Chan-Wook Park’s Oldboy (2003) is one of those foreign films that so many people have already seen that a remake would almost be sacrilege, but in the eyes of studio execs, people who watch foreign films aren’t an audience worth considering anyway so shut up while Kevin James takes a gorilla ice skating.  Last we heard, a deal that would’ve had Spielberg and Will Smith involved in the remake fell through when Dreamworks and Mandate couldn’t come to an agreement.  But Mandate apparently still owns the rights to the remake, and now Twitch reports that they’re in talks with Spike Lee to direct.  Yes, Spike Lee. I for one can’t wait for ODay Sioux’s inevitable out-of-context rant about how much he hates Arab cab drivers.

Twitch has learned that Spike Lee is currently in talks to direct the long-rumored Hollywood remake of Park Chan-Wook´s Oldboy.
The film is set up at Mandate with Doug Davison and Roy Lee producing and Mark Protosevich (Thor, I Am Legend) writing the script.

The original starred the brilliant Min-Sik Choi as Oh Dae-Su, a man with five days to find and exact his revenge on the man who imprisoned him for 15 years.  Whether a straight remake or a new adaptation of the original manga, I imagine Spike Lee’s version would play out much the same way. “Oldboy 2: Who you callin’ ‘Boy?”” they could call it.

Good news, everyone: I wrote a humorous headline.  Also, Steven Spielberg and Will Smith’s planned remake of Park Chan-Wook’s Old Boy (actually, if you want to get technical, it was supposed to be a separate adaptation of the original Old Boy manga) is dead.  Latino Review reports that it was killed when Dreamworks couldn’t come to a deal with Mandate pictures.

So now if you want to see Old Boy, you’ll just have to watch Old Boy.  And to get your fill of Will, you’ll have to satisfy yourself with his remake of Karate Kid, Flowers for Algernon,  I Am Legend 2, Hancock 2, Men in Black 3, Bad Boys 3, that street magician movie, the Hurricane Katrina movie, and God knows what else. Will Smith is basically the Michael Jordan of acting, in that no one knows his actual personality, which as it turns out is really good for business.  That’s why publicists coach actors and athletes to answer all questions with variations on the same clichés. That, and Tom Cruise is a succubus.  It’s true, I read it in Science Magazine.

Okay, folks, it’s comments of the week time again, and this time I’ve got prizes to give away.  First place gets a Thirst poster autographed by the director and the soundtrack, three runners up win the soundtrack. Thirst opened in select theaters on Friday. You can see when it will be in your queer town here.

The way COMMENTS OF THE WEEK works is: at any time this week, when you read a comment you think worthy of recognition, YOU nominate it by copy and pasting it in the comments section below.  I pick the winner from among the nominees the following Sunday/Monday. (To help you find it more easily, the nomination thread is always linked in the ABOUT section).

FIRST PLACE – from the James Cameron with a gun post – goes to… Donkey Hodey.

Donkey Hodey says:
Donk: “How do you shoot women and children?”
Cameron: “Easy, you just use softer lighting!”

RUNNERS UP:  From the DJ CARUSO TO DIRECT ‘DEAD SPACE’ post, Robopanda rose to my challenge to come up with a more generic movie pitch than Dead Space:

RoboPanda says:
I accept your challenge:  A headstrong, hot (but not too hot) 30-something career woman gets cheated on by her hot boyfriend and realizes she’s been in love with her hot coworker with whom she’s had an unexplained rivalry throughout the first two acts. Also, they’re all zombies.  40 Dresses Later – in theaters this Secretary’s Day.

Meanwhile, in the APATOW PLANNING RAAAAAAAANDY MOVIE thread, mreverdred01 was all over my ass like anal warts.  I mean, like a big gay dude.  No wait!  I mean like my man jizz!  Wait, no!  Damn these Freudian similes!

mreverdred01 says:
You tend to say something along the lines of, “this movie sounds terrible, but at least it doesn’t sound as bad as this movie:” with a link to a worse-sounding movie. I followed the MacGruber link in this video and in that article you said, “I guess it can’t be worse than View-Master” with a link to a View-Master article. So I went to the View-Master article and in that you say, “After having previously reported on studios going forward with movies about Candyland and Bazooka Joe, nothing should surprise me at this point.” It ends with Candyland and Bazooka Joe, meaning those two movies must be the lowest of the low and nothing can get worse than them. I’m expecting to see those two on the IMDB top 100 worst movies list now.

