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Posts tagged: adaptation
The Hollywood Reporter interviews director Takashi Miike about his new film, Shield of Straw: ” In Japan now, films are very safe. When I was young and went to old cinemas, they had a distinctive feel, an adult smell about them. As you got in your seat…
Screen Editor alex takes a look at two new iterations of Sherlock Holmes:
There’s something about the way Benedict Cumberbatch plays the lead role in the BBC series Sherlock that seems like it could be Holmes’ fantasy version of how a brilliant detective behaves. In the episodes I’ve seen he’s twitchy and neurotic, but also cool and proficient with a performative quality that left me thinking the series could turn out to be a dream sequence where the last episode ends with young Holmes waking up in his bedroom, or an older version playing it all out in a psychiatric ward. Or for another twist on that cliche, the audience is seeing the whole series of events through Holmes’ own distorted self-image, a sort of Jekyll and Hyde split where Watson is his alter-ego, penning his own narrative.
image via the Denver Public Library.
This week, Romance Editor Chris discovers that while she hates zombies, she likes Warm Bodies.
Lately the sheer ubiquity of zombies has added a patina of irritation to my hatred. Ever since Seth Grahame-Smith plunked zombies into Jane Austen, the damn things pop up everywhere. Appearances in works of classic literature turned into cameos in every historical period that could possibly contain the concept of the walking dead. Post-apocalypse. Pre-apocalypse. Both World Wars, along with pretty much every other major armed conflict one could name. Magic zombies. Fast zombies. Zombies in fairy tales, and on every street corner. In fact I’m so overwhelmingly sick of zombies that I’m ceasing to be so afraid of them*. Insult to injury, they’ve become tedious as well as terrifying. There is little that will make me drop a book faster than even a hint of zombieness within.
Strange, then, that I loved Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion so much.
Screen Editor alex considers the implications of anti-climactic endings, beginning with The Lord of the Rings:
When I was about 12, my parents took me to see a stage version of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings performed with life-sized puppets. As Frodo was agonizing over pitching his precious ring into the fiery pit of Mount Doom, Sam, exhausted from the epic journey but determined to help his beloved friend, inched out onto the rocky promontory. He reached his puppety arms out to relieve Frodo of his burden, they both fell into the fires of Mount Doom, and the curtain came down.
This outfit, which pays homage to The Shining, is part of horror film-themed couture designed by fashion designer brothers The Blonds.
One of the most tragic women in horror, Oiwa. Here she’s depicted just after being poisoned by her husband. Print by Kuniyoshi Utagawa from the kabuki play, Tokaido Yotsuya Kaidan, by Tsuruya Nanboku IV. In the second image, she appears as a ghost in Nobuo Nakagawa’s 1959 Tokaido Yotsuya Kaidan
There are many film versions of the story, including two presented by the Criterion collection, Nakagawa’s adaptation and Kinoshita Keisuke’s1949 Yotsuya Kaidan, Parts I and II. (Both are available this weekend on Hulu for free).
via “Sheer Pleasure: Transparency in Japanese Woodblock Prints.”
Comics Editor Carol didn’t expect the French Revolution while watching the Dark Knight Rises. But then again, no one expects the French Revolution.
In The Dark Knight Rises, Batman tells the people of Gotham that anyone can be a hero, that anyone could be Batman. But we—and Bruce Wayne—are also repeatedly told: Gotham needs Batman. I’m not sure The Dark Knight Rises backs Batman up. And this makes me a little sad, because I believe strongly in the idea that we can all be heroes. Sitting in the drive-in on a summer night, I was distracted by those questions and the obtrusion of the French Revolution while I watched the film.
(image via http://www.booksplease.org/2008/07/09/the-scarlet-pimpernel-by-baroness-orczy/)
This is probably the first time I’ve seen the president (or at least his twitter feed) do movie spoilers!
Obama: In the same day he declares his support for same-sex marriage he also declares he is a Coulson fan boy.
Winner.
OH MY GOD
Nerd Presidents are the best presidents, and spoiler for The Avengers.
Sadly, I can’t find the original tweet and the president signs any he’s written, “-bo.”
So Marvel has an interesting tie-in with Muscle & Fitness Magazine.
