International Trailer – Amazing Tales: Three Guns
Twitch has the first trailer I’ve seen of Amazing Tales: Three Guns, Zhang Yimou’s adaptation of Joel and Ethan Coen’s Blood Simple.
The dialogue isn’t subtitled (some of the credits are given an English voice over), but you can get a pretty good idea of the style and tone of the film. Think blackly comic and a little bit zany.
As surprised and skeptical as I was to hear about this project originally, the trailer brings home a certain connection between Barry Sonnenfield’s kinetic cinematography in the original film and some of the crazier stuff that has come out of Hong Kong cinema. Or maybe I’m just trying to hard to find a link.
Either way, as a huge fan of Zhang’s Raise the Red Lantern (less so of Hero or House of Flying Daggers), this one captures my interest.
Have a look at the trailer after the jump. It’s difficult to pick out moments recognizable from the original film, but there might have been one or two shots from an iconic scene where bullets are replaced by swords.
Sony Pictures Classics has picked the film up for US release, but no date has been set.
Filed under: Trailers
Tags: Amazing Tales: Three Guns, Blood Simple, Ethan Coen, Joel Coen, The Coen Brothers, Zhang Yimou
On one hand, I must applaud this because it appears to be a wonderfully original adaptation of the source material and I love when a filmmaker takes the idea of another works and makes it his own. On the other hand, this isn’t exactly what I expected and I must admit, the trailer leaves me cold. Very cold.
Still, I have to see this, right? How could I not?
The opening of the trailer did nothing for me at all, but a little bit of menace seeped in near the end and I warmed up to it.
Either way, I think it’s clear from the trailer that people need to stop referring it to a remake of Blood Simple. It’s not an adaptation either exactly since it’s the same medium…unless you want to say it’s adapted to a new time period and culture…but the connection is obviously loose and plot related.
That’s how I was thinking of it, adapting the themes and characters (or whatever he took) to a new culture and time-period. But I see your point.
No matter how you slice it, “remake” just doesn’t feel like the right word.