Eh oh, lookata powers of obsavation on dis guy. For my final runner up, I had to go with Deux-Deux-Deux in the FEI FEI THE CHINESE SUNGLASS DOG thread:

Deux-Deux-Deux says: I think Fei-Fei’s just in disguise to avoid being eaten.

“Hey, mistal! You see dericious rooking dog lun through heele?”

“Ree went rataway!”

What can I say, there was just something about the way he combined crude racial stereotypes with The Jetsons that did it for me.  Congrats, winners.  EMAIL ME YOUR ADDRESSES TO COLLECT YOUR PRIZE.

And now, the HONORABLE MENTIONS (some of these might be funnier than the winners – choosing comments of the week is a real Sophie’s Choice.  I think.  I never saw that movie.):

From ANDY GRIFFITH LEARNS TO MACK ON OLD BITCHES:

Michelle07 says: I thought he was only down with Opie.

From JUDD APATOW ON INSIDE THE ACTOR’S STUDIO/KNOCKED UP WAS SEMI-AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL:

Påüłÿ Ðąηgęrσűşľγ says: I think James Lipton should have asked the question that was on everybody’s mind: Did he f*ck his bong?

AND

Påüłÿ Ðąηgęrσűşľγ says:

Pauly’s Girlfriend: I’m pregnant.

Pauly: Well, let’s go see the gynecologist. Just to be sure…

[in Pauly's car]

Pauly’s Girlfriend: Why are we going to Mexico?

Pauly: [whispers] Shhhhhhhhhut the f*ck up….

From RYAN GOSLING HELPS A FRIEND, GIVES $5 TO A HOMELESS:

MarkitZero says: “Hey girl, do you wanna 76 later? That’s where only our backs touch so we don’t succumb to temptation.”

From MORMONS FEAR HOLLYWOOD THE MOST:

Påüłÿ Ðąηgęrσűşľγ says: You would hate Hollywood too if you had 3 wives asking you what’s happening in the movie you’re watching every 10 minutes.

From FIRECROTCH REPLACED BY FIRECROTCH AS TWILIGHT VILLAIN:

ChinoMoreno says: So it’s not garlic that Bella has to watch out for but ginger?

Food humor.  Adorable.  From the PUNK YOUR DINOSAUR music video thread:

Chino Moreno says: Know what killed Dinosaur rap? The Vanilla Ice Age.

From the RACHEL LEFEVRE RESPONDS thread – I wish I’d thought of this caption:

Dick Trickle says: Can you do me a Lefevre and take off your bra?

And finally, this one needs no context so I’m not going to give any:

Donkey Hodey says: Pumpkins make awesome sex toys. You can have your fleshlight, I’ll take my Jack-O-Lantern. It feels so gourd.

Thanks to everyone who brought the funny this week, and that includes a lot of people who didn’t make the list.

Acclaimed director Park Chan-wook (Oldboy; I’m a Cyborg, But That’s OK) returns with his highly anticipated vampire film Thirst, an official selection at the 62nd Cannes Film Festival. Everyone’s favorite actor Song Kang Ho plays a respected priest who turns into a vampire after a medical experiment gone wrong. His newfound thirst for blood and deadly attraction for his best friend’s wife, played by Kim Ok-bin (Dasepo Naughty Girls), drives him down a road of lust and depravity.

You can watch the red-band trailer for Thirst here or here.  I haven’t seen it yet, but I’ve heard good things and I’m a big fan of Old Boy.  Plus, Korean vampire movies are way better, because instead of abstinence lessons they have a priest who bangs Asian chicks.  Anyway, this week’s Comments of the Week winner will receive a poster autographed by the director (which lends instant class to your mobile home and/or rape trailer) as well as the official movie soundtrack.  Three additional runners up will receive the soundtrack, on state-of-the-art compact disc!

So there you have it, trolls and n00bs.  Hope you’ve been bringing your A-game.

This is the red-band trailer for Thirst, from Old Boy director Park Chan-Wook, or Chan-Wook Park or however the right way to say it is.  It’s about some sort of priest who becomes a vampire, and follows in the footsteps of a long line of recent vampire flicks. Only instead of abstinence, blasphemy.  And instead of meaningful glances, implied cunnilingus.  Man, have you ever noticed that Asians are like, better at stuff?

