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Play It Again, Sam: Retakes on Remakes

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The nineteen essays collected here (along with introduction and afterword) grapple with various aspects of cinematic "remakes", and while most have something to offer the general reader, many get bogged down in attempting to find a definition or critical space for remakes. In other words, to get to the good stuff, you're going to have to wade through a lot of critical jargon from psychoanalytic film theory and cultural studieswords such as "intertextuality," "oedipal" and "postmodernity" pop up a lot. That caveat aside, there are plenty of nuggets to reward the patient reader.

Albert Kolker's "Recalculating the Hitchcock Formula" is an intriguing analysis of Martin Scorcese's Cape Fear, in which it is proposed that Scorcese remade Cape Fear by simultaneously remaking Hitchcock's Stage Fright, I Confess, and Stranger on a Train. Dan Georgakas's essay on Robin Hood effectively shows how the 1938 and 1991 versions each embodied the cultural and political trends of their time. Michael Brashinsky's considers Bergman's Virgin Spring and Wes Craven's The Last House of the Left in an examination of how a to remake a European "art" film into a low-budget slasher picture. In "The Superhero With A Thousand Faces," Luca Somigli provides a cogent analyses of the relationship of superhero film franchises such as Batman and Superman to their comic-book sources. His elegant conclusion is that such projects are based on the accumulated myth of the characters and setting, rather than being remakes. My favorite essay is Elisabeth Weis's exploration on how the film M*A*S*H was adapted for television and managed to continually reinvent itself while maintaining audience loyalty. Other essays have their moments, but the ones above will be the most accessible and interesting to the general reader.