New York Giants

Monsters love New York City. Love to destroy it. (Tom Whalen for Gallery 1988's Crazy for Cult 4)

Previously on Popped Culture....

Evil Comes In All Shapes And Sizes
Mornin' Sam, Mornin' Ralph
The Diabolical Diagram Of Movie Monsters

King Kong Meets Iron Giant

King Kong/Iron Giant by Andy Hunter for Draw2D2, a new pop culture icon mashup site. Thanks for the tip, Andy.

King Kong/Iron Giant by Adam Carlson

Previously on Popped Culture...

King Kong Is Ape Amongst Apes

Curious George Takes Manhattan

Evil Comes In All Shapes And Sizes

King Kong Is Ape Amongst Apes

Finally the King felt like a king. Poor beast was just lonely. And the flying monkeys look pretty happy too. (Ape Amongst Apes via Scott Campbell, featured in the Amicvs Monstrvm exhibit at Gallery1988.)

Previously on Popped Culture...
Take Your Stinking Maps Off Me, You Damned Dirty Ape!
Curious George Takes Manhattan
Great Movie Showdowns 

Curious George Takes Manhattan

George promised to be good, but it is easy for little monkeys to forget. Then George, who was now a very big monkey and still very curious, climbed to the top of the Empire State Building and peeled The Man with the Yellow Hat like a banana. Get Irate Primate from Threadless designer David Schwen.

Previously on Popped Culture...
Evil Comes In All Shapes And Sizes
Shel Silverstein's American History X
Goodnight Keith Moon

Evil Comes In All Shapes And Sizes

Evil movie monsters, from smallest to tallest: Chucky, Wicked Witch of the West, Tyrannosaurus Rex, King Kong, Rancor, Maegatron, 50 Foot Woman, Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, Tripod, Gozilla, and Cloverfild monster. From graphic designer Sean Mort.

Sure puts King Kong in perspective. What a shorty. (Link via BuzzFeed)

Previously on Popped Culture...
Ghostbusters Catch Gozer... Um, Jesus
Crime Lords of Oz
Paraskavedekatriaphobia Butchery

Seeing Double

With the release of Poseidon we return to one of Hollywood’s worst habits – remaking films that don’t need to be remade. Poseidon is only 34 years old and stars Gene Hackman. You can still watch Hackman in current films and rent the original, why remake it? Hollywood eats their old, I suppose that’s the case with movies as well.

So in honour of Poseidon I’ve put together the worst and the best movie remakes (to be fair, some are good). I actually did this for work so this allows me to be a lazy blogger and repurpose something I’ve already written. Check out Dose if you want to see the full picture version.

Worst Movie Remakes:
1. Director Gus Van Sant recreated Alfred Hitchcock's masterpiece Psycho shot for shot, but with Anne Heche and in colour. What, exactly, was the point?

2. Take a fantastic French film like La Femme Nikita, lighten the tone and put in a U.S. actor and you get Point of No Return, a pale shadow of the original. Can't people read subtitles?

3. Auteur Tim Burton's version of Planet of the Apes proves why indie directors shouldn't be given massive budgets -- there is nothing to reign them in, resulting in a bloated letdown.

4. Remember when you said how funny Nicole Kidman was? Oh right, nobody has ever said that. Too bad the producers of The Stepford Wives didn't realize that.

5. Adam Sandler, not satisfied with making horrible, but original, movies decided to mess with The Longest Yard. Hits to the groin ensue. Ha, ha.

Best Movie Remakes:
1. George Clooney, Brad Pitt and crew took a huge risk making themselves out as a modern day Rat Pack in Ocean's 11 but they manage it with wit and style. Too bad about Ocean's 12.

2. Though everyone should make an effort to see Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai, the Western version, The Magnificent Seven, is itself a classic. Plus it has Yul Brynner!

3. "Say hello to my little friend!" Al Pacino's bloody Scarface was so succesful at creating a new movie icon, few even realize it based on a 1932 film. What all remakes should aspire to.

4. Director David Cronenberg takes the campy Vincent Price verion of The Fly and adds terror and gore (and Jeff Glodblum), creating a remake that stands above the original.

5. Taking on King Kong for the third time, director Peter Jackson applied modern special effects and proved there was still life in the giant ape. Technology, it's a good thing.

Is Bomb Spelt K-O-N-G?

Only in Hollywood would making $146 million over five days be seen as a failure. But that's exactly what the makers of King Kong are facing after their debut this weekend.

I try not to get sucked into the false economies of major moviemaking and it's spread into entertainment journalism, but when I see headlines like "Hollywood moguls beat their chests as Kong takes a dive," I just can't help myself.

The budget for the film was kingly on its own - a whopping $207 million -- but it has already recouped close to three quarters of that worldwide after its first weekend. Now box office often, almost inevitably, drops the following weekend as new films open and the massive multiplexes have satiated the publics pent up desire to see the film.

But Kong's three hour running time, which has been cited as one of the reasons for the "low" numbers, is a reason that the movie could keep growing, as those who couldn't make one of the showings last week head to the theatres on the good word of mouth. And who decided that three hours is too long for a movie anyway? Seems more of an economic decision than an artistic one. I think there should be more, while a few should probably have a half hour or more edited out of it. Either way, it should be based on the content, not how many screenings can be squeezed into an evening.

As a film fan, that all I really care about. Is the flick any good? I'll leave the rest to the economists and the statistic obsessed.