The few things I do remember I don’t remember all that clearly, so maybe I’m being falsely nostalgic over the 1980 movie Fame. Maybe I’m remembering it as being better than it actually was, but here’s the key. Thirty years later I can still summon up those characters the way I knew them then. LeRoy, Ralph, Doris, Montgomery, Coco, Bruno. Whether or not the movie was as good as I now think it was, those characters popped off the screen and found a permanent place in my memory.

I’m afraid there isn’t anyone in the 2009 remake of Fame that vivid (with the possible exception of Naturi Naughton, and in her case it’s the actress/singer and not the character I remember). Here I am an hour after watching this version, and it’s like movie popcorn. Gone and not missed all that much.

And it’s not even that it was a bad movie. I enjoyed it well enough, but it didn’t have the substance of the original. It didn’t grab me emotionally, and the only song I’m humming is the title song. We know where that one came from

Maybe it’s not fair to compare the two, because they come from different eras and fill different spaces in the movie continuum. If that’s the case, though, maybe they shouldn’t have called the new one by the same title.

On the other hand, last night I watched last year’s Oscar winner for foreign language film, and it blew me away. Departures explores great themes within the small story of a cellist whose orchestra folds, forcing him to take a job preparing bodies for ritual burial (in Japan, where such things are regarded with reverence). It’s about life, death, love, work, and different kinds of loss. Its tone is neither too frivolous (despite the quirky concept), nor too dark (despite all the dead bodies). It’s a beautiful movie with wonderful performances.