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The Lion in Winter

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PillowRock

Regular
Last night on Showtime (a "premium" cable channel for those outside the US) I saw an ad for a remake of The Lion in Winter starring Patrick Stewart and Glen Close in the Peter O'Toole and Katherine Hepburn roles.

My only question is:
Why?

I mean, Stewart and Close are very fine actors and all of that .... but those characters are designed to be larger than life presences, and for that particular intangible I just don't see these actors measuring up to O'Toole and Hepburn. That's not a knowck on them. There are other roles that Stewart and Close could do as well or better than O'Toole and Hepburn. It's just that when you are talking about this kind of larger-than-life even when just standing quietly role ...... *Extremely* few people in film history have had the sheer presence on screen that O'Toole and Hepburn had.

The odds are good that I'll check it out anyway. I have always really liked the original film. I just don't really expect this remake to stand up to the original.
 
I always liked the original as well, but I don't see recasting it as a big issue. Happens in stageplays all the time. And certainly these two actors are strong enough to be compelling.

Now, my bigger concern is somehow "updating" it in the process so it looks like a SCA tourney run amuck.
 
Odd, I just posted in another forum how much I'm looking forward to this movie. :D :cool:

Patrick Stewart likes a good challenge. I admit, this must have been one. The original is excellent, it won't be easy to measure up to it, I am sure.

But I'll be watching. Heck, when I got broadband internet through my cable, I also signed up for Showtime since they tend to show Patrick Stewart's stuff. :cool:

I so wish he'd film Ibsen's "The Master Builder".
 
Last night on Showtime (a "premium" cable channel for those outside the US) I saw an ad for a remake of The Lion in Winter starring Patrick Stewart and Glen Close in the Peter O'Toole and Katherine Hepburn roles.

My only question is:
Why?
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It may simply be a divorce story. The pop song "Sweet Dreams My L.A. Ex" has been popular recently. (The song is horrible but the dance was great.)

The other alternative is that more of the characters lives may be explored. For instance Henry the Lyon was a Crusader. And so was his wife. They took part in the Second Crusade, which the West actually won. (Their son Richard the Lyon Heart lost.) Fighting Muslims is a very relevant story to today’s world.
 
I have fond memories of the original film and hope that the new one equals it, dispite my dislike of remakes (as I noted in another thread). The original had so many great actors; Peter O'Toole, Hepburn, Anthony Hopkins, Timothy Dalton.

A great quote from the original: "So, the royal cockscrew finds me twisted?"
 
Perhaps I'll look profoundly stupid for asking, but:
What is 'the lion in winter' about?

I never heard of it.
 
Perhaps I'll look profoundly stupid for asking, but:
What is 'the lion in winter' about?

I never heard of it.
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The Lion in Winter is a movie from 1968, based on the play by James Goldman. It is about the 1183 AD Christmas of the royal family at the time; King Henry II, Eleanor of Aquitaine, and Princes Richard, Geoffrey and John.Eleanor and the three princes want Henry to name a successor and all of them want it, hence there is more conniving, back-stabbing and double-crossing than in your average soap opera.

IMDB's page for the movie is here

A very good movie with a first-rate cast.
 
Does anyone know who will be playing Richard? Anthony Hopkins' role?

I admit: this will be tough if not impossible to surpass. I mean, Katherine Hepburn, Peter O'Toole, and Anthony Hopkins?

:eek:

But I'll be in the front row the moment it airs on Showtime in the USA. :D :cool:

Theater (or theatre if you prefer) was meant to be re-done. :cool:
 
I confess: I doubt anyone can top the original. It was done so magnificently. But I agree, this version should be worth watching. :D :cool:
 
Does anyone know who will be playing Richard? Anthony Hopkins' role?
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IMDB says it is someone named Andrew Howard. In fact, except for Stewart and Close, I haven't heard of anyone that is listed in the cast.

The link for it is here.
 
Theater (or theatre if you prefer) was meant to be re-done. :cool:
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Yes, theater definitely is.

However, when it is preserved on film certain casts (combined with their directors, crews, the exact time of the performance, etc.) make the inevitable comparisons prohibitive (to some degree) of new versions. Casablanca is one such movie. Lawrence of Arabia is another (since we are talking about O'Toole). One could make an argument for In the Heat of the Night and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, although those two are so firmly rooted in their time period that they would be very unlikely to be remade even if the casting of them was not so strong.

