthetic. Was this an opportunity for him to do something different? Or do you find that the movie has an aesthetically-similar approach?
Simon Oakes: It's a very different aesthetic. At the end of the day, you could make this movie and never use the word "vampire." You could say this is a love story between two kids. I think an understanding of genre helps, because there are obviously some big set piece-genre moments in it. You know that he's got the chops to do it. But really, I think it's because he's a storyteller, he knows how to tell a story. If you think of Cloverfield and you think of the technical difficulty in maintaining the focus of story in a film like that, the way he shot it, that was brilliant – to be able to do that, to keep us there, to keep us watching and engaged. I think one of Matt's great qualities is that he's a genuinely great storyteller.

"Felicity" was about young people in love, and Cloverfield was a thriller. Combining those two elements should work for Let Me In.
Simon Oakes: Truthfully, subliminally, he must have tipped the boxes in my head and my colleagues. But to be honest, we didn't think about it in such a drilled out and rational way. I think he understands the audience for the movie and that sort of thing. I think he has a sort of a natural understanding of what an audience would expect from this film and how to make it accessible to a wider audience.

What is the audience that you are going for?
Simon Oakes: As big as possible, I think. The fan boy base. The people that you guys interact with on a daily and weekly basis, they will all come and see this movie. They will all come with preconceptions --some good, some bad. I think this will be an R-rated picture. I'm thinking it's a pretty young demographic, but we are only at the beginning stage of our marketing, because part of it is marketing it as a love story, a redemptive love story.

Is there still a chance that it might be cut down to a PG-13 rating?
Simon Oakes: I don't know. I mean, we are literally in the first week of post. There are some different rules in the states. It's amazing that they would give Kick-Ass a 12 rating. [Note: Kick-Ass earned a '15' certificate in the UK.] It is unbelievable, where we have a 12-year-old girl using the C-word and cutting people's heads off. How did that happen? Well, that's England for you. I think in this country it slightly more difficult to get the rating that you would like to get, but we'll get there.

When you guys were shooting the action violence and intense stuff, was Matt sort of free to do whatever he wanted or how choreographed was it?
Simon Oakes: He could do what he wanted. I think it is a mistake to sort of manufacturer the scares and stuff. I think the story lends itself to the right type of action in the right type of scares. We have a picture that we are making this year called The Woman in Black, which was a famous novella, and then a play. It's been on forever. Jane Goldman, who did Kick-Ass and so forth, is writing it for us. And when you are dealing with something like that, which is sort of a classic ghost story, and you're dealing with the supernatural in a sense, you can sort of get away with more. You can get a better rating for your movie, because there is the suspension of disbelief. When you are dealing with a story like this, although it is a vampire story in part, it is so realistic. Then you are always going to have a problem with the rating because it just crosses the boundary.

How will you balance Hammer's pedigree of personal, character-driven stories with the spectacle of today's horror?
Simon Oakes: I think that movies find their own feet in a sense, and I think The Resident, for example, is a commercial psychological thriller. I think Let Me In is interesting. I've said it's Stand By Me meets The Exorcist; it's got art house credentials but it's got a commercial filmmaker at the helm, and it's also got a great story. And I don't want to speak for our US distributor, Overture, but I think there will be a wide release -- but it's not going to be three and a half thousand screens. But nor is it necessarily going to be platformed, either. I think it will be a film that will find its feet and I think there will be gradual platform release over time, but I don't really know yet. It's too early to say, but it's story-driven like the Hammer films of old – character-driven, story driven. But with an extraordinary central premise at the heart of it, which is that [Abby] is a vampire. And it's a very touching story as well; do you remember when he says, "What if they do this and what if they do that?" She tries to get him to really look after himself, and he eventually says, "But what if I can't?" And she says, "Well, if you can't, then I'll look after you."

Quote from: MacGuffin on March 10, 2010, 11:22:53 AM
We saw [Let the Right One In]...we thought it was astonishing because it was a love story-- Stand By Me meets The Exorcist --

Didn't make it past this. 
Has this guy any of these three movies?

Spielberg helps Americanize that Swedish vampire movie
Source: SciFi Wire

Director Matt Reeves (Cloverfield) at first didn't want to direct the Americanized version of the acclaimed Swedish vampire movie Let the Right One In, then decided he'd remain faithful, and now defends "Americanizing" the story of a young boy who befriends a girl who happens to be a 200-year-old bloodsucker. And he got help from none other than Steven Spielberg.

At the South by Southwest film festival panel "Directing the Dead," featuring four notable horror directors, Reeves assured fans that he defended the integrity of the Swedish film as soon as he got the gig.

"It's funny, the people who gave me the film to look at in the first place, they said, 'Take a look at this film. We think you might respond to it,'" Reeves said. "'We want to try and get the rights from the Swedish producers. Maybe you'll want to make the kids older. Who knows what you want to do?'" Reeves recalled for the audience on Saturday in Austin, Texas. "I watched it and said, 'Well, here's my response. Number one, if you make the kids older, you literally ruin the film. So please don't do that. Number two, I'm not sure you should remake this film' was my response."

Reeves ultimately did decide there was a good reason to "Americanize" the film. Coming out of the Cold War '80s, he felt, the time is right to challenge the country's political views, as represented by vampires.

"Reagan was talking about the evil empire at that time, and the idea that the evil is outside of us," Reeves said. "I became very drawn to the idea that evil is within us and that whole thing. It's details like that. People think an Americanization means you're going to come in and add lots of gratuitous stuff. In my case it was much more about context and how to honor the original story and find a way that it applies to the way that we live or that I live in my childhood and things like that."

When it came to working with child actors Kodi Smit-McPhee (The Road) and Chloe Moretz (Kick-Ass), Reeves felt he needed a childhood fantasy expert. Luckily, he had an "in" with E.T. director Steven Spielberg.

"I'd never really had extensive experience directing children," Reeves said. "I met Steven Spielberg to talk about directing kids, and I was like, oh my God, it's Steven Spielberg, what's he saying? I have no idea, it's Steven Spielberg. He was very generous. I was really lucky, because Steven Spielberg is friends with [Cloverfield producer] J.J. [Abrams]. He'd seen Cloverfield and was like, 'Oh, that's a cool film.' I was like, 'Well, can I talk to you about directing kids?'"

That's the case for Americanizing the Swedish vampire film. Otherwise, there are themes that are just universal. "I related to the bullying and the idea of being a child of divorce and growing up in the '80s," he said. "I think it comes down to, in terms of doing a remake, what your intentions are. Whether you are interested in running roughshod over something or whether or not you are trying to bring something of yourself to it and being committed to and respecting where it comes from. I have such tremendous respect for that story. At the same time, it so resonates with me personally, and I thought, 'There's an interesting opportunity.'"

Let Me In opens Oct. 1.

When was the last time Spielberg got a good performance out of a kid? Leo in Catch me if you Can? Certainly not since he's transformed into businessman Spielberg. Shia was terrible in Indy 4.

Probably Dakota Fanning in War of the Worlds, but she's a special case.  Can't really give Steve all the credit for that.

The shitty acting by the brother cancels out that.

what was the point of this article? "this remake won't suck because Spielberg kind of liked my last movie!"

well if anything i got the impression matt reeves is a bit vague but has his heart in the right place.

the idea of talking to spielberg is maybe to counter the fact that Cloverfield got kinda mixed reviews and so it adds a bit of respectability to the film. i guess he's thinking of early spielberg and it could be true that if he has a hand in this it'll be alrite in the way he was the hidden hand behind Poltergeist.

i like the idea of Americanizing something IF the process is the result of an american putting something of himself in the new project. the idea is that it's influenced by the author and the author happens to be american, in the process of trying to express his personal take on the story it inevitably imbues the film with american qualities.

i don't know if that's exactly what Reeves was trying to say with his "context" and "things like that". i'd like to believe he's trying not to blow this amazing opportunity by making something stupid.

SXSW Interview: 'Let Me In' Director Matt Reeves on Remaking 'Let the Right One In'
by Peter Hall; Cinematical

I, probably like you, exploded a little inside at the news that someone, anyone, was remaking the brilliant film Let the Right One In less than two years after it was first released in its native Sweden. I have an undying love for Tomas Alfredson's film, which is as fresh a breath of air as one can find from a vampire film, and don't want to see anyone dumb it down for American audiences. Fortunately for fans, it seems like Matt Reeves, the man behind the retitled remake Let Me In, shared those very same concerns.

Cinematical recently sat down with Reeves to chat about remaking what so many already consider to be an untouchable film, and I must say, he won me over. I'm not the only one either. Later in the day, Reeves was a member at the SXSW panel Directing the Dead: Genre Directors Spill Their Guts and you could practically feel the room packed with several hundred horror fans breathe a collective sigh of relief after he echoed much of what he told Cinematical below.

Cinematical: How terrified are you at this point of the horror fans?

Matt Reeves: You know, it's interesting. I totally get why, I would have that reaction and I totally get the cynicism of "I know what's going to happen..." Especially because when I was first getting involved, someone was asking me what I would do with the story and I was talking about Americanizing the story and there's been an idea about what Americanization means. There's an assumption that immediately goes, "Oh, he's going to take it and make it a big, stupid American film and destroy everything that's great about this story!"

But what I was really talking about was an American context for the story and about detail and about taking a story that, in the book and also in the film, is so rooted in Sweden and finding the way the essence of that story works in an American context, in the '80s of America and the idea of the Regan America and the "Evil Empire."

Cinematical: So it is set in the '80s?

Matt Reeves: It is set in the '80s, yeah. There's a great chapter in the book that's just the beginning, the very beginning. Lindqvist grew up in Blackburg where it's set ... you know it's so funny, when I first got involved I wrote to him and said, "I'm so touched by this story and blown away that I just wanted to let you know that I'm getting involved with this and why. It's because I had such a personal reaction to this story. I was bullied when I was younger, it's weird, when I first I saw this story it was way before it came out here. I had just finished Cloverfield and the movie didn't come out for almost another year. Someone showed it to me and -- they didn't even have the rights -- but they said, "Look we're pursuing the rights for this, we think you might be interested in it, take a look at it. The thing you might want to do is consider making the kids older," or some sort of thing, they were just throwing it out to me or whatever.

So I watched the film. Thing is, I've been working in TV for a number of years, and I did a movie before that, and one of the things that I had done was I had created this show we never got to make because it was too dark. But it was a coming of age story from the point of view of this 11 year old boy and he lived in this courtyard apartment complex and there was this girl next door and they had these sort of encounters in the courtyard that were so weirdly reminiscent of what Lindqvist had done. So I'm watching the movie and going, "This is so weird but amazing'" because it had that tone, which was a tone I'd been wanting to do for a long time.

