How Was Monday 🌘? The Openthread That Hugs You Back

Here's to hoping everything went smoothly for you, but this being BTV, an accurséd place shunned by God, your day probably went more like 

The Seven Magnificent Gladiators, 1984, d. Bruno Mattei, Lou Ferrigno and Dan Vadis, shot simultaneously with Hercules, also starring Lou Ferrigno and Sybil Danning.

There have been a few remakes of The Seven Samurai, which in turn was influenced by John Ford's westerns. You've probably seen one or two of the remakes, but even if you haven't you've seen several that were inspired by it. Ebert ascribes to the critic Michael Jeck the idea that The Seven Samurai was the first film to show a team being assembled to fight off a greater enemy. If not the first, then the one that popularized it. Guns of Navarone, The Dirty Dozen, Star Wars Episode IV, Rogue One, at least one episode of The Mandalorian, The Avengers, Battle Beyond the Stars, and so on.

Sybil Danning as Saint-Exmin, "a Valkyrie warrior looking to prove herself in battle" in Battle Beyond the Stars according to Wikipedia. Ought to mention that John Sayles wrote the screenplay, and Jimmy T. Murakami directed. Murakami directed or was supervising director for the animated films When the Wind Blows and The Snowman. Aww, Raymond Briggs and David Bowie.

I did start The Seven Magnificent Gladiators* the other day. I stopped when feelings of regret overwhelmed me (around seven mintues). I'll finish it at some point. Speaking of regret, I am on the library waitlist for Living, the recent remake of Kurosawa's Ikiru (To Live) and it's all about regret. I do like Bill Nighy, in both his comedic and more dramatic roles, and Kazuo Ishiguro wrote the screenplay. I haven't loved any of Ishiguro's books, but his writing seems well suited for a movie about a dull government functionary looking to accomplish one good thing before he dies. I don't expect much from it, and that's probably the healthiest way to approach the thing, which has been criticized as being inferior to the original and unnecessary. That may be true. I'm not always sure what makes an original movie "necessary" though.

Anyway, I'm off to deliver some justice on my nogoodnik neighbors.

Not Sybil Danning, and not Ikiru. Franco Nero in Django, 1966, d. Sergio Corbucci. A remake of Yojimbo which was inspired by Dashiell Hammett's The Glass Key (the film version with Ladd and Lake) and probably Red Harvest, but not confirmed.

What's up with you all? Can you think of a remake which surpasses the original? Or a movie which is better than the book? A cover song that you like better than the one it's based on? Make your case below.

* streaming free for subs on Amazon and Paramount+, Tubi for everyone else.