Posts Tagged ‘Novel’

  • 30 Sep

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    Cinecast Episode 184 – Death Lottery

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    The 4 hour barrier is broken as The Documentary Blog’s Jay Cheel joins Kurt and Andrew on the longest Cinecast ever – you know it is even longer than the previous epic length TIFF show. What do we talk about? For starters, Kurt & Jay examine the Let The Right One In remake, Let Me In (*SPOILERS*), in painstaking detail, and how not to process American remakes of foreign language films. Next we move along for a solid hour on Never Let Me Go (*SPOILERS*) which keeps going on the vibe of comparing source material to eventual film adaptation and why you probably should not do that. More Carey Mulligan talk as Andrew skims and sums up Wall Street 2 with out spoilers. Then, a spoiler-free discussion on Catfish follows, although only Jay caught it, so it is more of a discussion on fake/faux-Documentaries, and ‘narrative-ethics’ which leads to more more talk on I’m Still Here, with a little Last Exorcism and The Blair Witch Project to round things out. Next we move along to the avant garde and barely-narrative Cannes Palme D’Or winner, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, and a lot of other films we watched: An overview of the “Middletown” documentary series, a bit of Daybreakers-Redux, a bit of Season 6 of “LOST” (you guessed it, with *SPOILERS*), and more avant garde cinema with Last Year At Marienbad. We also debate the finer points of Steve Buscemi and the cast and crew of HBO’s “Boardwalk Empire.” Finally (finally!) at around the 4 hour mark, our DVD picks round out a show that carried us well into the wee hours of the night recording. We hope you enjoy listening as much as we enjoyed chatting. It may be long, but it is a solid and whip-smart show this time around, although we are biased on that front.

    As always, please join the conversation by leaving your own thoughts in the comment section below and again, thanks for listening!

     
     

    Cinecast Episode 184 [ 4:20:01 | 148.78 MB ] Play Now | Play in Popup
    To download the show directly, paste the following URL into your favorite downloader:
    http://rowthree.com/audio/cinecast_10/episode_184.mp3

    ALTERNATIVE (no music track):
    http://rowthree.com/audio/cinecast_10/episode_184-alt.mp3

     
    Full show notes are under the seats…
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  • 10 May

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    Thoughts on the LET THE RIGHT ONE IN Remake

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    You go on vacation and it is a relatively slow movie and news week, but my interest perked up upon glancing at the two released stills from Matt “Cloverfield” Reeves’ english language remake of Let The Right One in. First off, if you average out the Row Three contributors’ picks on 2008 films, Låt den rätte komma in was probably the most loved, so most people writing for the site have some sort of emotional stake in seeing it redone for a North American Audience. You know the part where they polish off the rough edges, take out the emotional depth and thematic resonance, and make it a thrill ride (for any or all of the above, see: The Vanishing, Bangkok Dangerous, Nine Queens, [REC], La Femme Nikita, etc. etc.)

    But, oddly enough, I am rather interested in such an immediate do-over in spite of the high water mark set by the Swedish version of the film. There is the casting of the two leads, Chloe Moretz who kicked ass in, well, you know, and Kodi Smit-McPhee who give stellar performances in two dark films, The Road and Romulus My Father. Also, the producers are being rather clever in using the title of the first edition translation of the Novel, Let Me In, which at least tells me they took the time to do a bit of looking into how the book and film have been processed over here, and are not slapping it with the same title (causing some confusion due to the proximity of the releases) or giving it some focus-group moniker. Furthermore, I thought Cloverfield was a fairly solid both in the writing department and the directing department, and Reeves is doing both the remake (albeit Reeves did not write Cloverfield). Lastly, the novel has a number of twists and turns that were polished out of the original movie. The author of the novel, John Ajvide Lindqvist, wrote the screenplay and I’m sure he knows his own material, but having an outsiders interpretation, particularly at some of the more graphic elements in the novel, if the producers are willing to go there, would be enough to get me in the cinema.

    Really, there is bound to be some disappointment with the remake, due to how familiar I am with the source material and the original movie, but at this point I am not flat out against an English Language production. After all, there have been some good remakes done out there, Gore Verbinski’s The Ring has that knock-out addition with the horse on the ferry, Martin Scorsese’s The Departed was entertaining and added a gritty Boston atmosphere to the story, and lest we forget that both The Thing, The Fly and Invasion of the Body Snatchers all got it right on the second whirl around.

