Pusher vs. Pushed out

Last week I got an overwhelming urge to re-watch one of my favorite movies, the Danish crime drama Pusher (1996). It's a subtle but grim story about Frank, a drug dealer who's life goes down the drain in just one week.

I, however, also noticed that there is a British remake from 2012, and I know, remakes are usually terrible, but I gave it a go anyway.

This is my comparison between the two.

The story is about 90% the same. The UK version changes locations and minor side characters, which is mostly fine. After all, there are sixteen years between the films, and many things have changed.

What's not fine are the changes made to major characters.

Danish Frank is played by Kim Bodnia, and he does an amazing job. His frustrations, anger and fear are palpable throughout the movie. He sells most scenes and can relay more with a look than a whole page of crappy dialogue.

British Frank Is played by Richard Coyle. He's not a bad actor, but he seems to sleepwalk throughout the movie. He comes across as either absent-minded or uncaring in most scenes, and that just doesn't work when dangerous gangsters are the threatening your life.

Frank has a good friend and co-dealer called Tonny/Tony.

Danish Tonny (Mads Mikkelsen) is great. Boorish, crude and weak. Not a good person in the slightest. But we are talking about drug dealers, not Red Cross volunteers. You aren't meant to like him. Mikkelsen has since become an international star, and with good reason.

UK Tony, (Bronson Webb) is not a bad actor, but Good God is his character annoying. There is no earthly reason why Frank would have him around. He's a giggling idiot, a weirdo loser. Enough said. Very bad characterization.

Frank's Girlfriend is Vic/Flo.

Danish Vic (Laura Drasbæk) is an exotic dancer, escort, and prostitute-in-denial with a heroin habit. With her, you see the beauty that's being rapidly chipped away by drugs and stress. She's pretty, but only because she's young, and you just know that in a couple of more years, she'll be a complete wreck. Or dead.

British Flo (Agyness Deyn) is also pretty. Much too pretty. In fact, Ms. Deyn used to be a professional model and it shows. She is bubbling with life and energy. You don't get the feeling that she needs to strip. She could walk into any agency and get a modeling job that pays ten times what the club pays her. Also her drug use feels fake. Finally, why is her name changed? Vic is short for Victoria, and that shouldn't be a problem in the UK.

Our final Important Character is Milo, the drug kingpin. He is played by Zlatko Buric in both films. Yes, it's the same guy, which I thought is pretty cool. But there is a problem. In the original, he is sleazy, hungry and dangerous. In the remake he is sadly pretty much a parody of himself.

Now let's take a look at the movies themselves. The original is directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. The remake is directed by Luis Prieto. Now to be fair, Refn saw and approved the remake before it was done, as well as doing a voice only cameo. One could say that if the original creator is okay with it, no one else can complain, but I'm complaining anyway.

Where the original takes time to establish the characters, the remake is all over the place. In fact, to cut this part short, let me just say that the original is well made with good techniques and attention to detail. The remake looks like a hefty dose of MTV slathered over a Guy Ritchie parody.

Even worse, the remake takes no time to demonstrate the humanity of the characters. One of the best scenes in the original is between Frank and Milo's main henchman Radovan (Hakan in the remake). Radovan expresses his disgust with the dirty violent work he does and explains how he would really rather own a restaurant. The scene is shot in a car, on the go, and feels so intensely alive.

The remake? A bar that looks like a green screen and a short monologue. Dull, lifeless and boring.

Finally I want to talk about the dialogue. The version of the original I re-watched had English subtitles. The dialogue in the remake was almost word for word the same as the subtitles. I could predict most of the dialogue perfectly.

Bottom line. If you remake a film, you either redo it from the bottom up, keeping only the core of the story, or then you make as faithful an adaptation as possible. Don't try to do both at the same time. Scenes make no sense if you keep one, but leave out another that sets the first one up. It's a mess.

I could go on, but I think you get the point.

I highly recommend the original 1996 version. It still holds up wonderfully, and with English subs, it's a far better movie than the UK version, no matter who you are.

Whew, that's all for today, until next time, stay away from scary gangsters and have a great week!