And then when it turned out to be a vampire story, what he had done with it was so brilliant I thought, "This is amazing!" and I was so affected by it I said to the person who gave me the film, "I have two things to say. Number one, if you make those kids older you ruin the story and you shouldn't even make the film, just forget it. And number two, to that point I'm not sure you should remake this film because it is fantastic." And then they said, "Well, you should read the book," so I read the book and again I was so affected by that story and the detail of that story.

So I wrote to Lindqvist and said, "You know, This will not leave me and I'm so connected and drawn to it because of the story, which I so relate to for my own reasons, that I was interested in exploring a similar world with this thing that I had written. So when I saw this, which was so much better than anything that I could have written, it's just incredible." I wrote to him and said, "I just want to let you know why I'm so drawn to it. It's because I think most would think 'Oh, it's a vampire story and this and that' but it's because this story resonates so truthfully about that coming of age."

He wrote back to me and said, "First of all, I loved Cloverfield, I thought that it was a fresh take on an old tale, and so that was the thing that he responded to. And he said "That's what I was hoping I have done and that Tomas and I had done with the film. The thing that makes me more excited is that you're talking about it in a very personal way and this is my autobiography; I grew up in Blackburg and the whole thing." And I thought "Oh my God, that makes total sense that this would be your childhood because that's how vividly it's told."

And so in that book, in reading it, I remember in the first chapter there's this great thing where he talks about the city where he grew up, Blackburg, and he talks about how it was a planned community and that it was one of these sort of places that was built up and then people moved in. And he said you could imagine them building it and then one day all the residents coming in on the same day to move in. And at the end he says, "but the one thing about this place is that there wasn't a single church, which is probably why they weren't prepared for what was about to happen." And you're like "What? I gotta go read -- that's too amazing!"

But that thing was very, very specific to the Swedish context, which was this idea of a community that just sort of sprouts up without history and collides with the idea of this thing that's sort of rooted in primal history, and the idea of not even having religion as a way to deal with it. And I thought well, that whole idea of the planned communities, we have all these levittowns, all the WWII communities that grew up and all the other planned communities after that and I thought, well, that's also a very suburban, America idea, but not a godless one. So what does that context mean and what does the evil empire part of it mean.

So in terms of Americanizing it -- sorry, this is a very long answer -- but it was really about taking specificity and detail and what it meant to be growing up in that age, in that area, under those conditions in an American context so that the essence of that story remained the same but that it would resonate in a context that would be American and that specificity was what was most important. Because to me, the thing that's so powerful about the story is the idea that Oskar is grappling with very, very dark feelings because he's so put upon. His family is tearing apart, he's bullied mercilessly and he has no one to turn to and he's fascinated with these fantasies of revenge because, well, how could you not be; he has no way of expressing himself.

But in an American context, what does that mean when the government is telling you in essence that the evil is other, it's out there, it's not in us, it's over there. So if you're having those feelings does that mean that you are evil, that you are other. And the same thing with the idea of the religiosity of the community; none of these feelings are supposed to be acceptable. What do you do when you're 12 years old and not acceptable and how does that play out.

Cinematical: Sticking with the Americanization, since this is the rebirth of Hammer Films...

Matt Reeves: Which is British!

Cinematical: Exactly. How involved was Hammer in making it a British Hammer Film? I read in an interview the other day that [producer] Simon Oakes was enthusiastic about how much Britain had embraced the film.

Matt Reeves: Yeah, they had. Everywhere it's been loved, but particularly in the UK that film was exceptionally well received, it just caught fire. The problem in the United States is that there are many people who haven't seen it. But the people who have seen it, they are passionate fans, understandably because it's an amazing film. I think what he was referring to was how that film had created such excitement and how Hammer has this history of these classic genre films but in particular vampire films. I'm excited about that, the idea that this will be the first Hammer vampire film in a very, very long time.

That's a really exciting thing and what ended up happening was, amongst all those people who were pursing the rights, they were the ones who got the rights from the Swedish producers, who were involved with the film as well. It's a very interesting process through which this all came together.

Cinematical: Are you familiar with the subtitle ordeal here in the States?

Matt Reeves: You know what, I did hear about that. It's so funny, when we first started putting the movie together I asked all the people if they had seen the film. The directory of photography, this guy Greig Fraser who I hired, he and I just really connected on certain ideas visually. He hadn't seen the film -- he had just finished Jane Campion's film; he's an incredibly talented director of photography -- but we really connected about the sense of naturalism that I think was important for the story. So I asked him to not see the film yet. The essence of this story I want to honor, but we really need to make this our own story. I did the same thing with Kodi and Chloe, who hadn't seen it yet.

But one of the things along the way ... I would talk to people who had seen it. A couple people would say "God, that film was brilliant!" Then some people would say, "Ah, I don't know about that film," and I'd go, "What are you talking about?" And they'd say, '"Well, the acting really wasn't very good." I'd say, "What are you talking about?" I started to realize that they had seen the dubbed version! So I became aware of that through those people. And then I found out about these sort of terrible translations. I don't know what happened but I did hear about it.

Cinematical: Well my question is, even if you weren't aware of those similar problems ahead of production, what was your approach to keeping the nuance of the language, of the dialog? I'm not talking the literal translation, but the lingering moments of "I'm not a girl..."

Matt Reeves: Sure. I don't know what [the new subtitles] said they said, but after I saw the film and was so taken with it -- and I didn't see any dubbed version of the film, I saw the film with subtitles, which I thought was just tremendous. Then I read the book. Obviously I don't read Swedish, so it was already an English translation of the book. You know, it's interesting, because Lindqvist did the adaptation of his book, it's very faithful to it in certain sections, almost word for word.

In adapting it, I tried to make it American as possible in terms of filtering through of what I felt it would be, but I really honored what he had done. In terms of the translation, for much of it I would turn to the book and say, "Okay, what do they say in the book?" I looked at what he had done in the movie and how he would take two scenes and sort of combine them into one. His adaptation was brilliant I thought, so I had the book to constantly refer to for nuance.

There might be something that didn't sound right colloquially, but it was a good translation in the same way the subtitles on the film -- before they did all that dubbing -- were. There was definitely a respect and attention to that and anything that didn't feel quite right we would change. There's stuff that I would go back to the book for often.

When I was making the film, there were a couple points, getting into certain aspects of the film, where I had an idea based on what I had read and also what I had seen in the movie. The cool thing was, and I only did this once or twice, but Lindqvist said, "if you have any questions," and I went "I do have a question!" And so it was a great opportunity to email him and say, "This is how I relate to it, and this is what I think it meant, but what were you intending? What was this?" And he wrote me back a very, very beautiful, articulate answer and it just helped me to know it.

Cinematical: If you had discovered the book ahead of time, do you think you could have gotten an adaptation made in America if the original film did not exist?

Matt Reeves: It depends on how you're asking. If you mean a commercial sense, it's hard. I think if the book had been an American book and if the American book had a bit of a following then the answer is probably yes. It's interesting, when I first got interested, I read the book and ran into a friend from film school who is Swedish. I asked him if he knew the book Let the Right One In and he went, "Do I know the book Let the Right One In?! I love that book!" Because to them, that is a HUGE book in Sweden. It's respected like The Shining, like a Stephen King to them.

So I think if it had been a Stephen King-type book, the answer is yes. If it had been just the Swedish book it would have been challenging because I think there would have been a question of how dark it was. There are times with a lot of these horror remakes where, if a film works well in another culture, it lets American producers know that this is something that can be done. So that's how a lot of things come to pass, I think.

Cinematical: Well looping back to the interview with Simon Oakes, one of the things he said was, "We played a little with the chronology." Can you elaborate on that? Does the story do a sort of Cloverfield jumps back and forth through time?

Matt Reeves: It's definitely a faithful adaptation to the essence of the story. I don't think anyone will think we did anything too radical to the story. The book is a brilliant book and if you were to adapt it in full, you would have to make a ten-hour miniseries the way you would with a Stephen King book. There's an enormous amount of story there and what he did with his adaptation was focus it on essentially the Oskar-Eli story and make that the throughline because it was the potent coming-of-age, Romeo and Juliet story. And I think that is what you have to focus on so the essence of that is exactly what our film is.

The chronology aspect of it ... we're only two weeks into editing so it's too early to say how much of that will stay. But even that, it's not some radical thing, it's much more an approach to storytelling. It's not like the movie is Memento, radically shifting back and forth, it was just a structure thing.

Cinematical: I've also heard the approach this time around is to make it scarier. What is the philosophy there? Did you have an R rating in mind? Are you going to maintain an R?

Matt Reeves: The thing is, I don't know how you do this story and it isn't R. Who knows what it'll be, but there is an expectation that we have that it'll be R. It's weird, Simon told me that he heard Kick-Ass, which got an R here, had gotten a 12+ rating in the UK, so he thought, "Maybe we'll get a PG-13..." I told him that maybe the UK is more accepting of certain aspects of things but that I can tell you that based on what's happening in our story, here I can't imagine it not getting an R.

In terms of the scary thing ... the kind of movies that made me shrink in terror were horror films that were done in a very, very naturalistic, realistic way. When I was young and I saw the Exorcist ... the approach to that film is so horrifying because it's so committed to the believability of that story. As ridiculous as the story is, I tried to do that with Cloverfield too. Most monster movies are silly and fun but the idea was let's imagine that it's totally real and what would happen. The key is to find the reality of it.

When I was working on Chloe I kept saying, it's not about playing a vampire, it's about taking her and making her real and to deal with those darker sides of ourselves, the primal nature. When you think of the Exorcist you think of Linda Blair and pea soup and all this madness, but really if you look at the first half of that film, the stuff between her and Ellen Burstyn is so naturalistic and so real. She's incredible in it! People think "oh, it's the Exorcist and she's just doing crazy," but she's so terrific in it and so believable as this young, 13-year old girl.

That was really what I meant in the approach of trying to get into that tone. To take this story as if it were utterly real, and if it's real, that would be horrifying. The thing about the book that so blows me away, and the movie as well, is that it's such a tender love story but at the same time it's a terrifying story. It's that mixture of tones that gives this story it's unique quality. For them to have those sort of halting, tender interplay and the way they talk to each other and to know that a moment's notice she can turn; it's an absolutely horrifying thought.

Cinematical: Ah, okay, so you're not stocking it with jump scares?

