Saw Bug. felt a little too much like a play in the last half-hour, but other than that it worked very well. Ashley Judd is fabulous. Our friend, Mike Shannon, kicks ass, just as he did in the play. A big surprise to me was Harry Connick Jr. Not only is he Mr. Buff Workoutlington, he is REALLY impressive and scary and believable.

I am sorry that they are marketing this as a horror film instead of a very black comedy'psychological thriller. It's supposed to be disquieting and also sometimes very funny. There were some people in our audience who seemed to be laughing AT moments rather than with them, if you know what I mean. I don't think they realized the writer emant them to laugh, which the rest of us did.

Still, worth a visit.

I can't help wondering if The Vulture entry was the work of a Buffista: Spider-Man 4 Villain contest.

Isn't it funny how often you can tell that the movie was adapted from a play? Something about the dialogue

We talk so much more in theater.

Well, in a play you have to establish everything through dialogue, and it shows when you're ignoring half of the movie's medium-- no action sequences, no location-- nothing visual does any work when the play is adapted to the movie format.

nothing visual does any work when the play is adapted to the movie format.

I would like to think nothing visual does any work when the play is poorly adapted to the movie format.

For some reason I can swear I can hear it in the delivery of the lines, which makes no sense, especially if it's not the stage actors reprising their roles. The most egregious I can think of was Jeffrey and the least-but-still-bothersome was Six Degrees of Separation. I know there's at least one where I was thoroughly impressed, but I can't remember which. Oh, and for sure others I never knew were adaptations in the first place, so I can't cite them for not bothering me.

I thought History Boys adapted to the screen very well. There were significant changes made to the script, but they also made sure to use locations as film locations and not shoot it as if they were still working with a proscenium.

Bug used location and imagery very cinematically, so mad props to Friedkin. Some of the words still felt a but stagy, but not enough to make me dislike it.

Closer struck me as very well adapted to its new medium, though still relentlessly talky.

Did anyone see Tsotsi (about a gangster kid in one of the Johannesburg townships, maybe Soweto)? That movie felt very much like a play to me. It wasn't so much about the dialogue, but more the structure & arc of the story. Which sort of makes sense, given that it's adapted from a novel by the playwright Athol Fugard.