  • 06 Apr

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    DVD Review: The Wave

    2
    The Wave Movie Poster

    Director: Dennis Gansel
    Writers: Dennis Gansel, Todd Strasser (novel)
    Producer: Christian Becker
    Starring: Jürgen Vogel, Frederick Lau, Max Riemelt, Jennifer Ulrich, Christiane Paul
    MPAA Rating: NA
    Running time: 107 min.

    (4/5)

    In April of 1967, a high school history teacher in Palo Alto, California launched a week long experiment called “The Third Wave.” The experiment was an attempt to show students how Germany could have overlooked the signs of trouble and full heartedly accepted the Third Reich. In 1988, a YA novel titled “The Wave,” author Todd Strasser took the original experiment and expanded it into a story.

    The Wave Movie StillFast forward to 2008 and the release of Dennis Gansel’s The Wave. Gansel adapts Strasser’s story to modern day Germany and project week. History teacher Rainer Wenger is saddled with the task of discussing autocracy and during the first class, the students argue that they find it impossible to believe that a dictatorship could arise in modern Germany. Enter Wenger’s idea: turn the one week project into an experiment of sorts. It starts small with the class wearing uniforms, creating an image to represent the group and eventually even creating a specific greeting but right off the bat things go badly. Some students are completely against the idea while others are so fervently involved that it’s clear things aren’t going to end well. As the week progresses, things get further and further out of hand until it all unravels in a dramatic closing act which, though it doesn’t exactly surprise, manages to punch you in the gut.

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 24 Nov

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    Review: The Road

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    the-road-Header
    Doomsday Movie Marathon

    When it was announced that Australian director John Hillcoat would be taking up the challenge of bringing the bleak and difficult novel, The Road, to the screen it seemed liked the absolute perfect match of director and material. After all, his gritty and fly-coated outback western The Proposition had that right mix of apocalyptic and tender that is the essence of Cormac McCarthy’s prose (the crisp non-nonsense sentences are as sparsely worded as any book that I have read, yet finds power and poetry in its repetition). And are not many post-apocalypse survival movies similar in tone and execution to the modern anti-western? Make no mistake, this is a handsome, consistent and harrowing adaptation of the work, but it is not quite a filmic masterpiece because I fear the novel as it is, is not translatable from the written page to the screen. There is something about letting the immediacy of each small sentence in the book sink in slowly, whereas Hillcoat and co. have only 2 short hours with with to pain their gray portrait of a world in ruin. It is a faithful adaptation of the book to be sure, many of the “Day After Tomorrow” images in the gawd-awful trailer cut by the Weinstein Company are (thankfully) not in the in the film, and any scars or signs of its length (and likely troubled) production history are not evident on screen. Rest assured that The Road is the quiet and intimate drama, and very likely to be the bleakest multiplex movie of 2009 (should the distributor finally stop shuffling it back in the calender again and again) as it should be; yet, nevertheless between book and screenplay, something of the soul was lost in translation.

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 21 Oct

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    From Sin Nombre to En Amor

    2

    JaneEyreBookCoverCary Fukunaga is on a roll; his feature debut Sin Nombre (our review) (a film I have yet to see) was extremely well received and he caught my attention with his recent Levi’s commercials. He seems the type of guy to try his hand at whatever comes his way and news that he’s working on an adaptation of a classic novel certainly suggests exactly that.

    Variety reports that Fukunaga is in “advanced negotiations” to adapt one of the most notable (and adapted) works in the English language, Charlotte Bronte’s “Jane Eyre” with a focus on the story’s gothic elements. We previously noted that Canadian starlet Ellen Page was attached to the project but she has moved on leaving the titular role open (wonder if she’s kicking herself for the missed opportunity?).

    Aside from Fukunaga’s attachment, there seems to be a lot of buzz generating around the woman writing the adaptation. Moira Buffini is an acclaimed playwright who recently adapted Posy Simmonds’ graphic novel “Tamara Drewe” for director Stephen Frears. All fine and well but what really caught my attention about Buffini is the tidbit of information that her stage play “A Vampire Story” is being reworked for the big screen under the new title of Byzantium. A little reading uncovered an entry at /Film which provides more information on the project, one I’m very keen on following (for obvious reasons).

    I’m not sure another interpretation of Eyre is really necessary but as long as the directors provide a new take on the material, I’m on board and Fukunaga’s work certainly suggests this won’t be your typical BBC spin-off. As for Buffini’s Byzantium…more vampires? Yes please.

