Attn: Steve McQueen fans

billyz wrote:

mjl1783 wrote:

So, how long do you guys think it'll be before Bullitt gets a reboot?

Also, I fucking love Bullitt.

Call me an asshole , but I don't think Bullitt should ever be remade. I know for a fact that a remake would never hold up to the original- not in today's Hollywood. Plus it would be, like, I don't know... sacrilrigeous or something.

Who the hell would take McQueen's place? And, how many ways could they possibly screw up THE chase scene?

Stallone remade Get Carter. And Pierce fucking Brosnan remade The Thomas Crown Affair. Both were dreadful [though TTCA was far better than what Sly did to one of my favorite movies of, well, ever] but they do go to show that there is absolutely NO sense of leaving classics well enough alone.

Count on a Bullitt remake one of these days as a vanity project for someone like Shia TheBeef or some other prat with more LA clout than sense...

Gimme a kickass T-shirt with Toshiro Mifune's pic on it from "Yojimbo" any day. Or better yet, Humphrey Bogart from Casablanca. Those are a couple of old school bad-asses in my book.

-Will

I had a great Bogart shirt when I was a teen - I wore it out.

billyz wrote:

mjl1783 wrote:

So, how long do you guys think it'll be before Bullitt gets a reboot?

Also, I fucking love Bullitt.

Call me an asshole , but I don't think Bullitt should ever be remade. I know for a fact that a remake would never hold up to the original- not in today's Hollywood. Plus it would be, like, I don't know... sacrilrigeous or something.

Who the hell would take McQueen's place? And, how many ways could they possibly screw up THE chase scene?

They'd do the thing in the Fast and the Furious where the fucking ricer survives and the muscle car blows up in a blaze of fury...fuckers...

Bulwyf wrote:

Gimme a kickass T-shirt with Toshiro Mifune's pic on it from "Yojimbo" any day. Or better yet, Humphrey Bogart from Casablanca. Those are a couple of old school bad-asses in my book.

-Will

Fucking Yojimbo!!! Now that would be kick-ass!!!

As I was at Target last night buying new sheets I checked out the Steve McQ shirt. Not something I'd wear, but it is a good t-shirt compared the rest. I wasn't expecting it to be an all-over silk-screen design. I figured it'd just be one of those thick patches that peels away after wearing it once type deals.

On the plus side, the sheet set I bought game in a drawstring cloth bag. So I now have an awesomely sized cloth draw bag for my games.

I love Bullitt but it does not need a reboot. Also, how much more can they up the ante in the car chase sequence - which is what that movie is known for? It was great in its time but there have been many movies with awesome car chase sequences.

It's funny, the last time I watched BULLITT was right before I watched SPEED RACER. So I went into SPEED RACER almost actively resenting it because it didn't have real cars doing real stunts moving real fast. I was thinking a lot about how modern car chases are totally removed from what you see in BULLITT. They're so amped up with CGI, terse editing, and a sense of removal from the physicality of kinetic motion that you see in pictures like DIRTY MARY, CRAZY LARRY, THE DRIVER, et. al.

But it turned out that I loved SPEED RACER because the car scenes were so ridiculously beyond the physical that they simply weren't even trying to maintain any kind of realism or impact. It was speed and kineticism in almost a surrealistic, disembodied fashion. I like that a hell of a lot more than watching a heavily treated car chase in a modern film where all of the physicality is replaced by postproduction techniques to mimic on-set reality.

So yeah, if they did BULLITT today, a lot of what makes that picture special would be lost. I've shown that chase to people raised on crap like THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS and it's blown their minds. Because it's _real_. Aside from that, BULLITT is a film that fits into a certain cultural context that doesn't exist, its narrative is tied to 1967, not 2009.

BTW, the director, Peter Yates, went on to direct KRULL.

A Bullitt remake would essentially be Fast and Furious 4 or whatever fucking number that shite series is at now...

For the record, I was basically just asking a rhetorical question. I'm pretty sure we'll see a new Bullitt. Obviously, I don't want them to remake the picture as there's no real reason to do it, but when's that ever stopped Hollywood?

