Oh, gawd...another CARRIE trailer — Page 3

I like the trailer, but it looks like they are Arima-fying the piece. Margaret will be crazy, but earnest shown dropping Carrie off at school. Carrie will be pretty but misunderstood. Out come the cellphones to post Carrie on facebook. It will try to make commentary on bullying and use effects not available in the 70s to truly make the prom a bloodbath. That's irritating.

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I don't believe I saw a single obit that didn't mention that he and Siskel were criticized by the cinema establishment of dumbing down the craft of film criticism by bringing it all the way back to the Romans and the lions. I'm not saying he wasn't a serious critic and he certainly grew to be deeply respected and beloved.

I'm just trying to give some historical context so that people might realize that a good review for Carrie from Ebert then did not have the cultural impact of the Times pan.

That is all.

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Updated On: 4/6/13 at 12:19 PM

Sympathizing and humanizing Margaret is a huge mistake.

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*shrugs*

I dunno... I'm still gonna watch it!

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There is a huge difference between being a villain or depicting someone as totally bonkers, and being one-note. Laurie found so many shades of crazy to play in her character, I mean, Jack Nicholson gave one of his great performances in THE SHINING where he was completely crazy, same with Glenn Close in FATAL ATTRACTION. These are villains and pretty nuts ones, but at no point would I describe their performances as one-note. They are wonderful performances that take huge risks by not attempting to appeal to the audience's sympathy in an obvious way.
The problem with this preview (I have no clue what the movie will be like so maybe it's just a marketing thing) is that they are trying to make Margaret a misunderstood mom who deep inside just loves her daughter like the good woman she is. That is possibly the most boring and safe interpretation of the role I've ever heard. It's simply not Margaret, read the novel, read King's comments about the character. Marin Mazzie's "And Eve Was Weak," for example, manages to get us to understand Margaret's actions without humanizing her in the most simplistic of ways.

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I just saw the original trailer for the DePalma version and it gives away just as much of the story as the latest remake and the new trailer uses many of the same lines as in the first.

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They've given the remake's writing credit to the guy they hired behind Julie Taymor's back to rewrite the Spider-Man book even though the same lines are in the previews from the first movie. They got the director of Boy's Don't Cry. It was supposed to come out last month. It's coming out in the middle of October. I wonder if there really is any confidence in this remake, I mean, since it's appears to be purely a business proposition anyway.

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(to not be too catty--I should say he also has written a few really great comic arcs, especially with Spider-Man--ironically)

It looks good. From what I remember about the original it was a BIG, BIG HIT. Everyone I knew went to see that film and it was always being talked about. Same thing with JAWS, SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER, STAR WARS and GREASE. The last three were not only BIG HITS but PHENOMENONS.

Updated On: 4/7/13 at 07:59 AM

I remember girls talking about not wanting to take showers after PE because of it.

Poor things stunk up the afternoon classes for months...

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"Could not agree more, i don't know why so many people on here want to see her as a one dimensional villian."

I'm sorry, but I absolutely abhor how the revival tried to humanize Margaret. I'm not asking for Margaret to be a one-dimensional villian; in fact she's a very multi-dimensional character. But I think it is hard to justify - and even more so humanize her - based on her abusive and destructive nature towards Carrie. Margaret is a sick woman. Plain and simple. She does not answer to anyone but God, and she believes all of her motives in punishing Carrie (which includes killing her) are of his will. I don't think Stephen King intended for Margaret to even love Carrie in the first place, judging upon that final monologue in the book:

"I should’ve killed myself when he put it in me. I saw the way he was looking at me, in that sexual drunken daze. I could smell the whiskey on his breath, and I let him to it to me. After the first time, he said not until marriage. Never again. But then he…slipped. And I believed him. I felt the sin be expiated. By blood. But sin…sin never dies. The Lord works in mysterious ways, his wonders to perform. When the pain began, I went and got a knife. This very knife. And I waited for you to come so I could make my sacrifice. But I was weak. I was weak and backsliding, and I took this knife again when you were three…and blackslid again. But now the devil has come home. And we'll pray. For the last time, we'll pray."

That monologue to me proves that she clearly views Carrie as the manifestation of her sins. However, she does view Carrie as her responsibility, and that she must punish Carrie for her wrong-doings (locking her into a closet, literally beating her with the bible). If one were to make the argument that Margaret does love Carrie (which I don't think she does, as according to the original text) then clearly the love she has for her is very spiteful and distorted, and therefore should not be humanized.

Think of it this way - if the ending to Carrie were different, and Carrie and Tommy didn't win prom king and queen, there was no pig's blood, and Carrie came home a HAPPY girl - Margaret's plan was still to kill her (which arguably could be an even more tragic story). She decided to kill Carrie the moment she defied her and went to prom.

King's Margaret was deranged, abusive and hostile. If you strip that away from the character, the stakes simply aren't raised if Carrie's home life is not worse than her life at school.