Matt Reeves: No, no, no. It's nothing like that; it's just about treating and honoring the situation that was created and doing it in as realistic a way as possible, which if you think about it would be horrifying. That is definitely what the intention was; just treating it as reality and not "let's scare this up!" It truly honors the story that Lindqvist has created, it doesn't throw in some cool, new scares just to jazz it up.

Again, that's the same thing with what people think when they think Americanization. "Oh, I know what they're going to do, they're going to make this totally over the top," and it's not at all. Again, as with the Exorcist, part of the reason it's scary is because it's done so realistically, but it's also restrained and that's one of the things that I tried to do in working with everyone; in working with the crew and the sets and the actors was to do it as restrained as possible. It's funny, people don't think of Cloverfield as being restrained because it's a handycam movie, but the only reason it's a handycam movie is because that was supposed to be the reality of the situation.

This has nothing like that, but there is an approach to try and do it through his point of view as naturally as possible. It's the restraint of that story that makes it scary. You and I could be having a conversation and then the creepiest thing can happen and it's not in your face. So hopefully no one will think that the film is in your face.

Cinematical: Well I know you're only two weeks into editing, but when can we expect to see our first glimpses and teasers?

Matt Reeves: I don't know. I'm sure you'll be one of the first to know, it'll be soon for sure but I literally just started editing, so there's no date right now.

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First Image of Chloe Moretz in 'Let Me In' Remake
by Erik Davis; Cinematical

The first image of Chloe Moretz in Matt Reeves' Let Me In has arrived online, courtesy of an Entertainment Weekly early preview that's apparently only available in the print edition (hence the scan). Moretz, who was last seen as the somewhat controversial, foul-mouthed, ass-kicking vigilante in Matthew Vaughn's Kick-Ass, trades in her mask, guns and purple wig for a much softer, vulnerable-yet-dangerous look in Let Me In, which is a remake of the supremely excellent Swedish flick, Let the Right One In (which itself was based on a book by John Ajvide Lindqvist). Those who saw that film will immediately recognize what's happening in this image, and while she's not running up walls and jump-kicking bad guys, those blood trails right under her lip prove Moretz definitely gets her freak on during the film.

Our own Peter Hall sat down with Matt Reeves to talk about the film back at SXSW, where he made comparisons between Chloe Moretz and Linda Blair in The Excorcist: "When I was working on Chloe I kept saying, it's not about playing a vampire, it's about taking her and making her real and to deal with those darker sides of ourselves, the primal nature. When you think of the Exorcist you think of Linda Blair and pea soup and all this madness, but really if you look at the first half of that film, the stuff between her and Ellen Burstyn is so naturalistic and so real. She's incredible in it! People think "oh, it's the Exorcist and she's just doing crazy," but she's so terrific in it and so believable as this young, 13-year old girl. That was really what I meant in the approach of trying to get into that tone. To take this story as if it were utterly real, and if it's real, that would be horrifying."

Let Me In hits theaters on October 1st.

Chloe Moretz > Dakota Fanning

I really dig the roles she's choosing to do... I know people here hated her in 500 days, I thought she was pretty funny I guess. Kick-ass was definitely amazing. She's gonna be in Hugo Cabret, some other thing that has a very decent premise (Mixtape) and the pretty kickass sounding film of Michael Mann's daughter... so yeah, good for her.

Quote from: Pas on May 07, 2010, 01:15:03 PM
Chloe Moretz > Dakota Fanning

I really dig the roles she's choosing to do... I know people here hated her in 500 days, I thought she was pretty funny I guess. Kick-ass was definitely amazing. She's gonna be in Hugo Cabret, some other thing that has a very decent premise (Mixtape) and the pretty kickass sounding film of Michael Mann's daughter... so yeah, good for her.

it's funny when this kinda thing happens. i would like to hope it's her choices but i doubt it sadly. i think she's very talented and not yet super expensive so talented film makers that are starting out or work in a more budgeted environment have access to her. like in the end i hope she's some cool girl that develops into a very respectable actress and is behind all her choices, but then again she could be doing michael bay pictures next year. i wouldn't be surprised either way; the test of time will reveal it all.

I like Chloe Moretz, but I don't like her for this role. Really, 12-year-old Dakota Fanning was the ultimate actor for the part. Sadly, that ship has sailed. While Moretz does the "wise beyond her years" schtick well, it only plays about ten years past her actual age. Pre-teen Dakota Fanning, on the other hand, played like someone who had lived a full and extensive life, yet somehow got stuck in the body of a little girl. I don't know. I'm cautiously optimistic about this flick, but I'm more cautious than optimistic.

She hasn't hit her awkward stage yet. Every kid hits that age at the onset of puberty where they're not cute and not good looking. Just awkward. It lasts for about a year which is an eternity in kid actor time. Dakota Fanning ended hers and is now picking up the pieces and seems to be on the right track.

Leo Dicaprio still might be going through his awkward adolescense phase. It's hard to tell. 

Quote from: Stefen on May 07, 2010, 05:30:02 PM
Leo Dicaprio still might be going through his awkward adolescense phase. It's hard to tell. 

hahaha, i think it has gone on so long he had to employ michael pitt to take on some of his excess awkward adolescence.

and despite my comments in the 500 days of summer thread regarding her HUGE nostrils when she says "hey, you're sketching agian!", and the shittiness of her character in general, i don't think chloe moretz has made a bad choice since she broke into the big leagues (or at least her mum hasn't).. i saw an interview with her on ellen and she seemed genuinely charming and alert in a much more relaxed way than dakota fanning and less spaced-out than abigail breslin.

whether she sells out as soon as she is allowed to make independent decisions, or never recovers from her awkward phase like anna chlumsky, time will tell. i just hope she doesn't go the way of lohan.. such a shame.

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Matt Reeves to genre fans: 'Let Me In'
He's probably best known as director of 'Cloverfield.' That has some fans worried he'll go flashy on a remake of 'Let the Right One In.' He makes the case for giving him a chance.
By Mark Olsen, Special to the Los Angeles Times

It's an uncomfortable position for any filmmaker to be in — having to defend your new movie against angry attacks while you're still making it.

The director in the crosshairs is Matt Reeves and the movie in question is "Let Me In," the American remake of the Scandinavian art-house hit "Let the Right One In." Seen by many fans as something of an antidote to the broader passions of the "Twilight" series, the original 2008 film is a delicately told preteen horror-romance revolving around a lonely 12-year-old boy who discovers that the sweet, shy girl next door he has become smitten with is also a vampire.

From the moment that it was announced, Reeves' "Let Me In," scheduled to hit theaters this fall, has garnered intense scrutiny from the online genre community. Debates rage as to whether the project should even have been undertaken, and the writer-director — whose previous film was the frenetic camcorder monster movie "Cloverfield" — has been doing his best to assuage fan fears, recently participating in a panel discussion about horror films at the South by Southwest Film Festival.

A respectful devotee of both the original novel by John Ajvide Lindqvist as well as the first film, Reeves understands the concerns of those with strong feelings for the original. He had his own reservations about the remake and corresponded with Lindqvist, who also wrote the script for "Let The Right One In," before taking on the project.

"I think because of 'Cloverfield,' people have an assumption, which is, 'Oh, crazy handicam, he's going to jazz it up,' " Reeves said. "And I think that's probably what a lot of people were afraid of when they thought of the most cynical version. And that's the last thing we tried to do. We tried to create the approaching, foreboding dread of movies like 'The Shining,' where you feel like something wicked is unraveling and it's not going to end well. That's what I responded to about the original, the juxtaposition of those tones, this very disturbing story but at the center of it there are these very tender emotions. That's a very unusual mix, and that's what drew me in and dug into me."

In March, just a little more than a month after shooting wrapped in New Mexico on "Let Me In," Reeves was fiddling with the controls on an editing console in a North Hollywood post-production facility. While confident about what he had captured on film and willing to show some scenes to a visiting journalist, he still seemed anxious, clearly wondering how others will respond to his version of this much-loved material.

Reeves' own background — he co-created the TV show "Felicity" with boyhood friend J.J. Abrams and directed and co-wrote the 1996 David Schwimmer-Gwyneth Paltrow rom-com "The Pallbearer" — certainly lends itself more to character studies than hard-core action. Anyone expecting the frenetic pacing and whiplash visuals of "Cloverfield," which did more than $160 million at the worldwide box office, will be shocked by his new film's stillness, as well as the patient and exacting mood that Reeves is working to create.

"It's a slow-burn kind of thing," Reeves says of his take on the material, "which the original was, in a way."

The casting alone should help quell fan trepidation that this is some sort of smash-and-grab adaptation. The central trio of characters — the boy, the girl and the man who takes care of her — are played by Kodi Smit-McPhee ("The Road"), Chloe Moretz ("Kick-Ass") and Richard Jenkins ("The Visitor").

Reeves was approached for the remake — distributed by Overture Films and produced by Exclusive Media Group's relaunched Hammer Films — even before the Swedish film had opened in the United States. When that film was released to intense acclaim from stateside critics and fans, Reeves knew that the bar had been raised.

"It was doing all the things I am interested in, having gotten into genre films," said Reeves. "One of the fun things about doing genre is you can kind of smuggle in real stuff, so it kind of charges the metaphor. It's a giant monster coming down the street, but it's really about anxiety. This is a vampire movie, but really it's about the pain of adolescence. And that kind of thing is really exciting to me."

When shooting his version of the scene in which the boy and girl first meet, in the courtyard of their apartment complex, Reeves captures much of what inspired such loyalty to the original — the emerging desire and confusion of early romantic feelings underscored by the tension of a horror tale. If there is something more, it will come in no small part from the assured performances by Smit-McPhee and Moretz.

Overall, Reeves wants the look of the film to have a startling naturalism, to evoke a stylized reality, and so he chose to work with the young Australian cinematographer Greig Fraser, who previously worked on Jane Campion's evocative period drama "Bright Star." Although there are some 300 visual effects shots in the film, Reeves instructed visual effects supervisor Brad Parker that he doesn't want people to notice.

"In the same sense I want the photography to have this kind of messy realism, to be beautiful but gritty," said Reeves, "I want the effects to feel believable. I want people to think back later and say, 'I don't even know if that's an effect.' I don't want anything that pulls you out.

"It's not going to feel like a movie with a crazy number of effects. It's, hopefully, going to feel like an intimate coming-of-age story."

 :bravo:

Another balless filmmaker being applauded for catering to source material.  Let the Right One In got it, I would have much preferred a Keep Hollywood Weird remake.