The Hateful Eight

Yesterday, I finally watched The Hateful Eight, the eight film by Quentin Tarantino. In case you're confused, it's the eight because he counts the Kill Bill movies as one.

Anyway, seeing as I've watched all the others, I had to see this one as well. And since it's Monday, I might as well talk about it.

Is it good? Yes and no.

The thing about Tarantino is that he makes the movie he wants to make, and then leaves the rest up to you. He's not really one for making statements about issues, nor does he worry too much about opinions and messages. This is not a bad thing, everything doesn't have to be deep and meaningful, but it does make you wonder what you just watched for three hours.

Yes, that's right, hateful eight is three (3) hours long, and to be honest, that is one hour too much. The movie could have been just as enjoyable at the two hour mark without loosing anything valuable. But that's the interesting thing about it, there isn't really anything that's pointless due to the fact that the movie is all about atmosphere and suspense. I suppose it could almost have been better as a mini-series than a movie.

Tarantino takes his time building things up. A less dedicated director would just have pointed out that there is a blizzard, but Tarantino spends almost an hour driving home how bad it is for the characters that there is a blizzard.

Oh, I forgot to tell you what it's all about, didn't I? Well, it's western set a few years after the civil war. A bounty hunter is on his way to deliver a prisoner, when he meets another bounty hunter and a newly minted sheriff (unless he's lying), and they have to seek shelter from the blizzard. But there are other people at the roadside inn/store where they take shelter, and then Tarantino things happen. With me? Good.

The dialog is excellent as always, as is the action. Most of the Tarantino trademarks are there, including the Red Apple cigarettes, but the best part of the movie is the tension, without a doubt. You could cut it with a knife, and that's the real genius of The Hateful Eight. Despite the three hour length, Tarantino manages to keep up the tension, which is no small feat. The cast helps of course, with names like Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russel, Tim Roth and Jennifer Jason Leigh.

I enjoyed the movie, no doubt about that, but when it was all said and done, I still think it's too long. What I find fascinating are the inspirations for this film. Tarantino likes his homages, we all know that, but The Hateful Eight is inspired by The Thing by John Carpenter, and Reservoir Dogs by Tarantino. He was either inspired by, or made a homage to, his own movie. Maybe both.

The bottom line is this: if you like what Quentin Tarantino does, you will like this movie. If you're sick of his stick, avoid seeing it.

That all for today, so until next time, have a great week! (And avoid bounty hunters, trust me).

Wow, really?

It's Monday yet again and here we are. Time for some Eccentric Spheres, this time concerning some interesting trivia facts.

We'll start off with something nice. In Rome you can find the famous Fontana di Trevi, or Trevi Fountain, if you prefer. Like many fountains around the world, it's popular to throw coins in the water, but it's special with the Trevi. For starters, you should throw three coins, not just one. Now, I have no idea if it'll grant you luck if you do, but I do know needy people get food. You see, about a million euros are thrown in the fountain yearly, and the money is used to fund a supermarket for people in need. So keep tossing those coins.

Next up is the New Zealand town of Brightwater. Back in 1911, they had five electric street lights that were powered with hydroelectricity and controlled by chicken. No that's not a typo. Some Clever Person had rigged it so that when the sun went down and the birds went into their coop to sleep, their weight triggered a pressure switch and that turned on their lights.

How many times do you try again before you give up? Two times? Five? Well, the city of Dallas, Texas has tried one man 82 times in court and lost every time. The man, Robert Groden sells books and magazines about the JFK assassination and the city has tried and tried again to get him to stop. With attempts from tickets to fines to jail time, Dallas keeps loosing. One would think they'd just call it quits, but I guess quitters never die. Read the whole story here:

http://www.dallasobserver.com/news/dallas-has-now-lost-82-cases-against-robert-groden-someone-call-guinness-8680799

Did you know that in 1913, Hitler, Freud, Tito, Stalin, and Trotsky all lived within 2.5 square kilometers of each other in Vienna, Austria? Happening place...