  • 19 Oct

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    VIFF 09 Review: Quiet Chaos

    0

    viff09bannerReviews

    QuietChaosMovieStillLife is good for Pietro. He’s a successful TV executive, happily married and has a beautiful daughter but while on vacation, a day which starts off with great promise ends badly. While at the beach with his brother, he risks his life to save a drowning woman while at home, his wife has a nasty fall and dies leaving his daughter frightened and alone. In shock at the loss of his wife, Pietro is now left with the task of raising his daughter alone, a daughter who seems to be taking her mother’s death too well. Concerned that she’ll break at any moment, on the first day of school Pietro offers to wait by the door until school is out and when he calls the office to say he’s out for the day, we realize that he wasn’t exaggerating.

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  • 29 Sep

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    VIFF 09 Review: Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire

    2

    viff09bannerReviews

    PreciousMovieStill

    Life is full of adversity and for some, the hurtles can be too much to bear. So is the case for Clareece ‘Precious’ Jones, the title character in Lee Daniels’ poorly titled Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire, but rather than take the easy way out and walk away from life and all of the problems that plague it, Precious takes the higher road and decides to tacked the problems which are continuously stacked in her way.

    Precious is 16 and pregnant with her second child. She can’t read or write, she’s verbally and physically abused by her mother and continuously raped by her father. It’s a sad life and one too depressing to be believed and though the immediate thought is that there are simply too many issues piled onto the character, it’s the overwhelming amount of issues that render the book and to an extent the film, so successful. Both mediums provides the story of a girl broken far beyond repair (or so one would imagine) and yet here she is, surviving. But everyone has a breaking point and though Precious’ comes much later than anyone could image, when she finally reaches it she takes the high road and changes her life for good.

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 21 Sep

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    Extended Thoughts (TIFF 09): The Road

    6

    John Hillcoat's The Road

    When it was announced that Australian director John Hillcoat would be taking up the challenge of bringing the bleak and difficult novel, The Road, to the screen it seemed liked the absolute perfect match of director and material. After all, his gritty and fly-coated outback western The Proposition had that right mix of apocalyptic and tender that is the essence of Cormac McCarthy’s prose (the crisp non-nonsense sentences are as sparsely worded as any book that I have read, yet finds power and poetry in its repetition). And are not many post-apocalypse survival movies similar in tone and execution to the modern anti-western? Make no mistake, this is a handsome, consistent and harrowing adaptation of the work, but it is not quite a filmic masterpiece because I fear the novel as it is, is not translatable from the written page to the screen. There is something about letting the immediacy of each small sentence in the book sink in slowly, whereas Hillcoat and co. have only 2 short hours with with to pain their gray portrait of a world in ruin. It is a faithful adaptation of the book to be sure, many of the “Day After Tomorrow” images in the gawd-awful trailer cut by the Weinstein Company are (thankfully) not in the in the film, and any scars or signs of its length (and likely troubled) production history are not evident on screen. Rest assured that The Road is the quiet and intimate drama, and very likely to be the bleakest multiplex movie of 2009 (should the distributor finally stop shuffling it back in the calender again and again) as it should be; yet, nevertheless between book and screenplay, something of the soul was lost in translation.
    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 14 Sep

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    Ghosts, Vampires, Italy; Oh My!

    3

    NewMoonMovieStill

    So it’s true. Those nasty rumours you’ve heard about me being a Twilight fan…they’re all true. Thankfully, I don’t feel the need to share every tidbit of new information, every little detail, in an effort to drive traffic. There have been a number of trailers, a load of images and lots of news over the last few months but nothing has been particularly worth sharing until now when over the weekend, Summit premiered a new (the third) trailer for The Twilight Saga: New Moon.

    No one knew what to expect from Catherine Hardwicke’s franchise starter Twilight (our review) which was a big gamble from the small studio. The film’s success, among the plentiful negative reviews, showed that fans were ready for the franchise. With a new director in tow, Chris Weitz (of The Golden Compass, About A Boy and American Pie fame), the follow-up has even more to prove to the ever growing fanbase and to date, Weitz seems to be on the right track.

    This time the story shifts from puppy love to drama as Edward leaves Bella. She’s devastated and finds comfort in her friendship with Jacob. When Edward miss-reads an event (proving that reading minds is not a good thing to do) and assumes Bella is dead, he travels to Italy to have the Volturi, the vampire elders, kill him.

    Until now, the trailers have focused mainly on Bella and her growing relationship with Jacob but this new trailer shifts direction, showing the vampire side of the story and focusing mostly on Edward, Alice and the Volturi. Are there some iffy moments? Yes there are. Some of Kristen Stewart’s reactions seem at odds with the unfolding story and the ghost effect isn’t really working for me but overall, it looks like Weitz has managed to capture the sprawling story while also fixing some of the glaring problems with the first film (the make-up, effects).