I wanted to kill myself because it was so bad. I hope the remake will be better.

why kill yourselves when you can simply FLUSH yourselves

Quote from: P on April 22, 2010, 10:37:29 PM
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Quote from: KarlJan on May 18, 2010, 03:26:57 PM
I wanted to kill myself because it was so bad. I hope the remake will be better.

it wasn't bad, maybe a little slow. The english dub makes it seem bad but I don't need to watch a movie set during the heart of winter in Sweden and have to read too! I realized today while watching it, that the feeling it evokes that makes me want to commit suicide through every passing minute might be all that it has going for it. Its one of the only movies in recent years where I don't want to see the violence, its too icky and weird. But if this remake skimps on all that buildup and goes straight for the gore to make American audiences happy I'd say it really missed the mark. But wait, you're from Sweden, yet u still didn't like the original. What's wrong with you? Or is that a joke..

Did you see it dubbed? Holy fuck, that must be annoying. I would never, and I mean NEVER, see a movie dubbed. It ruins everything and is much more annoying then to read the subtitles, which is something I always do.

Anywaw, yeah, I'm from Sweden, which is why I see it differently from your guys. The thing that irritated me the most was the actors. Okay, Eli was awesome. But the rest was terrible. In particular the child actors, which did everything sounded so fake and bad. And while I have nothing against slow movies, this was just boring and uninteresting. Though, I think it's great that a modern film from Sweden is such a hit worldwide. Couse, you know, apart from Roy Andersson and perhaps Ruben Östlund and Jesper Ganslandt Sweden sucks at making movies nowdays.

Quote from: Reelist on May 18, 2010, 07:21:19 PM
The english dub makes it seem bad but I don't need to watch a movie set during the heart of winter in Sweden and have to read too!

i echo KarlJan's statements regarding this.. holy FUCK. what the hell? you must be the only person i've ever heard of that watched this film dubbed, worse than that, WANTED it dubbed. i mean watch a movie however you like, but i seriously didn't even know a dubbed version was out there.

i can only imagine how fucked up the dialogue must have been, as is always the case when ridiculous choices are usually made to fit the mouth movements more than actually carrying any nuance in meaning, and especially consdering the furore that occured over the different subtitle versions.. wow.

and i can totally understand KarlJan not liking the film since his comments are based on the line delivery of the kids. it's kind of a disturbing truth that a person can't REALLY judge the merits of a film completely if it's in a foreign language. it's bad enough that each film carries its own cultural baggage, western/eastern ideas, histories, etc, but when it comes specifically to the delivery of dialogue and the quality of acting, it's impossible to guage this accurately if all you've got to go on is subtitles.

often the genius of a script is lost due to untranslatability. any spanish speaker familiar with the work of Cantinflas would know that his films are quite hilarious but that it's just impossible to translate the insane ways he constantly plays with the vocabulary. you can only compare it to other ppl who do sort of the same thing in english, like the marx bros. the advantage of some genres of course is the ability to communicate narrative points without dialogue, using a universal shorthand endemic to say action films, or horror. silent films never had a problem for this reason, and i think that's part of the charm of Let The Right One In.. slow film means little dialogue!

but seriously, dubbing only works on animated films - no one is watching them for the performances.

The only case where dubbing is good is for these "so bad it's good" movies. Steven Seagal in french is something else.

or watching "a better tomorrow" and "a better tomorrow 2". those movies are so fucking awesome dubbed, a couple times i've made it a night with friends. drinks, laughs and horribly awesome dubs.

however films like this dubbed it can only work against the experience. i remember i started watching "intacto" (one of my hidden gem loves) dubbed and turning it off 10 mins in because i didn't want to ruin it. found the dvd with the original language track (for some reason there were two different dvds) and it was easily one of my fav films that year.

Quote from: Pas on May 19, 2010, 09:18:12 AM
The only case where dubbing is good is for these "so bad it's good" movies. Steven Seagal in french is something else.

arnie in spanish is hilarious, the one-liners in commando are priceless.

the only great thing I like better dubbed are the simpsons, and it's a rare case where the ppl in charge of dubbing really put a lot of thought in translating the jokes, and while some of the simpsons jokes fall into the category of untranslatable, the dubbing team did a great work into adapting the jokes to our culture, hence the enormous success of the series here.

one that didn't work at all is seinfeld, watching it dubbed was painful and not funny at all and so it disappeared real fast, however, on cable when it had subtitles was a huge success.

Fundamentally I agree that original language is the way to go, though a funny problem I sometimes run into is bad original language adr - especially 60s-70s Italian genre films.  When the words don't match the lips in any language I find it really doesn't matter and I'm free to choose.

And on topic,  

Quote from: KarlJan on May 19, 2010, 07:16:03 AM
And while I have nothing against slow movies, this was just boring and uninteresting.

Isn't it?  I rewatched it the other day and found myself wondering what I initially liked about the film.  I'd prefer the Keep Hollywood Weird remake.

Quote from: P on May 19, 2010, 07:40:15 AM

Quote from: Reelist on May 18, 2010, 07:21:19 PM
The english dub makes it seem bad but I don't need to watch a movie set during the heart of winter in Sweden and have to read too!

i echo KarlJan's statements regarding this.. holy FUCK. what the hell? you must be the only person i've ever heard of that watched this film dubbed, worse than that, WANTED it dubbed. i mean watch a movie however you like, but i seriously didn't even know a dubbed version was out there.

the version i netflixed when it first came out had english dub automatically turned on. watched about two minutes of that atrocity before going in to manually turn off. id have surely flushed myself if i kept watching it that way.

Quote from: Pozer on May 19, 2010, 12:29:37 PM
id have surely flushed myself if i kept watching it that way.

hahah keep flushin that chicken.  :yabbse-thumbup:

I tell ya, after seeing The Road I know that kid will do a good job. I'm still not sure about the other girl, Chloe Moretz. The one in the original looked like she was really thirsting for blood, I hope they can do that again.

Quote from: Reelist on May 26, 2010, 11:56:11 PM
I tell ya, after seeing The Road I know that kid will do a good job. I'm still not sure about the other girl, Chloe Moretz. The one in the original looked like she was really thirsting for blood, I hope they can do that again.

well the one in the first film didn't really look like a girl at all. the BOY looked more like a girl than that little blood guzzler.

moretz is already too feminine for the role to stay exactly the same.. she's awesome tho, my only doubt was the road kid but i haven't heard anything about him til now except that he's box office poison..

International Trailer: http://theplaylist.blogspot.com/2010/07/let-me-in-trailer-not-as-bad-as.html

Looks good/just like the original but in English.

Quote from: modage on July 01, 2010, 09:40:06 AM
just like the original but in English.

Seriously. From this very brief evidence, I can't think of another remake that aims to replicate the look of its original so closely outside explicit 'shot for shot' remakes.

LOVE IT.

I don't think it looking so close to the original is a bad thing in this case. I think that's actually a very good thing.

I agree it'll probably make for a nicer looking film than if, say, Ron Howard did a hack job remake on it. But you could equally argue that it makes it a bit of a pointless exercise. Unless replication/pastiche/etc is specifically the POINT (Psycho, Funny Games), what chance does slavish imitation have of producing an artistically worthwhile movie? Though this is all moot until we actually see the film, of course.

Well, I think it will have some differences. Elias Koteas seems to have a pretty big role as a detective and I don't remember that being a big role in the original. This teaser was probably just for people who were upset at the remake happening haha.

I like the look. I like the way the children look. They look creepy and that's what I wanted. Like fucking mutants. Love it.

I expected these kind of similarities, but I think the remake will feature a lot additions as well as tonal break ups which will make fans of the original favor the first one even more. Since both are adapting from the same source, I guess it's hard not to run into those similarities, but I think this film would be better to make more changes since the best part about the original is the clarity of its simple vision. Unless you're attuned to every filmmaking measure of how the first one was made and you're just increasing the deft of its grimness, it's going to come off as half-hearted.

They've certainly nailed the look, and the kids look creepy enough. I wasn't a big fan of the trailer music, but i know that has nothing to do with the film (actually i think Michael Giacchino is doing the score, which is a great choice).

I don't know how they're going to top that pool scene.

so it's exactly the same.

in fact i think it'll be slightly better cos chloe moretz is the best actress of her generation (and will be the best of all time i'm sure.. who's gonna stop her? no one that's who). the look also was never in doubt if it he's working with an australian cinematographer.. anyone with eyes should know by now that for some bizarre reason i have yet to figure out, australians make GREAT cinematographers (and i guess no-name bland faces to front studio super blockbusters), but can't for the life of them/us write and direct a good watchable decent movie.

Quote from: P on July 01, 2010, 10:39:01 PMfor some bizarre reason i have yet to figure out, australians make GREAT cinematographers

Yeah that's because of all that crazy light you get out there with those wide open expanses of land and all that yellow glow you get from the desert heat. /?/

I want this movie to be hardcore like the original and find a new way to garner the same reactions I had when watching it without being so predictable, a little spice added

do. not. want.


this looks horrible.

Quote from: squints on July 02, 2010, 03:47:19 AM
do. not. want.


this looks horrible.

what about it looks horrible?

did you hate the original cos it looks exactly like the original.

i just want to say that the best cinematographer in my film school class was indeed an australian.

Michael Giacchino to Score Let Me In
Source: ComingSoon

Oscar winner Michael Giacchino has been tapped to compose the original score for the upcoming Overture Films release Let Me In, writer/director Matt Reeves' English-language adaptation of John Ajvide Lindqvist's best-selling Swedish novel "Låt den rätte komma in" and the critically-acclaimed film Let the Right One In. The haunting and provocative thriller stars Chloë Moretz (Kick-Ass), Kodi Smit-McPhee (The Road) and Richard Jenkins (The Visitor). Let Me In releases in theaters October 1, 2010.

Giacchino's work has been nominated twice for an Academy Award - first, for his score to the animated blockbuster Ratatouille, and more recently, for his score to the highly-acclaimed Up for which he won the award in the Best Original Score category. Giacchino's other notable credits include the score for ABC's hit shows "Lost" and "Alias," as well as the feature films Star Trek, Land of the Lost, The Incredibles, Mission: Impossible III, and Speed Racer.



UK poster:

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Will the American mainstream get to let the right one in?
Source: Los Angeles Times

As fan interest in, and backlash to, the American remake of "Let the Right One In" has streamed in over the past year, its principals have said that fans of the original should hold their judgment. "If I didn't feel a personal connection and feel it could be its own film, I wouldn't be doing [a remake]," director Matt Reeves told my colleague Mark Olsen last year. "I hope people give us a chance."

