Joyce ,'Chosen'
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I'm not convinced Jackson's stylised FX movie instincts are right
After watching Heavenly Creatures, I'm absolutely certain PJ can do a movie about a dead girl and weird family dynamics, but I haven't read the novel myself, so I don't know if there's other things about the novel that would make it less of a good match for his style.
HA! Wildly improbable x-post with Fiona!
It's Heavenly Creatures - and the incredibly overt evocation of the fantasy world - that makes me dread a Jackson Lovely Bones movie. It will only work if they pull back on the fantasy and make it suggestive rather than explicit. Which is not to say I don't like HC, of course.
and the incredibly overt evocation of the fantasy world
I didn't think that was HC's strength at all, though. These were, what, a couple of very brief sequences? Otherwise I thought he was extremely good at capturing the unspoken dynamic between the girls.
But, as I say not having read LB, it's not really possible for me to comment further....
It's the mood. TLB is very limpid and Couplandesque (actionably Couplandesque, almost). My memory of HC is much more frantic, although it has beena while.
The nearest I can think of, actually, to a film of how TLB should feel is the film of The Virgin Suicides or Ang Lee's Ice Storm. That mid-90s 70's suburban ennui subgenre.
TLB is very limpid and Couplandesque
But...I love Coupland. I haven't read it and want to, having heard so many good things about it until now.
That mid-90s 70's suburban ennui subgenre.
I thought it was more ennui than anything else. And I don't quite mean that as a slam on the book. Just that Ice Storm had a tremendous tension that it lacked -- it felt, even during the "crime-solving" and re-enacting portions much slower.
I haven't see The Virgin Suicides, so I can't compare.
And there is room for fantasy, even if of the mundane sort.
And there is room for fantasy, even if of the mundane sort
Oh, yeah, just make sure the fantastic elements take place "In a setting of clear reality".
It is a very static book, you're right.
A bit more detail in the IMDB summary:
Director Peter Jackson and his screenwriter wife Fran Walsh will follow up this year's King Kong re-make with a screen adaptation of Alice Sebold's best-selling novel The Lovely Bones. American movie trade publication Daily Variety reports the Oscar-winners used their own money to buy the feature film rights to the grim tale from British production company Filmfour. The 2002 book is narrated from heaven by a 14-year-old girl who has been raped and murdered, as she follows the lives of those left behind to deal with the tragedy. Jackson and Walsh will begin adapting the screenplay with their partner Philippa Boyens next January, and will promote the project to studios when it is finished. Jackson says, "It's the best kind of fantasy in that it has a lot to say about the real world. You have an experience when you read the book that is unlike any other. I don't want the tone or the mood to be different or lost in the film."
It's nice knowing the source material, but having no devotion to it, because then I can kick back and crituque unemotionally. Which is my favourite sort of carping.