Admittedly, The Lion In Winter is not quite in that class, but it is close (for me, anyway). I guess that was really the only thing that generated my somewhat quizical and skeptical response.

I didn't have that response to Showtime's remake of Twelve Angry Men several years ago, dispite the immense strength of the original movie cast. I think that was because changing the racial makeup of the jury changes the dynamics and what is being said enough to make it a tangibly different piece, even if you don't change a word of the script.
 
One could make an argument for In the Heat of the Night and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, although those two are so firmly rooted in their time period that they would be very unlikely to be remade even if the casting of them was not so strong.
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In The Heat of the Night was remade as a TV-movie that became a series, starring Carol O'Conner in Rod Stiger's role.
 
Theater (or theatre if you prefer) was meant to be re-done. :cool:
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Yes, theater definitely is.

However, when it is preserved on film certain casts (combined with their directors, crews, the exact time of the performance, etc.) make the inevitable comparisons prohibitive (to some degree) of new versions. Casablanca is one such movie. Lawrence of Arabia is another (since we are talking about O'Toole). One could make an argument for In the Heat of the Night and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, although those two are so firmly rooted in their time period that they would be very unlikely to be remade even if the casting of them was not so strong.

Admittedly, The Lion In Winter is not quite in that class, but it is close (for me, anyway). I guess that was really the only thing that generated my somewhat quizical and skeptical response.

I didn't have that response to Showtime's remake of Twelve Angry Men several years ago, dispite the immense strength of the original movie cast. I think that was because changing the racial makeup of the jury changes the dynamics and what is being said enough to make it a tangibly different piece, even if you don't change a word of the script.
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Therefore it's a different deal. Close I assume is playing the Hepburn role of Eleanor. She's a great actress, but I'm very leary of a remake of such an incredible classic. Hepburn's performance is one of the greatest on screen performances ever captured. I might watch the remake, but it could never match or exceed the original...there is simply no way. Some films in IMHO simply should not be remade...ever. This is one of them.

CE
 
I agree that a remake of this film is not welcome, to me. I love the original as well, and cannot imagine improving upon it. Also, Henry was considerably younger than Eleanor. Hepburn and O'Toole were perfect.

I could peel you like a pear and God himself would call it justice! Eleanor :D
 
In The Heat of the Night was remade as a TV-movie that became a series, starring Carol O'Conner in Rod Stiger's role.
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A TV series based on a movie is not a remake of the movie. The heart of the movie was the reltionship between Tibbs and Gillespie and how that changes over the course of the investigation. You can't possibly contimuously do that over the course of a long running series. From what I can tell from the IMDb, there was not a pilot movie which was a remake of the original. There were 5 TV movies made later, after the series had been around for several years. None of them even lists Tibbs as a lead character (he only even appears in one of them); the lead opposite O'Connor's Gillespie is Carl Weathers as Chief someone-or-other. I had never seen the pilot of that series, but I would have been surprised if it had been a remake of the original movie. In the intervening 20 years the political situation had changed enough that it would have been clear, even in the deep South, that much of what Gillespie says and does early in the movie is not legally acceptable; not to mention that by the late 1980's Gillespie would no longer be surprised than an African American from Philly might be a homocide detective. And I never saw any evidence that the series was set back in the time period of the movie.

Beisdes, even if they had actually remade the movie for a pilot to the series, that wouldn't mean that this was good idea. There was also a made-for-TV remake of Casablanca with David Soul in the Bogart role, IIRC. That was an absolutely horrendous idea from the beginning.
 
Close I assume is playing the Hepburn role of Eleanor. She's a great actress, but I'm very leary of a remake of such an incredible classic. Hepburn's performance is one of the greatest on screen performances ever captured.
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Yes, Close is playing Eleanor. And your reaction is basically the one that prompted me to start this thread. I just have similar feeling about O'Toole's performance as Henry. Stewart is also a great actor, but he doesn't quite exude that larger-than-life star quality that O'Toole (and very few others in the history of film) had. I have this fear that without that "star quality" some of Henry's stuff could come off as a being much more banal and petty, and therefore not really working as well (because, at some level, Henry and Eleanor both need to remain somewhat sympathetic).

Oddly, I can think of a couple other good candidates for Henry ..... back around the time that the original movie was made, but I am having a much harder time coming up with someone to do it now.

Oh, and that "star quality" no matter what he is actually doing is also why O'Toole was so perfect for My Favorite Year.


PS: The candidates for Henry that I mentioned above would be Burton and Harris.
 
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