Here's hoping they have the opportunity.

The major management shakeup at Overture last week threw a number of previously ironclad realities into question. Chief among them was the status of "Let Me In," Reeves' take on the Tomas Alfredson coming-of-age-vampire movie that bowled over art house and genre audiences in 2008.

The original, which examined a loner named Oskar and his tender friendship with the oddball vampire Eli, created an exquisite mood and even more exquisite ending. It picked up a hard-core cadre of fans and also caught the attention of Hammer Films, a sales agent and producer that came on board to remake the Swedish hit it long before the film developed a cult following in the U.S. Reeves, hot off his "Cloverfield" debut, soon joined too. Scenes were shot, trailers were cut, and one of the many in-development foreign-language remakes finally was on its way to the screen.

But last week, in something of a surprise, it was announced that Chris McGurk and Danny Rosett, Overture's top dogs and co-founders, would be leaving the company. Overture had been on the sales block for nearly a year, as owner John Malone and Liberty Media looked to exit the film business (and a buyer who would help them achieve that). Without that, Malone decided to retool, slim down,  other euphemisms reserved for people who don't want to be in a business anymore. Chris Albrecht, the head of Overture parent Starz, was stepping in to oversee the film division.

All these moves threw into question several upcoming releases, most notably the Oct. 1 roll-out of "Let Me In."

Sources say that Overture, which declined comment for this story, is still planning to release the film along the lines of its initial plan of 1,200-plus screens. Reeves and the film's stars are still planning on coming to Comic-Con, so the publicity wheels are in motion, and so are the marketing ones. At the very least, the film won't get lost on the watch of Peter Adee, the canny marketing veteran who has been bumped up to run Overture's day-to-day operations in the wake of the McGurk-Rosett departure.

But sources with knowledge of the Overture situation also say that nothing is certain when it comes to the banner's upcoming films, much less for "Let Me In." The fate of the vampire film and two other finished movies (Philip Seymour Hoffman's directorial debut, "Jack Goes Boating," and an Al Pacino crime drama titled "Stone") will depend heavily on Albrecht, who has several options before him.

Holding back "Let Me In" would be one possible, but not likely, move, as Liberty uses the film as a bargaining chip of sorts for the several suitors who have circled Overture. (We say not likely because when you have the gun ready to fire, as the "Let Me In" marketing team does, you don't take your hand off the trigger. And it Liberty can't find a buyer by October, it probably won't find one anyway.)

More likely, "Let Me In" comes out on schedule in October, but without as much marketing support as it might have gotten when Malone was actually keen to stay in the film business. That would keep the film confined to a narrow audience, creating a particularly ironic situation since one of the main reasons you remake "Let the Right One In" in the first place is to broaden its audience.

It's also possible that Albrecht decides to hold back "Let Me In" so that the company could raise some cash for its release. (P&A investors, as these people are called, are usually among the easiest moneymen to find.) That could mean the movie indeed gets the marketing support it deserves -- it just doesn't come out in October.

In LeBron-like fashion, Albrecht has yet to make a decision about the film on the slate in general, say people familiar with his thought processes, though in his previous life as HBO chief he developed "True Blood," so at the very least has a soft spot for vampire movies.

Long before the latest business drama, there were reasons for fans to be worried when Hammer and its distribution/co-financing partner Overture stepped in. Could you replicate the Gothic mood created by Alfredson and screenwriter-novelist John Ajvide Lindqvist -- and if you could, why would you? A trailer that highlights the horror elements instead of teasing out the metaphors for adolescent sexuality, as the first one did, gave reason for pause. ("Among ordinary people...something wicked lives" is part of the tagline here, and there are a couple of "Omen"-like shots that suggest the horror but not the heart.)

Then again, Chloe Moretz as Eli should hearten anyone who wants to see some sensitive but tough-minded acting, providing she doesn't overdo her wiseacre persona made popular in "Kick-Ass" and "(500) Days of Summer." Richard Jenkins, who plays a kind of father-figure/manipulator figure, is always a joy to watch. And Overture/Hammer should get credit for not aging up the characters in the scurrilous hope of piggybacking on "Twilight" interest.

Even if it's a shaky effort, the passion with which the filmmakers defended it was a reason to want to see this one through. And if nothing else,  a large-scale release would call more attention to the original, an entirely welcome and necessary development -- assuming that large-scale is still possible. As Oskar could tell you, sometimes justice is a cruel monster.

Quote from: Los Angeles TimesThe original, which examined a loner named Oskar and his tender friendship with the oddball vampire Eli,

Yeah, they've never seen it.

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The movie website on the bottom makes me want to call this movie Let MEIN!

so....they're making this movie to look as close as they can to the original?

is the purpose of this movie to appease the people that hate reading subtitles?

cuz otherwise, i really don't get the point of this remake.

Quote from: jtm on July 23, 2010, 03:12:57 AM
is the purpose of this movie to appease the people that hate reading subtitles?

Yes, they're called Americans.

This looks really good.   :oops:

New Trailer: http://theplaylist.blogspot.com/2010/07/new-let-me-in-trailer-continues-to.html

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Red Band Trailer here. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtg5YZ1pv00)

I don't know what you guys see in that clown Matt Reeves. This looks brutal.

And why was that trailer red band anyway? They're wasn't any excess of gore or anything.

Quote from: OrHowILearnedTo on July 28, 2010, 05:18:13 PM
I don't know what you guys see in that clown Matt Reeves. This looks brutal.

clown? i think his debut proves he's anything but. i'm no cloverfield fan (the material sucked balls) but the perseverance that film demanded and it's execution were pretty damn impressive. he's doing the screenplay this time, he's got the goods to work with and it's clearly something he's passionate about. i'm predicting this will be awesome, assuming those last two trailers are deceptive marketing, which i believe they are. my biggest fear is that this is gonna get too carried away with the horror elements.

Quote from: OrHowILearnedTo on July 28, 2010, 05:18:13 PM
and why was that trailer red band anyway? They're wasn't any excess of gore or anything.

they showed a 12 year old girl with blood dripping from her mouth. that's all it takes.

It's bizarre that don't list any of his Felicity episodes or Under Siege 2: Dark Territory other than Cloverfield, which, oddly enough, was also the most overhyped shaky cam accident.

This will not be exceptional in any way, and if it is, why?  Why, God?  Why must they ruin a great film?  Why can't they obscure it more so it won't puke all over the original and simply ruin it?  I can't believe some of you are excited for this.  I am sick.

It would only be a testament to the situation that they'd botch the subtitles on the original DVD's for Let The Right One In.

he also did the paulbearer. does anyone else remember that god awful movie?

fuck u both. i'm still excited.

I am too. Everything about it looks really good. Not just okay, but good.

Ooooooooh (http://www.fantasticfest.com/blog/2010/08/let-me-in-announced-as-opening-night-film/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+FantasticFest+%28Fantastic+Fest%29&utm_content=Google+Reader), I get to see this a week early at Fantastic Fest.

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I'm not disappointed in these posters, 'cause I wasn't expecting much to begin with, but fffffffffffffffffuck they're ugly.

I really wish designers would stop using photoshop for everything nowadays. It's lazy, ugly, and we can tell when and where it's been used (especially the faces! why is no one allowed to resemble a real live human being anymore?). Just take a fucking picture and leave it at that.

ya, those posters perfectly capture how bad i think the movie will be.

Reviews from TIFF are all extremely positive.

""Let Me In" achieves the rare feat of remaining rigorously reverential to its source material while emerging as a highly accomplished work in its own right." - Hollywood Reporter (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/film-reviews/let-me-in-film-review-1004114041.story)

"This is a true, respectful treatment of the original material.  As for the question of Swedish or American, which version is better? I simply don't know if I can offer an answer to that because the experience of watching the two versions is so wildly different." - Twitchfilm (http://twitchfilm.net/reviews/2010/09/tiff-2010-let-me-in-review.php)

"I would argue that Matt Reeves' Let Me In, which I've just come out of, is at least as good as Tomas Alfredson's Let The Right One In.  It doesn't diminish -- it respects and pays tribute to the original by keeping what worked -- adhering as closely as possible for the most part -- and enhancing here and there." - Hollywood Elsewhere (http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2010/09/better_than_ori.php)

SlashFilm and FirstShowing both loved it (http://www.slashfilm.com/2010/09/11/tiff-video-reaction-matt-reeves-let-me-in/) too.

OrHowILearnedToStopForejudging

The Playlist too: "TIFF '10 Review: 'Let Me In' Is The Rare Remake That Is Worthy Of The Original" http://dlvr.it/55YBQ

This is great news. I hated this movie, then I kind of warmed up to it, and now I can't wait to see it. Mod, you need to bust out the spoilatar for this one. At least until Halloween.

Quote from: Pozer on September 11, 2010, 07:03:36 PM
OrHowILearnedToStopForejudging

Can't stop loling at this.

I was pleasantly surprised. I was shocked first when Tim League said he liked it more than the original. I think that is going too far, but its pretty pretty pretty, pretty good. It has some differences and things that make it unique in its way, and shows Matt Reeves is a smart dude. It's a lot easier to fuck this up than to do it right.

kal, I appreciate your short reviews of films that beat everyone else to it and I appreciate your larry david reference.  maybe I'm just in too jolly of a mood, but I like it when I see your name in a post 'cause I know it wouldn't be bullshit hype links or clever jokes; it would just be some type of capsule review that I may or may not agree with, but it's there for everyone.  Thanks buddy.

 :yabbse-thumbup:

always a pleasure.

Quote from: kal on September 24, 2010, 11:16:23 AM
I was pleasantly surprised. I was shocked first when Tim League said he liked it more than the original. I think that is going too far, but its pretty pretty pretty, pretty good. It has some differences and things that make it unique in its way, and shows Matt Reeves is a smart dude. It's a lot easier to fuck this up than to do it right.

I'm torn about this movie.  I saw it at the same screening as Kal (Kal, I don't think Tim said he liked it more, I think he was feeding the hype by saying it "might be better" than the original... he does this sometimes).

I really enjoyed it and my initial reaction is to say "Great Job!".  The acting is great and there's one scene in the movie that I think is the best scene out of either movie, but outside of that, it's almost TOO FAITHFUL.  I guess it's better than being a shitty, watered-down Americanization, but it borrows SO MUCH from the original that you might as well watch the original.