Old Boy director Chan-Wook Park has a movie about a vampire priest coming out in May called Thirst.  You can watch the trailer below. I can’t understand it because it’s all in Korean, but I think it’s safe to say Park’s vampires won’t be abstinent pussies like Twilight‘s been trying to sell us.  Oh hi, Bella. I already owe my soul to Satan, so it makes complete sense that I’d never kill people or have sex or use any of my awesome superpowers.  The only thing that would make this better is if at the end Wesley Snipes burst in and killed everyone with a samurai sword. 

[via CHUD]

Pedro Almodovar’s Broken Embraces, (opens in Spain on March 18 so seems a fair bet)
Steven Soderbergh’s The Informant and The Girlfriend Experience (a friend tells me the latter film will probably hit at Tribeca first)
Lars von Trier’s Antichrist
Cristian Mungiu’s Tales From the Golden Age
The Coen Brothers’ A Serious Man
Gaspar Noe’s Enter the Void
Ang Lee’s Taking Woodstock
The new Michael Moore documentary (possibly titled, “Bailout”)
Fatih Akin’s Soul Kitchen (“The Edge Of Heaven” was in our Top 20 of 2008, he’s amazing)
Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon
Ron Howard’s Angels and Demons
Jane Campion’s Bright Star
Todd Solondz’s [Editor’s note: director of Happiness, Philip Seymour Hoffman’s most underrated performance.] Forgiveness (btw, we were right about the title)
Jim Jarmusch’s The Limits of Control (opens in the U.S. in late May, so seems perfect for the early-mid May Cannes festival)
Ken Loach’s Looking For Eric
Neil Jordan’s Ondine
Terry Gilliam’s The Imaginarium Of Dr Parnassus [Ledger's last role]
Park Chan-wook’s vampire drama Thirst
and of course Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourius Basterds if he can finish on time. [via ThePlaylist & HollywoodElsewhere]

So Steven Soderbergh did two Che movies last year and he’s already finishing two more by May?  Does that guy ever sleep?  I think maybe he’s been dipping into Tarantino’s coke stash. In any case, I wish I wasn’t too poor to go to France, both because of the movies and because it’s been rumored that there’s a place there where the ladies wear no pants.  I think I read that somewhere.

Filmschoolrejects recently caught up with Will Smith while he was out promoting Seven Pounds, and Smith wanted to clarify that his Oldboy remake with Steven Spielberg is not a direct remake of Chan Wook-Park’s film, as was reported this week.

“We’re looking at that right now. Not the film though, it’s the original source material. There’s the original comics of ‘Oldboy’ that they made the first film from. And that’s what we’re working from, not an adaptation of the film…,”

So not only is this an ill-advised remake, it’s yet another comic-book movie.  Thanks, now I feel much better.  And with Will Smith in the lead, I’m sure it’ll be edgy as hell.  Let’s face it, the guy can’t walk five feet without doing something controvertial, like screamin “Kill whitey!” or “Dogs f-ck the pope!” or “Gayness should be taught in Kindergarten!”    He’s pretty much the black Lenny Bruce.

If you haven’t seen Chan Wook-Park’s Old Boy, you need to rent it right away because it’s pretty legit.  Unless you can’t read subtitles, in which case it’d probably just be depressing.  Anyway, as you may have guessed from the headline, Spielberg is trying to get the rights and wants to do a remake for Universal starring Will Smith.

In the 2003 Korean original, a man gets kidnapped and held in a shabby cell for 15 years without explanation. Suddenly, he’s released and given money, a cell phone and clothes and is set on a path to discover who destroyed his life so he can take revenge. [Variety]

Spielberg isn’t nearly as shitty a filmmaker as George Lucas, and I’m even willing to concede he’s made some pretty good movies (Jurassic Park, Minority Report, Saving Private Ryan…), but one thing the dude most certainly does not have a talent for is dark and edgy.  And if he remakes Old Boy, with Will “I only play good guys” Smith of all people, it’s going to be the most dickless watered-down hero story ever.  If you want to know what Spielberg does with edgy material, just watch the last 30 minutes of AI.  It’s a good thing that kid from Virginia Tech already killed a bunch of people, because this probably would’ve put him over the edge.  Okay, so on second thought, I guess that’s probably not a good thing, but I think we all know what I meant.  Shut up, you were thinking it too.