Saturday Playlist #22: Lalo Schifrin

I realise it's nearly a month since the last Saturday Playlist, but since there have been no reported deaths caused by lack of Saturday Playlists in the last few weeks I'm assuming it's no biggie. Anyway it's back - BACK, I SAY! - and it's BETTER THAN EVER! Actually it's not, it's exactly the same as it used to be.

So this is Lalo Schifrin:

And let's face it, if you had the theme tune to Bullitt on an eternal loop in your head you'd look that cool too. Unfortunately you're constantly singing the song from the gocompare.com adverts.

This playlist contains all the obvious stuff you already know from Schifrin's work in film and telly like Mission: Impossible, Bullitt and his LITERALLY FACE-CRACKING Enter The Dragon theme, but I've also squeezed in a couple of extra cheeky tracks from the Dirty Harry score (not least because one of them's called Harry's Hot Dog), some other lesser-known stuff and his unbelievable jazz cover of John Barry's theme for the 1976 King Kong remake.

It's all very '70s, it's got six times the recommended daily allowance of wah-wah and it's the perfect soundtrack for that cocktail party you're throwing tonight. If you're not throwing a cocktail party tonight, WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU?

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO

SATURDAY PLAYLIST #22:

LALO SCHIFRIN

Want more playlists? I got more playlists.

The Law Of Inverse Proportionality

Conclusion: 104 minutes is the perfect length for a film.

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Daniel Craig Needs Tighter Speedos

You can’t open the virtual pages of the interwebs these days without reading about another evil soldier of Beelzebub planning to remake a perfectly good film that needs remaking about as much as Daniel Craig needs tighter Speedos.

It used to make me quite cross but now when I read these stories I just sigh and throw a half-hearted punch at the nearest person to alleviate my mounting apathy. The irony of remaking movies is that they rouse the ire of bloglodytes and forum-dwellers the world over, forcing them to spew out their own remakes of posts they’ve written several times already, except with more exclamation marks and ‘O’s than in the original “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!”

This week alone my sensibilities have been offended by forthcoming remakes / reboots / re-imaginings / re-configurations / revisits / rehashes / retardations of classic ‘80s horror-comedy (I’m trying to coin the term ‘horredy’ but nobody’s having any of it) An American Werewolf In London, and Swedish kiddy-vampire flick Let The Right One In. Which, I hasten to add, was released about ten minutes ago.

Now I might be going out on a controversial limb here, but it seems a trifle hasty to be remaking a film that hasn’t even finished its cinema run yet, wouldn’t you say? It’s really only a matter of time before these remakes start turning up before their original counterparts. They could be called ‘retro-makes’, and people could get all their anger and bile out of the way before they’re then ‘originalised’, and everybody will be happy that the retro-director’s vision has been unsullied and the spirit of the first film yanked harshly out of a stinky cesspit to be polished off as a shiny, new, original work of art.

So just to be obstreperous (one of many things my old history teacher used to call me), and with everyone crying vinegar from their blub-holes about how there are no good remakes, The Incredible Suit takes Hollywood’s side and pulls from its incredible sleeves the Top 5 Greatest Re-Whatevers, Like, Ever:

1. Moulin Rouge! (1952 < 2001)
2. Casino Royale (1967 < 2006)
3. Batman Begins (1997 < 2005)
4. Star Trek (2002 < 2009)
5. King Kong (1933 > 2005)

Actually King Kong doesn’t count because it’s not as good as the original. Which, in effect, means there are only four decent re-somethings in the entire movieverse. The bloglodytes and forum-dwellers were right all along! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!