    The Twilight Saga: New Moon will blow minds (or at least panties) on November 20th.

    Trailer is tucked under the seat.

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 08 Sep

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    Hillcoat Reuniting with Cave for Next Project

    0

    NickCaveAndJohnHillcoatReviews are starting to roll in for John Hillcoat’s The Road and from most sources, the reviews have been very positive. Not that it’s much of a surprise considering the pedigree; Cormac McCarthy is a genius with a pen and Hillcoat is no so shabby himself when it comes to directing great films.

    While the rest of us eagerly await the film’s October 16th release date, we can bask in the knowledge that Hillcoat already has a new project to jump onto once promotion and film festival jumping is complete. Hillcoat has signed on for another adaptation, this time Nick Cave’s “The Death Of Bunny Munro” which tells the story of a “sex addicted travelling salesman on his final road trip.”

    I’m not very familiar with Cave’s work outside of his music, and even then I’m a fan in passing but I like the idea of another Hillcoat project and one that sounds as promising as this one. I can’t be the only one excited to see what a sex addicted travelling salesman looks like never mind what sort of shenanigans he gets himself into.

    This will not be the first time that Hillcoat and Cave have worked together. Cave created the score for The Road, the two worked together on The Proposition and Hillcoat also directed the Bad Seeds film Babe, I’m On Fire.

  • 03 Sep

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    Arterton Takes Lead in Frears’ Next Film

    0

    Gemma ArtertonBritish helmer Stephen Frears plays in the sandbox I love. Though I’m well in the camp of High Fidelity hate (and the hate has nothing to do with the art of the film but rather Nick Hornby’s story), I’ve enjoyed Frears’ recent projects which have all featured strong female protagonists. From Judi Dench as a theatre owner who scandalized London with her all-nude revues in Mrs Henderson Presents to Chéri, an adaptation of a novel by Colette featuring Michelle Pfeiffer as an aging courtesan. What I love best of Frears’ work is that he chooses projects which feature strong women who aren’t always in the right. His women are fierce but they’re human, making mistakes and dealing with the consequences.

    For his next project, Frears has chosen to continue the trend of strong females by adapting Posy Simmonds’ comic strip “Tamara Drewe.” Based on Thomas Hardy’s “Far from the Madding Crowd”, the strip features Tamara, a flirt of a woman “who returns to her small country village and stirs up dark passions among the locals.” The film will star the gorgeous Gemma Arterton (of St. Trinian’s (our review) infamy) as Tamara along with Dominic Cooper, Roger Allam, Luke Evans, Bill Camp and Tamsin Greig in supporting roles.

    I look forward to seeing Frears in action again and though I notice that Arterton has appeared in a few films since the Trinian’s debacle, I look forward to seeing her in something more memorable.

  • 21 Aug

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    Cera in Youth in Revolt Trailer

    2

    Youth in Revolt One SheetThe first and last picaresque novel I read was J.P. Donleavy’s “The Ginger Man”. It was an interesting exercise but overall it was not really my cup of tea (though it did have some hysterical scenes). Now it looks like I may, somewhat unwillingly, be making another jump into the style to see just what all the hubbub surrounding “Youth in Revolt” is about.

    C. D. Payne’s novel features a 14 year-old boy name Nick. He’s going through puberty, is obsessed with girls and sex and then he meets Sheeni. To gain her attention, he creates a bad ass alter ego named Francois Dillinger who says and does everything Nick doesn’t.

    The film, also titled Youth in Revolt, is adapted from the book by screen writer Gustin Nash who made a minor splash last year with Charlie Bartlett (our review), directed by Miguel Arteta and stars Michael Cera in the title role of Nick. The real surprise here is that for the first time, that I’ve noticed at least, Cera seems to be extending a little further than awkward/quirky teen. Though Nick fits Cera’s usual schtick, Francois seems a whole lot more direct and a bit of a douche which should prove interesting. Along with Cera, the film features a great cast of actors including Zach Galifianakis, Steve Buscemi, Justin Long, Fred Willard and Ray Liotta.

    The trailer seems interesting enough and as Eirk Davis at Cinematical notes, it’s a bit Fight Club-esque. I’m simply a sucker for teen movies so this one is definitely on my radar.

    Youth in Revolt opens on October 30th.

    Trailer is tucked under the seat!

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