So yeah, if they did BULLITT today, a lot of what makes that picture special would be lost. I've shown that chase to people raised on crap like THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS and it's blown their minds. Because it's _real_.

I'm not sure sure about this one, though. There were a lot of practical effects in The Dark Knight, particularly during the armored car chase, and considering how popular it was, it's possible we could see a small resurgance of that stuff.

Aside from that, BULLITT is a film that fits into a certain cultural context that doesn't exist, its narrative is tied to 1967, not 2009.

Again, I'm not sure that's true. It was pretty ahead of its time in terms of style (the credit sequence, for example), and aside from some of the slower scenes, it really doesn't feel like 40 year-old picture. They could possibly turn out a decent remake if they wanted to, but yes, it'd more likely be a Fast and the Furious sort of thing.

I remember reading an interview with Chris Nolan before BATMAN BEGINS where he spoke at length about how he really wanted to get back to practical effects and do something more in line with BLADE RUNNER in terms of having most of the "movie magic" happen on set versus in post. I think he totally nailed that in THE DARK KNIGHT, and I do think that one of things that resounds with people whether they realize it or not is that stuff like that tunnel chase were mostly done with real effects so that there's a real sense of weight and impact that CGI doesn't have. Likewise, the freeway chase in THE MATRIX RELOADED was memorable to people because it was a lot of ace stuntwork and real action.

The problem is that all of that kind of stuff is expensive, and takes a lot of work. So many lazy filmmakers today rely on doing everything in post. I've seen it happen many times on set. "This lighting is off". "It's cool, we'll fix it in post". "He didn't do that fast enough." "We can speed it up in post."

The result is that the film image is moving more and more away from communication of reality, light, and movement and toward simulation, virtualization, and immateriality. And no matter how realistic CGI gets, it's never going to mesh completely with the image captured on set. It can't, because reality and unreality are things in which we can detect the slightest seam, even if it's subconscious.

I really think that culturally, it's one of the reasons that stuff like JACKASS got popular. Seeing real people doing real things at risk of life and limb is naturally appealing and thrilling to people. I also think it's why stuff like MMA is popular now, because it's got a level of verite that you don't get in other entertainment mediums like film.

The problem is that all of that kind of stuff is expensive, and takes a lot of work. So many lazy filmmakers today rely on doing everything in post. I've seen it happen many times on set. "This lighting is off". "It's cool, we'll fix it in post". "He didn't do that fast enough." "We can speed it up in post."

I thought the whole "we'll fix it in post" mentality has been around for decades. I remember Lloyd Kaufman had a bit where he talked about doing that all the time in his book. I guess it's different with CGI, though, because you then get to spend even less time on location, or on the set.

The result is that the film image is moving more and more away from communication of reality, light, and movement and toward simulation, virtualization, and immateriality. And no matter how realistic CGI gets, it's never going to mesh completely with the image captured on set. It can't, because reality and unreality are things in which we can detect the slightest seam, even if it's subconscious.

That's true, but my real gripe with CGI is that I never find myself watching a movie and thinking "How did they do that?" Not the way I did when I first saw Jason and the Argonauts, Star Wars, or The Invisible Man. CGI just robs cinema of all that sense of wonder we used to get someone pulled off a really ambitious visual effects sequence. It's like watching a magic show where the magician shows you all his secrets while he's performing the tricks.

I really think that culturally, it's one of the reasons that stuff like JACKASS got popular. Seeing real people doing real things at risk of life and limb is naturally appealing and thrilling to people. I also think it's why stuff like MMA is popular now, because it's got a level of verite that you don't get in other entertainment mediums like film.

That's an interesting idea, but people still crave drama. Take pro wrestling, for instance. Once it dropped all pretense of being a real sport, and started playing up the soap opera-type story lines, it got more popular than it had ever been. Considering all that, you'd think people would want a more tangible quality to the films they see, but then you see Transformers 2 is the most profitable movie going right now. It doesn't quite jive.