Doomed from the Start: Pelham/Warriors (1/1/09) - Page 3

You keep Salma out of this.

For anyone interested, John Godey's The Taking Of Pelham 123 novel snuck back into circulation a month or so ago. They've pasted the cover design with imagery from the remake, a predictable move. Unfortunately, it has the effect that even my copy(with the artwork from the '74 film) does of making it look more like a novelization than an orignal work.

You also can't miss it as it's in that unctious new mass market format which gives paperbacks the dimensions of bricks. Stupid and ugly.

The book is easily worth the read if you're a fan of the Sargent movie. Makes for a good look at how adaptations of novels differ across time. What one era sees as vital and unchangeable another may see as simply a jumping off point for interpretation or (for the sometimes worse) extrapolation.

Like The Warriors, the book is a bit more visceral and may actually benefit from your retroactive application of imagery from the subsequent film version. And like Fail Safe or On The Beach, it's contextual strengths are somewhat diluted by time. While the points are still quite resonant, the situations can appear a tad bit quaint by contemporary standards. This, of course, hardly matters as it's still a good thriller thats chugs along at a great pace. If nothing else, it works as a period piece. A urine smelling, yellowing snapshot of an ailing city that more and more young folks in the metro area have never known. And that's a good thing.

Remember when we could get 100 comments on a movie of the month club?

The movie of the month club died like it was DOOMed from the start!

It lost its edge when Tati decided to watch thirty movies a month!

what is movies

This was my best year as a film lover. Don't hold that against me!

Was up late last night and encore ran PELHAM (right after the Travolta remake!) so I let it play in the background. I cannot underline how much I love this movie. Even passively, it just hooks you. It's also a stark contrast with the lifeless generic remake. I get that that's an issue common to almost all remakes in general, but the PELHAM remake (along with the ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 one) stick out as prime examples of how to drain an original idea of all it's life and the very qualities that made it work.

Anyway came across this on YouTube. There are hundreds of 'tribute' videos out there (most pretty awful), but this guy nails PELHAM. It's a good way to enjoy that rambunctious theme if you don't own the score and he includes my absolute favorite exchange between Stiller and Matthau in the film.

"Hey, wait a minute. I think I just figured out how they're gonna get away."
"I'm listening."
"They're gonna fly the train to Cuba."
"You're a sick man, Rico."

Vid's here: The Taking of Pelham 123 vid by Zerokomma