Still, worth seeing and I liked it, I just wonder if maybe I should be mad at it.*

(*not really, I'm in charge of my own feelings)

It's pretty damned good.  I don't have a lot of specific memories about the original, because I only saw that once, but I do remember that it made me feel the exact same way that this movie made me feel.  There were a handful of things that I thought were better about this movie, and a handful of things that I thought were better about the original, but the differences are so minor.  It more or less felt like watching the same movie, but it held its own in the sincerity of the relationship between the two main characters, so it's just as exciting to watch their relationship develop.

Excellent performances from everybody.  Richard Jenkins is always the shit.  Honestly, this is the first time that I've really liked Chloe Moretz.  She was my least favorite thing about (500) Days of Summer, and she was fine in Kick Ass, but here she really gets to show what she can do, and she can do a lot very well.

This was really really good.

There are actually some things I liked more than the original. Particularly the setting. I think setting it in the Reagan 80's really gave it a neat and unique feeling. Richard Jenkins is really great, but I kept thinking about what Philip Seymour Hoffman would have done in the role when he was rumored for it.

It's a scary movie. TONS of blood, but like the original, it's not an action film. It's really a coming of age film and an excellent one at that.

Matt Reeves deserves a lot of credit for not fucking it up. A LOT OF CREDIT. He hit it out of the park.

That's a good review. The only thing I'm worried about with this is everything being CG as fuck. That goes for the graphic violence effects and the overall 'look' of it visually. It isn't like that right? Well, I hope not but it really doesn't matter because there's no chance I'll be seeing it anytime soon.

Oh, that's one of the things that bothered me, the CG. It doesn't use CG for the graphic violence, really, but for stuff like when shes doing super-human vampire things like jumping and running, it looked weird. Like how old CG used to look where the character looks weightless. Small gripe and it never took me out of the movie. I actually liked the violence in this one more than the original. There's a lot more blood in this one for sure.

As long as there's nothing as bad as the CG cats in the original.

OH, they took that part OUT. THANK GOD.

Well, it's in, but done differently. It's one of the many things I prefer in the remake,

There's only a small handful of moments with regrettable CG, but they are distracting, yes.

By the by, has anybody seen this poster?  It's pretty neat.

(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.aintitcool.com%2Fmultimedia%2FFFollylet.jpg&hash=b5a0beccbe4428aa0b441cb42424bb87f9f18d72)

Is that official or fan-made?  Because it's way too awesome to be official.

Quote from: polkablues on October 02, 2010, 09:02:02 PM
Is that official or fan-made?  Because it's way too awesome to be official.

It was all over Fantastic Fest. I think it was just for the festival as there were similar ones for other films.

The morse code in that spells out KISS.

Quote from: kal on October 02, 2010, 09:07:19 PM

Quote from: polkablues on October 02, 2010, 09:02:02 PM
Is that official or fan-made?  Because it's way too awesome to be official.

It was all over Fantastic Fest. I think it was just for the festival as there were similar ones for other films.

Yeah that's where I saw it, and I notice just now that it says Fantastic Fest at the bottom.  It was for sale at Mondo Tees.

Quote from: P on October 02, 2010, 09:07:31 PM
The morse code in that spells out KISS.

haha no shit. quite fitting.

Oh, another thing about this movie is that it has one of the best car crash scenes I've ever seen.

Quote from: Stefen on October 02, 2010, 09:29:54 PM
Oh, another thing about this movie is that it has one of the best car crash scenes I've ever seen.

Yes.  I can't think of a better one that I've seen.

Quote from: matt35mm on October 02, 2010, 10:12:54 PM

Quote from: Stefen on October 02, 2010, 09:29:54 PM
Oh, another thing about this movie is that it has one of the best car crash scenes I've ever seen.

Yes.  I can't think of a better one that I've seen.

My jaw was seriously on the ground while that was occurring. Amazing. Gotta say that I really enjoyed this one a lot and as has been mentioned the CG jumping/running/attacking did pull me out of the movie. eh, no big deal. Still a damn great remake.

Kind of bummed this bombed. Thought for sure it would do at least respectable business since vampires are all the rage. The audience I saw it with had a few children and one of them kept kicking my seat. I would have said something but his father had tons of tattoos, what can you do? When the movie was over, the father said, "that was fucking gay!" and the little boy said, "yeah, that was the gayest movie ive ever seen." he must have been about 9. Crooked teeth, dirty shirt, snot nosed punk. A horrible little fucker.

Quote from: Reelist on October 04, 2010, 09:10:57 PM
hahahaha I thought u had tattoos. Or at least a back taco one, wtf?

He does. He got it the same night his son Jethro found a centipede on Megan Fox.

Matt Reeves Explains How Steven Spielberg Helped Shape 'Let Me In'
Source: Cinematical

If I were to draw you a picture that explained my thoughts about an Americanization of 'Let the Right One In' a year ago, it would have been of a stick figure with a speech bubble filled with asterisked-out swear words. I wasn't just skeptical about the idea, I was downright angry about it. But when Cinematical had the opportunity to talk to director Matt Reeves in March, I quickly realized that I could lower my guard a bit. If anyone was up to the task, Reeves was the person.

Now that 'Let Me In' is out in the wild and fans have had an opportunity to see what Reeves was able to do with his version of John Ajvide Lindqvist's darkly beautiful vampire story, Cinematical was given a second opportunity to chat with the director as well as with the star of his film, Kodi Smit-McPhee. The interview was originally supposed to be with Reeves and Smit-McPhee at the same time, but due to scheduling conflicts they ended up being separate.

Below you can find Reeves relating the advice Steven Spielberg gave him about directing child actors, how best to intertwine performances with filmmaking spectacle, and what exactly is going on with 'Cloverfield 2'. Below that is the very talented Smit-McPhee explaining what it's like to be an Australian child actor working in an American industry, as well as his plans to transition from acting to directing and editing.


If I were in your position, I would definitely be taking on a boisterous, "I told you so!" attitude.

Matt Reeves: You know why there's no "I told you so!"? Because I am a huge fan of the novel and the original film. I think they're wonderful and, being a fan, I knew what my intentions were, but being on the outside no one else knew. I think that people, understandably, think that most American remakes suck. And the truth is that they do. It doesn't mean they all do -- I've seen great remakes -- but there are so many remakes that are soulless retreads or something that goes and bastardizes the very notions and seeds about the first film that made it great.

So I think people were worried we'd do something like that, so they were protective of the story they loved. I just knew that I loved it and that the thing I had to do was block all of that out in a way and approach it as a labor of love, which it was, and hope that came across. So, I don't say "I told you so," I say, "I understand why you were skeptical and I hope you like this."

One of the biggest triumphs of it is, I think, the understanding of the relationship between Owen and the Bullies. How difficult was it for you as a director to work with child actors and maintain that intensity and intimacy without feeling like you were being manipulative?

I chose the actors I chose because of their ability to be realistic and that was the thing that was most important to me. The thing that appealed to me about Lindqvist's tale is that it's very ironic: It's a fantasy that's very realistic. Even though it's a vampire story, it's very believable and it's very naturalistic about the pain of adolescence and coming of age.

I was worried in casting it because I thought about how we were going to find child actors who could pull off the complexity of an adult story. It's told through the eyes of 12 year olds, and it's about that time of life, but in a very adult way. And they have to be able to play it in a totally realistic way. And then Kodi came in.

The first person I was looking for was Owen. I was getting really worried, but he was so believable that I was immediately relieved. I thought, 'Oh, we can actually make this movie!" We had to cast him immediately, which we did. And the thing about those scenes is that he loved Dylan [Minnette] and those guys. He loved Chloe [Moretz] and they had a great relationship, but these were "the guys". So it was, "Today I get to hang out with the guys!"

It was a cool thing that when we shot those scenes we were staying at a casino and they would race back from the set when we were done so they could play in the video arcade at the Indian casino. In that sense, those scenes were not difficult to do because he loved those kids and they had a great time.

Those scenes are so real because he knew that's what I wanted. And I cast kids that were able to play things in a realistic way. So it wasn't manipulative in that way. I did have to toy with the kids to get the brighter reactions, actually. I would do things off camera to make them smile for that kind of stuff. But when it came to the darker stuff, Kodi and Chloe were really right there.

It's interesting, because people go, "You had all these violent scenes, did you have to shield the kids from that?" But that on the set is like being a kid. You've got all this fake blood and bodies and it's awesome on those days. Kodi literally said to me, "Can I stay longer?" And I said, "we'd have to ask your dad."

I was really fortunate when we started because I spoke with Steven Spielberg. He had seen 'Cloverfield' and he told J.J. [Abrams] that he really liked it. Actually, when we met he said it scared him and I thought that was really cool because Steven Spielberg has scared me many times. 'Jaws' scared the hell out of me!

So when I was doing this I asked J.J. To ask Steven if he would talk to me about directing kids. First off all, I immediately thought of 'E.T.' when I thought of adapting this movie. I thought of Spielbergia and his way of kids in the suburbs, which is where and when this movie takes place. And he got such amazing performances from those kids, so I was thrilled he agreed to talk to me. And what I took away from that talk was that you should never lose the perspective that I may be remembering what it was like to be 12, but these kids are 12. So when you go into a scene, you have to think that.

But Kodi would do that anyway. I'd ask what he'd do and he'd go, "Well, keeping it real, I'd probably go over here and do this," and I'd say let's try that. They would come up with ideas, the kids eye point-of-view, and that was fantastic. And it wasn't just about them, they had perspective on scenes they weren't in. I borrowed a lot from them and I'd play with them. I could throw them things while we were shooting and they wouldn't break character, they'd keep shooting.

I had a remarkable cast is what it comes down to.

The performances are stunning, down to even the smallest characters. Even those without names who don't necessarily have an effect on the step-by-step plot change everything to the point where it's impossible to imagine the movie without them.

I completely agree. It's why I wanted Elias [Koteas], he and I had worked together on a pilot before. In an American story, you couldn't really have these murders taking place in a town and not have there be a reaction without the police getting involved. Plus, it's just in the book. So I thought if I could use that thread to put those two things together and collapse them into one, that character would serve as the inexorable threat that gets closer and closer to the Romeo and Juliet story. Because the whole movie is about dreading what's to come.

So I thought there was an opportunity, for almost like a Tommy Lee Jones character in 'No Country for Old Men' that's sort of seen it all and wonders what is this darkness that is happening now. I thought he could really be the moral eyes of the movie and be looking at the events without any information and be saying, "What could cause this? Who would do this? Who would hang a kid upside down and bleed him?" And yet to be looking at it with a true sense of wondering and morality, but also compassion.

