WORLD TOUR Day 14 - Baton Rouge + New Orleans, Louisiana
BEFORE: I watched the original film back in May (Movie #1,122) so the plot's still somewhat fresh in my mind. But it's here representing Louisiana, and it was filmed on location in Baton Rouge and New Orleans. So here begins a 3-day tour of the American South.
Linking from "Meet Me in St. Louis", Judy Garland was also in "A Child Is Waiting" with Burt Lancaster, who was also in "Rocket Gibraltar" with Patricia Clarkson (last seen in "Easy A"). I had to dig to find that one - I am definitely not making it easy for myself.
THE PLOT: The life of populist Southerner Willie Stark, a political creature loosely based on Governor Huey Long of Louisiana.
AFTER: Since it's the same story as the previous filmed version, the rating's going to come down to style points. The production values are obviously MUCH higher on the remake, but I think that says more about advances in technology, like, I don't know, color film, than it does about the intent. You always make the film you can make with the technology you have at the time.
Casting's probably a wash, if I feel closer to these actors it could just be that I'm more familiar with them. Some people decried the heavy use of British actors in this film to play American southerners, but overall I felt the accents were pretty well done, with one notable exception. In terms of acting, I felt that one lead was emotive and over-the-top, and the other was more subdued and underplayed. So maybe they balanced each other out?
There were twisty revelations about who was sleeping with who, and who was related to each other, and who held a grudge against the other, but the problem was that I'd seen them before, so they weren't all that shocking. I'd say if you're planning to watch this film and want to be surprised, try to avoid watching the earlier version. Story-wise, this one didn't bring anything new to the table, but why would it, if it's based on the same source material?
The remake had a slight leg up on the original, in my opinion, for just one reason - the reaction that Jack Burden had to finding out about the governor's affairs. In the original, his non-reaction made him seem very cold, and at least he had something akin to a real emotion here.
Also starring Sean Penn (last seen in "Casualties of War"), Jude Law (last seen in "The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus"), Anthony Hopkins (last seen in "The Mask of Zorro"), James Gandolfini (last heard in "Where the Wild Things Are"), Jackie Earle Haley (last seen in "Semi-Pro"), Kate Winslet (last seen in "Finding Neverland"), Mark Ruffalo (last seen in "Windtalkers"), with a cameo from Kevin Dunn (last seen in "Almost Heroes").
DISTANCE TRAVELED TODAY: 567 miles / 913 km (St. Louis, MO to Baton Rouge, LA)
DISTANCE TRAVELED SO FAR: 3,017 miles / 4,864 km
RATING: 6 out of 10 bottles of orange soda
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