OT - Hey, Waitaminute...

[FWiedner]

Last week I watched a Bruce Willis movie called "Last Man Standing."

Last night I watched Clint Eastwood 's old "Fistful of Dollars".

Am I imagining things, or are these actually the same movie... ?

[PaulB]

There are only 10 (or some such number) different plots for Hollywood movies.

I just had the same experience when watching "I am Legend". The whole thing about the main plot line, the man-made virus that goes awry, is ripped off almost intact from the Serenity movie.

[bogus bill]

Sure was a lot of gun play in those movies! Ever wonder how many people been killed off in movie westerns by now? Probley a 1000 times as many as the actual people that lived in the west back then. I wonder how many gunfights there actualy were where they looked at each other in the eyes for 30 secounds or more, then draw. Probley not even one!

[Hagler]

Gents,

I saw Last Man Standing, but I did not think it was anything but a bunch of ways to spend money of "cool" photography, gritty "realism", and characters with today's oft-needed "attitude". My local station has shown that movie about 6 times in just a few weeks.

The book I am Legend spawned the Vincent Price movie The Last Man on Earth, the 15 minute Spanish-language Soy leyenda, and the Charlton Heston film The Omega Man. Rumor has it that there is an I am Legend 2 in the works, set for a 2010 release. From what little I have seen, Price's version of the story is more like a Night of the Living Dead-style story. I really enjoyed Heston's entry, the last time that I saw it. I have not seen Will Smith's perfomance, yet.

Back in the late 1980s, Rick Springfield starred as "Nick Knight", a vampire detective. Later, Geraint Wyn Davies played the same role in Forever Knight. CBS tried to revive the franchise with its sub-par reworking Moonlight. Meanwhile, Fox tried a very similar idea, about an immortal detective, with New Amsterdam.

I recall a quote about nothing under the sun being new. ...hmmmm, where did I read that?

Shawn

[Hobie]

There are only 10 (or some such number) different plots for Hollywood movies.

I just had the same experience when watching "I am Legend". The whole thing about the main plot line, the man-made virus that goes awry, is ripped off almost intact from the Serenity movie.

Ever seen Omega Man?

PS. I see Shawn beat me to it!

[Rimfire McNutjob]

Ever seen Omega Man?

That was actually a remake of a still earlier movie.

[donw]

i watched "a gunfighters pledge" last nite...it's the same story line, plot and scenerio as "red headed stranger", "avenging angel" and several more i can't think of the names right off-hand.

i have a hard covered book titled "encylopedia of gunfighters" that the author researched over four hundred gunfights and listed the gunfighters. some very interesting facts were uncovered.

wyatt earp was documented to have killed NO ONE...

bill longley, hanged in texas in 1852 was reported to have killed over fourty people, (by his words, "not counting mexicans")

clay allison, frank "buckskin" lesley and john wesley hardin were of the few who were known to 'practice' fast-draw...

one of the leading "killers" among gunfighters, jim "killer" miller, killed a documented twelve persons, from ambush and favored a double barreled shotgun...lynched by an angry mob in a livery stable in guthrie, okla in 1902.

the notable/notorious tom horn, was convicted of murder for the "accidental" killing of a 15 year old boy...(he was got drunk by a jailer where he was incarcerated at the time and "tricked" into confessing while a hidden stenograper recorded the conversation.) there's no factual documentation (at the time the book was published) of how many persons, if any, he killed; hanged in cheyene, wy 1902. he served as a scout against gerinomo and the apache. who knows how many he killed?

the west was not actually "tame" until well into the 1930's. my grandma recorded her memory of two men 'shooting it out' with shotguns she witnessed on her way home from school in okla in 1907. my dad recounted "being shot at by indians" in okla in the mid/late twenties...

very intersting stuff...this thing, the phenomena we call the "wild west"...we're not that far removed from it are we?

[Ysabel Kid]

Yep - I remember seeing "Last Man Standing" in the theater, and turning to my wife and saying "this is just a 1920's version of 'A Fistful of Dollars'"!

She looked at me like I was speaking Chinese...

[Hagler]

Ever seen Omega Man?

That was actually a remake of a still earlier movie.

See my reply, above.

Shawn

[Rimfire McNutjob]

Ever seen Omega Man?

That was actually a remake of a still earlier movie.

See my reply, above.

Shawn

Ah, I missed that piece. The Heston version was very good for it's time. I think the Will Smith version was also a very good movie.

[Rod WMG]

Too Slim, of Riders in the Sky, once said of a B western they were hosting, "There are only three plots to these movies...You're watching one of 'em."

[The Lewis]

If you watch 'The Magnificent Seven' and 'The Seven Samurai' they are, scene for scene, the exact same movie. Happens a lot I'd guess.

[Pisgah]

There are only 10 (or some such number) different plots for Hollywood movies.

I just had the same experience when watching "I am Legend". The whole thing about the main plot line, the man-made virus that goes awry, is ripped off almost intact from the Serenity movie.

"I Am Legend" is a screen adaptation of the novel by the same name -- but the first version of it was Charlton Heston's "Omega Man". It seems to me that at least 50% of all new movies are remakes of earlier ones -- sometimes better, most often not.

[Hagler]

"I Am Legend" is a screen adaptation of the novel by the same name -- but the first version of it was Charlton Heston's "Omega Man". It seems to me that at least 50% of all new movies are remakes of earlier ones -- sometimes better, most often not.

Please see my response, above. Vincent Price starred in the first film, that was based on the book.

Shawn

[Otto]

"Last Man Standing" and "A Fistful of Dollars" are both remakes of (homages to?) a picture called "Yojimbo" by an almost legendary japanese director whose name escapes me at the moment. Many of his samurai movie plots were converted to gritty westerns in the mid- and late-sixties.

EDIT Akira Kurosawa is the man's name.

My grandmother witnessed a movie-style shootout between two local troublemakers, in the late 1940's, in Kimbolton, Ohio of all places. One of them riddled the door of the church, or possibly the Grange hall, with pistol bullets.

[FWiedner]

There are only 10 (or some such number) different plots for Hollywood movies.

I just had the same experience when watching "I am Legend". The whole thing about the main plot line, the man-made virus that goes awry, is ripped off almost intact from the Serenity movie.

"I Am Legend" is a screen adaptation of the novel by the same name -- but the first version of it was Charlton Heston's "Omega Man". It seems to me that at least 50% of all new movies are remakes of earlier ones -- sometimes better, most often not.

"3:10 to Yuma" being a case in point...

[Old Ironsights]

"Last Man Standing" and "A Fistful of Dollars" are both remakes of
(homages to?) a picture called "Yojimbo" by an almost legendary japanese director whose name escapes me at the moment. Many of his samurai movie plots were converted to gritty westerns in the mid- and late-sixties.

EDIT Akira Kurosawa is the man's name...

Dang. Beat me to it. I have all three DVDs and often watch them back to back.

Toshiro Mfume was Japan's John Wayne/Clint Eastwood.

Kurosawa is one of the all time great directors. A disproportionately large number of his films became "Important" Westerns (Seven Samurai, Yojimbo) and one was supposedly the impetus for Star Wars (Hidden Fortress)

RAN was his vision of King Lear and it is amazing.

I really encourage you to watch Seven Samurai, Yojimbo, Sanjuro, RAN and Hidden Fortress at the very least.

http://www.criterion.com/ ... search for Kurosawa.


If you are interested in looking these films up,