So when Elias decided to do it, I had been hoping he would. I wasn't sure if he would because it's not a big role, but it's a critical role. I was so excited because I knew he'd bring that compassion to it and make it human. Here's this character that, on one hand has no name, but on the other is the moral eyes looking into the events of the film trying to understand how they could have happened. He's incredible in it.

To maintain that pervasive sense of dread you mentioned, were there any particular moments that you set out ahead of time as needing to be bigger or better?

Bigger or better how?

In terms of having more visceral impact. Take the car scene, for example, which is one of the best car crashes I've ever seen. You're a very technically oriented director to begin with --

Ah, yes. To me, the performances and humanity of the movie is critically important, but the other aspect is the actual filmmaking and the way those two interrelate ... the way a brilliant performance in the context of a sequence that has been meticulously constructed can have a particular effect ... I just love movies and when I think of movies I love that they have those qualities, too. So it's very cool that you would say that. It's a great compliment.

Speaking of that brilliant performance and everything leading up to it ... when it comes to the father, you just absolutely ache for this man.

First of all, I was really fortunate that Richard [Jenkins] agreed to play it. I wanted Richard because he's got that soulfulness, that depth in his eyes. And I thought if someone is going to make you empathize with someone who is essentially a serial killer, it's Richard. That's number one.

For number two, I wanted to construct the story cinematically, so that you were dolloped out pieces of information along the way that continually shifted your expectations. If you don't know the story at all, you meet this character and you immediately assume that this is the father. So if he's the father, the power relationship must be that he's in control. But then you see her react and you wonder if she's in control. But then he goes out and kills people and you think he's a serial killer. But then he has this dreary, worn, weary kind of reaction and you're like, "This is affecting him, what's going on?"

And my idea was that you would feel this bitterness and see it and wonder why they snap at each other and what is this relationship. You'd watch as he went out for that last time to get blood for her and you'd have this whole experience where the tables have turned entirely. You had one expectation for what his character is all about; you see him kill someone in a horrifying way and you have questions what that was about; so that scene then becomes when you go through the looking glass. You dread that he's going to kill someone again, but because everything goes wrong in the sort of Hitchcockian, 'Dial M for Murder' way I described at Comic-Con, you begin to identify with him.

So that sequence works in this technical way that using the craft of filmmaking you go through the car crash with him, but because of the right setup narratively, you also find yourself weirdly rooting for him in a situation that you shouldn't be. So then you identify with him. And the last step I wanted was to transform that bitterness you see to her coming to him after that car accident and seeing him in a way that reveals the tenderness that was once there between them. It's the last step to giving that character a tragic dimension.

That's my fantasy, at least. If it worked in the slightest, I don't know, but that's what I was trying to do and a big part of that is Richard and being able to take Lindqvist's story, filter it through this lens and trying to do something craft-wise to construct that narrative and that moment you're talking about.

I think it's a seamless transition. But since we've got to wrap it up, I will catch hell from my editor if I don't ask about 'Cloverfield 2' or any Abrams collaborations.

You know what, I just saw Abrams. We were at Bad Robot and talking right before he went off to go do 'Super 8,' which is going to be awesome. It was the first time ... I hadn't had a chance to go to his offices when they were built because I was in New Mexico shooting and then I was editing. I've been so immersed in this because it's a passion project and despite what people think it was kind of a lower budget movie so we had to work extra hard on it. So it was the first time I had a chance to actually go over there.

I thought it was the greatest place and he kept saying, "Man, you gotta come over and we've got to do another movie together!" And I would love to. We always want to do something together and 'Cloverfield 2' is something we always have our eye on. He's doing 'Super 8' now, though, and I've said this before, but Drew [Goddard], who wrote 'Cloverfield', just directed his first movie, which he wrote with Joss Whedon that I'm really dying to see called 'Cabin in the Woods.'

Oh, I can't wait for that. I've been pulling for it to show up at Fantastic Fest as a Secret Screening, but I highly doubt it will. It really sucks that MGM is having the troubles they are.

I know, I know. I think they're starting to sort that out. That's the cool thing, Richard is in that movie too, so we've talked about it a lot. I actually talked to Drew about working with Richard beforehand and he said I was going to love him. But Richard tells me that the movie is just fantastic and I can't wait to see it.

But we've all been so busy with these things that we haven't really decided what we're going to do with 'Cloverfield 2.' We are really interested in doing it if we can find that right idea. The other project I'm really passionate to do is 'Invisible Woman,' which I originally wanted to do before 'Cloverfield' and then wanted to do after 'Cloverfield' and still want to do now, but we'll see. It's cool reading people's responses to the film. Fortunately they've been really good, so a lot of cool things have suddenly come in.

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Do you live in Australia?

Kodi Smit-McPhee: I live mainly in Australia, but right now I'm living in L.A. I have an apartment there and my whole family is there working. My dad got me into acting. He's been acting for over 20 years. And my sister is on HBO's 'Hung.'

Oh, who is she on 'Hung'?

She's the daughter of the guy.

She's great! I didn't realize that was her.

Yeah, she's great. She's a really good actor. My dad is in 'Sons of Anarchy' for eight episodes. He'll be the president of the Belfast chapter.

Since you've seen both aspects of it, do you prefer the American film industry or the Australian?

Definitely American. There's so much more work and this is where it all comes from. Our TV is all American anyway, so I'd much rather work here.

Well Australia at least makes good movies, particularly horror movies.

They do make good movies! My dad was in 'Wolf Creek,' he played the guy at the bar, but I haven't seen that because everyone has been saying don't, that it's too brutal. But I like to go back there to do films sometimes to help me stay grounded.

'Wolf Creek' is pretty rough, so I can understand that. Have you seen 'Let Me In' yet?

I saw 'Let Me In' for the first time as a rough cut. I was much more excited to see the finished one, which I saw in Toronto. I saw it again in California at a cast and crew screening and then on Monday of next week we have the official premiere in L.A. My friends will be going there, so I can't wait for that.

Do you like watching yourself on screen? A lot of actors don't.

Yeah, I know. Elias [Koteas] doesn't like watching himself, but I don't mind it. I like seeing everything come together in the end. It can be weird some times, but I actually like it. I think it's pretty cool.

When you're on set do you do a lot of spectating when you're not working?

Yeah. I watch a lot of stuff when I don't have to rest. I used to help them with some scenes. Not that they needed help, but sometimes they didn't know what shot they should do and some stuff they actually used that I said they should do. The scene when Elias comes in and stands on that toy, that was my idea and they put that in there. Matt [Reeves] just said that he had to do it, so he put on Elias' pants really quickly and did that.

I always do that sometimes. I edit my own films all the time and do different stuff on my computer, so I like that stuff a lot.

Are you planning to move towards directing or writing?

I have a script right now that's going to be done on a RED cam. It's going to be done for an Australian film festival that's all kids stuff. I wrote the script, I've got to do it. I'll do all the editing and stuff, so, yeah, I wouldn't one day mind going into directing. I think it'd be fun.

What's your movie called?

I think it's going to be called 'Nuance.' The whole film has no talking, it's just music. Can't wait for that.

Quick first impressions: they fixed everything that I didn't like about the original, then went and screwed up some things on their own. 

Grade = "B"asically the same as the original.

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from my blog (http://modage.tumblr.com/post/1291595371/let-me-in):
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Anyone who was as big a fan of Let The Right One In as I was, couldn't have been excited when it was announced there would be an American remake.  There are exceptions of course, but this was a completely original, nearly perfect film and I don't think anybody believed that there was a way to keep those elements in tact when adapting the story for an American audience.  It turns out there was a way: Matt Reeves.  The director of Cloverfield has succeeded in the near-impossible, making Let Me In feel as personal and thoughtful as the original.

After the trailer I had expected an almost scene-for-scene remake so was surprised to see both how different the film was.  I found that it worked best when it was doing something new: the Rear Window style apartment complex that gave the neighbors roles instead of random townspeople, an expanded role for the police, the un-chronological opening, etc.  It was the scenes that closely followed the original that I couldn't help but compare.  I knew every beat so well that something just felt off.

While the original is still my favorite, there are a lot of things this film does right.  The casting is great, cinematography is beautiful, Los Alamos New Mexico is a good substitute for Sweden's snowy isolation, and none of the story's strangeness or violence has been toned down.  If I have a few nitpicks, it's that there is some CGI I could have done without (though the original is guilty of that as well), I didn't care for the look of the actual vampire and by making Owen more thoughtful (and less of a sociopath) it leads you to question his choices more.  But I envy those who haven't seen the original because this is a completely worthy version of a great story and I wish I could have seen it without having to compare.

Everyone needs to see this before it's out of theaters.

Quote from: Stefen on October 12, 2010, 07:57:58 PM
Everyone needs to see this before it's out of theaters.

I was going to see it tonight - but it's too late. Guess I'll wait for the dollar theater.

i really wanted to let this be its own thing and not compare it the whole time but i know the original too well and this wasn't different enough not to do that, so i ended up watching them side-by-side in my head and looking at the choices made throughout, which lead me to the conclusion i will put at the bottom.
*mmmm... spoils for both i guess.*

things that were cool and maybe even better than let the right one in:
- a lot of neat visual ideas and textures. the overall grimy, grainy look works well. some shots were better than the ones they referenced. eg. climbing up the hospital walls.
- lacke's new methods of killing people that are so much riskier/scary to watch. it's borderline unbelievable that he'd take such big risks, but i buy it more because it's america and maybe there are fewer people hiking alone in the woods. that freaking car crash. finally the deleted footage from punch-drunk love finds a home.
- the lacke/eli ('abby') relationship felt more fleshed out for some reason. the hand on cheek scene was really great. maybe it's just jenkins, but i saw the sad, complicated love more. i'm on the fence about the old photobooth photos of them as kids, but i thought they were right for this version, which is less ambiguous about everything.
- the budget to make certain effects better, like skin burning, corpses etc.
- elias koteas

