Hollywood understands this well - even more so lately.

That George Clooney's resurrection of the cheesy '60s B-movie Ocean's 11 is so �ber-cool that it needed two sequels suggests audiences agree. The studios are reaching even further back in the archives in the next 12 months to remake what some consider the celluloid Holy of Holies, Casablanca.

And one I'm less nervous of, a remake of Dr Strangelove, with Steve Martin attempting to pull off the Peter Sellers hat-trick of roles, John Malkovich as the the crazed general Jack D Ripper who starts WWIII, Alec Baldwin in the George C Scott role and John Goodman as the bomber pilot who rides his payload into oblivion.

But it's not just Hollywood which seems determined to dig out some old scripts.

Russia's Vladimir Putin must fancy himself a movie mogul. But he's been acting like an out-of-work screenwriter posing as an indie director/producer. For the past couple of years, he's been shopping a classic script around; working title, Cold War - The Revenge. The below-the-line campaign to get a studio's attention has been first-rate. There have been chills, like Christmas 2005 when Putin shut off the natural gas pipeline that supplies 40% of Germany's gas, 69% for Austria, 43% for Poland and 82% for Greece - to make a point. Cinematic homage (to spy films), like when journalists and political opponents started dropping dead in Moscow and London. Laughs, when Putin recently described himself as "the purest democratic politician" since Gandhi. Thrills, when Putin tested a new ICBM and said if the Yanks went ahead and deployed a handful of missile defences, he would, for the first time since the Berlin Wall came down, aim his remaining missiles at Western Europe.

There's even been a Web 2.0 play - essential for any respectable marketing these days - when cyberwarriors responded to Estonia's removal of a statue honouring the army that oppressed it for 60 years by shutting down most of the Baltic republic's internet infrastructure. He's even cultivated a retro fan base of useful idiots among Europe's remaining crusty lefties who queue like Star Wars fans for The Phantom Menace for a chance to demand that Europe be undefended - and that's without the cute, cuddly Communist thing.

Last week, in a surprise move that eclipsed the premiere of the sequel to Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth - working title, How Green is My Bush? - Putin finally got his pitch meeting for the project with the heads of the big studios at the G8 meeting.

Bush tried to play it cool, like Tim Robbins' studio exec in Roger Altman's work of dark comic genius, The Player, trying to appease the unstable writer he thinks has been sending him threats. "Hey, I've been meaning to get back to you.

Interesting, really interesting idea. And I need it. My last picture, Rivers of Babylon, made Ishtar look like a blockbuster, a total bomb, and I can't even get my remake of Coming to America greenlighted by the money guys. So, y'know, we need each other, Vlad. We'll kick back at my Dad's place in Maine and look at the treatment."

"Just go easy on the tough guy-stuff, ok?"

The most recent stumbling block for 'Vlad' had been another Bush project, though one he'd inherited from previous execs at his studio, who figured that if a theme park ride could be turned into the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, why not the classic video game Missile Command, where you shoot down incoming enemy nuclear missiles.

Production hasn't started, as Putin strenuously objects to the on-location shooting in the Czech Republic and Poland.

In a big surprise twist, Putin suggested that, because the villains in Missile Command are those crazy Iranian guys, why not move production closer to the border? A joint US-Russian base in Azerbaijan. Sure, it came as a big surprise to the Iranians that Putin had been squiring around on some red carpets, but all's fair in love and the movies, baby.

So is this the beginning of a beautiful friendship? Or should we stop worrying and learn to love the bomb?

Either way, Putin has managed to steal a line from Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction: he will not be ignored.