Finally we're going to talk about ants. Ants are a constant source of fascination for scientists, and one aspect is their skill at finding their way back home again. A theory was proposed that they counted their steps and this was confirmed when some scientists managed to attach stilts to some ants and set them loose. The stilted ants overshot their nests by about 50%, since they took longer steps, something their brains couldn't process. Imagine attaching teeny tiny stilts to ants? I hate sowing buttons because it's so fiddly, but ant-stilts? Forget it.

That's today's serving, so until next time, have a great week, and stay away from ants, OK?

Alternative History

“What if?” is one of my favorite sentences, particularly when it comes to history.

That's why today's entry is all about the Alternate History channel on Youtube. What this channel does so well is take a monumental subject and analyze what we know and what could have gone differently.

Of course it is completely impossible to say for certain what would have happened in any situation with any degree of certainty, but one can speculate based on what is known and get a pretty good hypothesis.

The first video I watched was What if Stalin never came to power? The great thing about this video is that my, and probably your, gut reaction is “Well that would have been great.” But would it? No, not really. I'm not going in to details, watch the video, but I'll just say Trotsky was not a nice person either...

The second I watched was What if Napoleon never came to power? This was really fascinating. Old Bony-parts had a tremendous effect on the modern world. Huge in fact. As the video points out, without Napoleon you wouldn't be able to recognize the world as you know it. I can't recommend this enough.

The third video I enjoyed was What if the Black Plague never happened? Again one would think that it would be a good thing, but history doesn't work like that. There would have been horrendous famines and a complete stagnation in Europe. Not too awesome is it?

Anyway, I have a lot on my plate today, so I'll cut it short. Whether you're a history buff, a fan of speculative theory or just looking for some neat facts illustrated with animations, go watch the AlternativeHistoryHub. It really is worth it.

Until next time, have relaxing week! 

Backup links: 

Stalin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTHnTh6bNwc 

Napoleon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3M7DVkGNf4

Black Plague: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1aULu6BqNs 

It's a new year!

Hello and welcome to the first Eccentric Sphere of 2017!

I think we can all agree that 2016 was pretty damn subpar. So, let's kick off the new year the right way, by looking back on history. You see, in this age of the internet it is very easy to fall pray to pessimism and depression. We are bombarded every day with all the bad news from all around the world, but things aren't really so bad. Actually, things are mostly pretty good. And I'm going to prove it to you.

We are going to take a look at some historical rulers that left a bit to be desired, so if our modern politicians disgust you, you'll be able to say “At least they bathe”.

We'll start with Joanna of Castile (1479-1555). When her husband Philip the Handsome died, she went on treating his decomposing body as if it were alive. She traveled with it, she slept next to it and she refused to allow women to be alone with the corpse, just in case they would be overcome with lust. Very healthy indeed.

King James I (1566-1625), the guy who took over after Elizabeth I died, never bathed. The only part of himself he cleaned was the tips of his fingers. And because his tongue was too big for his mouth, he dribbled and drooled when he drank. Tasty.

Charles VI “The Mad” (1368-1422) has been featured here before, but because he thought he was made of glass. This time he's here due to the fact that he refused to change his clothes for five years, and to finish off the royal dirt-bags, Louis XIV (1638-1715) was really nasty. His throne had a built in toilet, which he used at court and he never washed either. He believed that to be clean all you had to do was change your shirt daily. He also doused himself in perfume every day.

But it's not all about the dirty bodies, sometimes it's the dirty minds. Christian VII of Denmark (1749-1808) was a chronic masturbator. Not that there is anything wrong with that as such, but when you do it so much that you forget to run the country, you have a real problem.

Then there is King Farouk of Egypt (1920-1965) who had several warehouses in several different countries stuffed to the rafters with his personal porn collection.

So you see, our modern politicians aren't so bad, it is all a matter of perspective. And speaking of perspective, do you know what the first message transmitted over the internet was? Well, back in 1969 when a group of scientists were testing ARPANET, the prototype of the internet, a student sat down and typed LOGIN. But the computer crashed and the first thing sent was: LOL.

There we are for this week. Tune in again next time for a thrilling new episode of Eccentric Spheres! (thrills not guaranteed). Until then, have a great week!