跑 (去看 'children of heaven') 吧孩子

without having much of an insight into the movie-making business/industry, it usually puzzles me as to why people like to remake movies. is it because original ideas are hard to come by, and so let's just take something that's worked somewhere else, and apply it in a slightly different context? or is there more of a 'paying compliment/homage' spirit at work? is the decision driven by economics and business concerns, or perhaps owes more to the personal whims of the filmmaker?

in any case, i watched homerun (aka 跑吧孩子) tonight. i originally intended to watch a different movie, but couldn't locate the actual disc (and it so bugs me when i know i've misplaced something... but i digress). homerun had been in the house for probably a good year or so, but i had never gotten around to watching it. upon reading the back cover, i was struck by how closely the storyline resembled another movie i had seen in the past... doesn't this sound exactly like children of heaven, i asked myself. upon seeing the opening credits, i realised it is basically is the same story, except homerun had been reworked for a singaporean setting.

maybe because my movie diet does include some foreign (and by that i mean non-western-english-speaking-country) films, and my general preference to see something in its original context (eg i'd rather watch a hk flick in cantonese and read subtitles, than listen to a mandarin audio track or worse still dubbed english, even though i would understand several magnitudes of order more of the mandarin dialogue than the cantonese), mixed in with having seen a few more singaporean movies/shows than i have of anything from iran (it could be the bias speaking, but the acting and dialogue in homerun seemed a bit too stereotypical at times, while the whole of c.o.h. seemed so much more "authentic" [which is a rather ironic thing to say/claim given that i know next to nothing about things iran!])... in the end i still definitely prefer children of heaven over homerun. very simple story, yet manages to be moving and touchingly believable. check it out sometime, and i think people would be better served seeing that than only having watched homerun as a not-quite-worthy substitute, though i wonder whether my conclusion would be any different if i had seen homerun beore children of heaven...