Xander ,'Same Time, Same Place'
A place to talk about movies--old and new, good and bad, high art and high cheese. It's the place to place your kittens on the award winners, gossip about upcoming fims and discuss DVD releases and extras. Spoiler policy: White font all plot-related discussion until a movie's been in wide release two weeks, and keep the major HSQ in white font until two weeks after the video/DVD release.
There's something familiar about the Cowboys & Aliens trailer...
Ha!
What? Seriously? In Cowboys and Aliens, Daniel Craig gets to blow things up with a thing on his wrist? On his wrist? Just like Iron Man did in just about every single scene in Iron Man? Just like that thing that pretty much only Iron Man can do?
Plus, who doesn't like a challenge!
I wonder why filmmakers feel the need to tackle unfilmable books.
That reminds me of one of my first film classes at NYU, which was "Film and Literature" taught by Alain Robbe-Grillet. The first day he opened Proust and read the first line aloud ("Longtemps je me suis couché de bonne heure...") and basically asked, "How do you film that? You can't. I don't believe in adaptation." Um, okay? It went downhill from there.
I wonder why filmmakers feel the need to tackle unfilmable books.
If they didn't, we wouldn't have Tristram Shandy and that would be a real shame.
I wonder if French cinema's love of the voiceover comes from a desire to capture the beauty of prose. Maybe it's not just exposition. (Is it annoying to discuss these sorts of things with someone who's never had a film class?)
Oh my goodness Tristram Shandy is such a great movie. And I find myself thinking parts of Infinite Jest would look really amazing on screen.
I didn't think Crash was a great movie.
OTOH, we also wouldn't have Adaptation, so it can cut both ways...
I had a film professor declare that there has never been a great film made from a great book. Great films are all made from mediocre books and all adaptations of great books are mediocre (or worse) films.
I had a film professor declare that there has never been a great film made from a great book.
Spoken like someone who has never read The Princess Bride.
[eta: There's another one tickling the back of my mind. Something fairly recent where massive sweeping changes were made but both versions worked exquisitely for their respective media. Not LotR, though that would also qualify. Damn it, this is going to drive me crazy.]
Spoken like someone who has never read The Princess Bride.
In fairness, a very rare instance of a novel written by a great screenwriter, who then wrote the screenplay.