things that were not good, in some cases downright bad, and make this film obviously not on the same plane as let the right one in:
- all of the superhuman things abby does including attacking people are done using this kind of cg that i'm seeing more and more that is not physically believable (like in black swan.. i think it has to do with 'seamlessly' morphing between real footage). i can't believe a little girl is moving that way, and she doesn't really have to move that way, as the original will show you. it's another classic case of less cg being a thousand times more effective.
- there are lots of moments that went from ambiguous to not. for example the scene where eli tells oskar he must strike back at the bullies. in the original this is treated like 'is this a good thing? yes and no..' and oskar has conflicting feelings about whether he should actually be hitting people, but here the score is telling you 'right on!! hitting the bullies back! hooray!'
- every fucking relationship in the movie is two characters speaking monotonously to each other 80% of the time. the way owen/abby behave towards each other is faaaar more awkward. and that's not unrealistic, but it's nowhere near as interesting as let the right one in, where they're really in love. it IS unrealistic just how monotonous they are, though. every line is spoken in a low whisper, as though it's only half-meant. there is very little range in anyone's voice. at first you think it's okay because these are disturbed people, but after a while it's just lazy directing. let the right one in allows the characters to play with each other and get annoyed with each other ('why do i have to invite you in?? 'tever! walk in! now!').. yknow. be human. these characters are relatively lifeless. owen's mom/dad are just thrown to the side. they become simple jerks. straight up. they have no idea what's going on nor do they care. now you could argue that about the original too, but there it's more of a stylistic choice. it's not so effing blatant that no one gives a shit.
- a specific choice that showed me matt reeves didn't get a lot of things about the original: when owen tells abby his age in specific days, he isn't being sarcastic. he's saying it like he matter-of-factly knows his exact age. REALLY, MATT REEVES??? no. he's supposed to say that as a counter to eli being unspecific about HER age. he's making a joke. you turned it into something awkward that didn't really make sense.
- i was very disturbed by the moment near the end where owen runs to his locker to get out his knife and then decides not to use it. why have that moment? what does that moment mean? why didn't owen at least TRY to stab that guy?? that would have been a great moment! and it would have made the bullies even angrier! and they could have easily grabbed the knife as he attempted to stab them. he didn't need to succeed necessarily. especially considering he's already hit them once, why does owen revert back to his early stage of being afraid to hit/hurt people?
then the bullies drag him to the pool and give him the impossible challenge of holding his breath for three minutes and he doesn't get a second to respond. he's the VICTIM and they are FULLY in control. in the original, oskar knows he's fucked, but he doesn't struggle. he swims up to the guy's outstretched hand and basically accepts death, because he's THAT STRONG. so why the FOCK do those two moments HAPPEN IN THE REMAKE??? the simple answer is that owen hasn't changed. he's still afraid to fight/hurt people.
and that runs counter to the entire POINT of Let the Right One In. because at its core that film is a metaphor for the transformative power of love, in all its glory AND ugliness. by the end of the movie you're not sure which way is up because YES oskar has become empowered and he has a purpose and he doesn't feel bad about himself anymore and he cares about things BUT he's also basically a psychopath who will likely cling to eli until she's given all the love she can and he dies old and confused. in the remake, all that's happening is a guy getting a girl. good for him, but has that shifted his very being? nope. so why am i even watching this? it's so.. slight. dude just feels bad and meets someone nice and they decide to be bf/gf.
this movie reaffirmed my deep love for the original because it showed me just how amazing that relationship is, and how impossible it is to create that kind of thing, especially using kid actors. i'm really surprised by the good reviews from people who know the original, because beyond style and some of the adult character's performances, there is NO comparison. this is a far less interesting, less complicated version of something that is profoundly beautiful and complicated. it's a pretty good sketch of the mona lisa.

By accident I saw this a 2nd time last night.  I still liked a lot of it, though it is IMPOSSIBLE not to compare them.  A few more thoughts...

Re: Picolas: I thought Owen DID try to stab them when he got to his knife, but there were too many of them and they basically overtook him right away.

I really do not care for the vampire makeup at all.  The CG attacks and the makeup take me out of the movie.  Though the original has the cats, so maybe it's a draw.

I don't care for the way the neighbor vampire goes up in flames.  The camera lingers too long on her before she ignites.  The angle isn't as interesting as the one in the original at the end of the room.

I think the pool scene is the biggest fumble in the film.  The original is a CLASSIC scene just perfectly done beat for beat.  This one is all wrong, using multiple angles, Owen coming out of the pool too early, the lights going off first, it all just feels wrong.  

Another thing I thought about this time was by showing the picture of Abby and her caretaker to Owen early in the film the audience and Owen both become aware of his choice to move forward from that point on.  So at the end of the film he's basically completely aware of the situation he's putting himself in.  In the original the ending is TRAGIC because the audience realizes in the last scene that Oskar is on his way to being the next caretaker but he may not even realize it yet.  

I had forgotten the original had no police in it and it's that random townsperson who ends up in Abbys apartment.  Making Elias Koteas a prescence from the beginning of the film IS a good improvement.  Also bringing everything close to Owen instead of cutting away to those random townspeople.  

All the scenes with Richard Jenkins are great, the stuff in the car better/on par with scenes in the original.

As much as I hate to say it, the score is intrusive at times.

I have never seen a movie where more is out of focus than in this one.  I'm not saying it's a bad thing, I'm just saying I notice it big time.  Every shot.  Most out of focus.  (I get why they did it.)

Quote from: modage on October 17, 2010, 08:39:59 AMRe: Picolas: I thought Owen DID try to stab them when he got to his knife, but there were too many of them and they basically overtook him right away.

no way. he just stands there. he pretends he might stab them, they call his bluff ('what are you going to do with that?'), and he very deliberately tries to run away. he was never going to stab anyone. and my point still stands that he never accepts their challenge, which is a HUGE distinction whether reeves is aware of it or not, so he's still basically the same kid from the beginning of the film.

Quote from: modage on October 17, 2010, 08:39:59 AMI don't care for the way the neighbor vampire goes up in flames.  The camera lingers too long on her before she ignites.  The angle isn't as interesting as the one in the original at the end of the room.

i thought this movie missed out on that subplot big time, and i was questioning the vampire validity of her chewing on her own flesh to the near-fatal degree that she was. i love the moment in the original where she gets a little sniff of her own blood, but she could never chew off her own arm.

Quote from: modage on October 17, 2010, 08:39:59 AMI think the pool scene is the biggest fumble in the film.  The original is a CLASSIC scene just perfectly done beat for beat.  This one is all wrong, using multiple angles, Owen coming out of the pool too early, the lights going off first, it all just feels wrong.  

are you just talking about it visually? as i've said i have huge issues with the emotional beats/owen's victim status that basically underline how weak this version is overall, but visually i enjoyed it, particularly the shot from underneath where pieces are falling from all directions. though i have no idea why matt reeves would cut the money shot of oskar finally coming up for air and smiling, then eli smiling back with her eyes. i suppose cause their relationship isn't that strong.

Quote from: modage on October 17, 2010, 08:39:59 AMAnother thing I thought about this time was by showing the picture of Abby and her caretaker to Owen early in the film the audience and Owen both become aware of his choice to move forward from that point on.  So at the end of the film he's basically completely aware of the situation he's putting himself in.  In the original the ending is TRAGIC because the audience realizes in the last scene that Oskar is on his way to being the next caretaker but he may not even realize it yet.

that's a really really good point. yeah, it makes owen into a bit of a dummy.

Quote from: modage on October 17, 2010, 08:39:59 AMI had forgotten the original had no police in it and it's that random townsperson who ends up in Abbys apartment.  Making Elias Koteas a prescence from the beginning of the film IS a good improvement.

it definitely increases the stakes, and elias is great. i missed the original neighbours, however the first time i saw let the right one in i found that whole subplot jarring until the girlfriend becomes a vampire.

I managed to catch this at the one theater that that was still playing it (once a day). It's very solid, no doubt about it, and the performances and technical aspects are spot on. But it just felt so pointless that I don't feel too bad about it bombing, even though it's actually a very worthwhile movie and no doubt more worthy of success than any of the other crappy horror movies that came out this month. Matt Reeves said he wanted to go back to the source material, which I've only skimmed, but there's nothing here that isn't in the original movie, leaving one to presume that the original movie was as good an adaptation as possible and there was nowhere for Reeves to go from there but sideways.

That was insanely good. It wasn't in my ballot cause I just saw it but I hope everyone else didn't forget it.

My only gripe: the last killing wasn't graphic enough. I wanted to see these little fucks suffer.

I had an issue with most of the killings, actually. In the original it was much more realistic and cringe inducing, here it was like "time to pump up the special effects, they're gonna want something updated and different if it's a remake!" but really if they would've taken the same route it would've been a lot more succesful IMO.

My gripe: since when does it snow in New Mexico? haven't spent much time there but I thought it was, you know THE FUCKING DESERT.

The best parts of this were Richard Jenkins performance and the 80's soundtrack. As much as I want to praise this expanding on this first one I still think I liked that a whole lot better.

Your gripe? It snows in the desert too. Welcome to planet earth.

I liked both films pretty much the same. Both are close to great but don't really get there for different reasons.
Some things work better in one than in the other.

Quote from: Reelist on February 12, 2011, 11:03:32 PMMy gripe: since when does it snow in New Mexico? haven't spent much time there but I thought it was, you know THE FUCKING DESERT.

Los Alamos, like Santa Fe and Taos, is located in the Northern part of New Mexico. It's closer to Colorado. They get lots of snow in Colorado. I live in Albuquerque and we get snow here, too.

Let Me In was my favorite of the year. I was skeptical of a remake of one of my favorite movies, but I think it actually works better than the original. The only beef I had was some of the visual effects looked weightless, like how CGI looked in the mid 90's where it felt nothing had any weight behind it. But the visual effects in Let The Right One In are pretty bad, too, so it's a wash there.

I wish there was a way to make a composite version, with the car crash, spontaneous combustion, and lack of CGI cat attacks from the US version, while retaining the vampire kills and climbing from the original where she didn't jump around like Yoda in the Star Wars prequels.

and the guy not being a coward at the end. and the waaay better performances. and the whole twisted/ambiguous meaning behind their love restored. and a lot of things.

Quote from: picolas on February 13, 2011, 04:07:36 PM
and the guy not being a coward at the end. and the waaay better performances. and the whole twisted/ambiguous meaning behind their love restored. and a lot of things.

All those things would be nice.  To reiterate what I said earlier in this thread, for every instance where this version improved on the original, they went and fucked up something else.  There's a near-perfect movie to be made from this, but instead we ended up with just two really good ones.

I agree with the majority of what Stefen, mod, and picolas said. Quite good and it has enough legs to be a movie on its own but like many have said, its reallly tough not to compare the two. Chloe did a fantastical job and while the cg irked me just a bit I could look past that and really enjoy the film nontheless.

Didn't really like this version compared to original. It was way more violent and dull. Why show the dudes face when the caretaker is slitting his throat? It's more effective in the original when we only heard the dripping into the bucket or whatever it was. But I guess I'd like it a wee bit more if there wasn't the swedish movie. Great acting by the two main actors though.