Comparing: The Little Shop Of Horrors; Original and Remake.

In this months' Directors Chair over at the LAMB is Frank Oz, who is mostly known for his voice work as Miss Piggy, Yoda and many others. His career as a director wasn't particularly extensive (14 films) and is primarily made up of Comedies (Dirty Rotten Scoundrel's, Bowfinger etc), and as that particular genre is not one of my favourites, especially when it comes to Hollywood Comedies, I am completely unfamiliar with his work a a director.
I thought this event would be a good chance to see at least one of his films and I decided upon his remake of The Little Shop Of Horrors, mainly because I thought it would be interesting to watch the original (by Roger Corman) and his remake back to back and then compare them. So that is what I'll be contributing to this month's directors chair.

Dobermann - 1997

Well, it appears my plans to watch lengthy arthouse/international films didn't exactly work this week. Instead I started of the week with a film that involves a man literally wiping his arse with a copy of Les Cahiers Du Cinema, it's pretty hard to get less arthouse than that.

This has just become one of my favourite posters ever!

This is a fine example of the Cinema Du Look style of film making, a French movement that was born in the late 80's, early 90's with the films of such directors as Luc Besson, although one of the earlier examples of the genre would be Diva - 1980.

This new style of film making abandoned the traditions established in the late 50's by an elite group of directors, many of whom had written for Les Cahiers.

Many people seem to have preconceptions about French Cinema, or European Cinema in general. Thinking it's made up of black and white drama about repressed middle aged women or something along those lines.
But this new style of filmmaking draws most of it's inspiration from American Action Cinema, it is stylish, violent, vulgar and full of one-liners.

Weekly Collection of Random Film Thoughts

•  I'm rather lacking in inspiration this week, so see the links below for cool stuff to read.

• Although I will say one thing, in a couple of weeks, probably the one after this one, I'm thinking of starting a marathon, nothing very impressive though, it will deal with Silent films, mainly because I've got loads of them sitting around unwatched on my Pc and I just never get around to them, so I thought I would need the motivation. I'll probably watch one a day and post a short review.  No need for suggestions as I've already planned most of it out.

Quick Ratings/Reviews of The Week

 12 films seen this week, only one of them was a rewatch. Not bad viewing, if I may say so myself...


 Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas - 1998 directed by Terry Gilliam
8/10
This is one of the few Terry Gilliam films I had not seen previously, I don't know why I had never got around to it exactly, maybe because of the mixed reviews or because of the fact that I don't consider Johnny Depp to be a very good actor.
But I was very pleasantly surprised, this was such a fun film, wildly entertaining and very different from what I was expecting. I realise now that I should have had faith in Gilliam, who is one of my favourites, and watched this earlier, as it's a great film.
I might even read the book now..