Friday, September 4, 2009

ULTRA CURIOUS


3 comments:

Lemmy Caution said...

It's strange....Herzog cliams to have never seen Abel Ferrara's film Bad Lieutenant.

The trailer for Herzog's "version" almost looks like a black comedy. Cage is whooping it up and carrying on as he is prone to do these days in some of his movies.

Can't say I'm not curious as well....but will there ever be anything quite like the original B.L.? I doubt it.

Heck, after the music rights debacle, even the original B.L. isn't the movie it was when orignally released.

Scott Mendelson said...

You might have already seen this, but Variety reviewed the film just the other day:

http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117940931.html?categoryid=3716&cs=1

Actionman said...

Lemmy -- the original BL is a one of a kind film, and a cornerstone of the cop film genre. It sort of transcends the genre in a way.

Werner being Werner, he's always making statements which may or may not be 100% truthful...so when he says he's never heard of Abel or the original movie, something tells me he might be having a little fun.

What interests (and excites yet scares) me, is that this is one of the first "paycheck" jobs for Herzog. It's a wonder that it's taken him this long to do something like this, a straight genre piece if you will. My guess is that while he might have been attracted to doing something different (a cop movie with Cage), he's probably taking his fee from BL and using to help finance one of his smaller projects. Or maybe he needs to pay his house...

All in all, I am very curious about this new movie. Yes, Scott, I read the Variety review, and it sounds very non-commital in calling it one way or another (success or failure). That clip that was floating around the net a while back indicated that the movie was unhinged in more than one way.

Herzog has made so many masterpieces, so many unique pieces of cinema, that I have a tough time thinking that even with something like a BL remake, he's not going to give us at least something fascinating to chew on.