Cinema and Literature

Film version of popular teen novel disappoints

2008-12-02T08:57:00.002-05:00

By Matthew Lucas, Correspondent

Published: Thursday, November 27, 2008 at 9:00 a.m.
Last Modified: Wednesday, November 26, 2008 at 3:30 p.m.

By now I'm sure it's safe to assume that most people have either read at least one of Stephenie Meyers' best-selling "Twilight" series or have at least heard of the phenomenon whose popularity reached a fever pitch in the last few months with the release of the final book in the series, "Breaking Dawn," and film adaptation of the first installment, "Twilight."

I won't belabor the plot points for very long as popular culture has become so saturated with it recently. The film introduces us to Bella (Kristen Stewart), a shy, awkward teenager who moves from Arizona to Washington to live with her father. There she is greeted as an exotic outsider by the other youths in town, but she never really fits in until she meets Edward (Robert Pattinson), an enigmatic hunk who turns out to be a vampire. He comes from a family of "vegetarians," vampires who have eschewed human blood to only hunt animals. But Edward's newfound attraction for Bella comes with a price; he must grapple with his thirst for her blood and his equally fiery passion for her. The danger is compounded by the arrival of a trio of vampires whose bloodlust extends to humans, and they set their sights on Bella.

After avoiding it for as long as possible, I read "Twilight" over the summer to see what all the fuss was about and found it to be an enjoyable, if lightweight, read - an entertaining piece of teen pulp fiction fluff. However, I had tempered expectations for the film version. Movie adaptations of popular books almost always pale in comparison to their literary counterparts. The only factor that gave me hope was the presence of director Catherine Hardwicke, who (despite the dull "Nativity Story") has always impressed me with her gritty sensibilities and visual prowess in films such as "Thirteen" and the severely underrated "Lords of Dogtown."

This time, however, one of her biggest weaknesses has come to the forefront. "The Nativity Story" hinted at it when she took a more mundane visual approach, which left her without her greatest strength. Hardwicke may be a talented visual stylist, but in many ways she is a weak storyteller. There are some beautiful moments in "Twilight," but they are often hampered by intrusive and inappropriate use of music and an overall lack of narrative movement. It just doesn't flow well. When you add that to the fact that many moments that seemed wondrous and magical on the page seem hokey and contrived on the screen (Edward's supersonic running is especially laughable), then "Twilight" fails to live up to its full potential.

Not that there was much to begin with. Quite honestly, I feel it's a story better suited to the page than the screen, or at least to a director whose storytelling skills match their visual prowess.

"Twilight" never had a very strong narrative in the first place. It is filled with long passages of breathless, enraptured descriptions of Edward's beauty and Bella's burgeoning love for him. Hardwicke attempts to up the ante and keep things moving by pulling the film's villains that don't appear until the end of the novel into a series of interludes that keeps a sense of danger over the film and a semblance of a plot that really doesn't exist.

It doesn't really add anything to the film, but it's a commendable effort. But ultimately I just didn't feel it the way I did in the book, the deep sense of longing just isn't there, nor, strangely, is the sense of danger despite the strengthened efforts in that area.

While I admit to liking the book, I'm far from a "Twilight" groupie. I hated the second book, "New Moon," so much that I stopped reading it after 200 pages and moved on to something else. It just didn't do anything for me. So I didn't have a very big emotional investment in whether the film succeeded or failed.

For my part, "Twilight" is not a massive failure, but it just doesn't work separate from the page. Anyone who has not read the book may find themselves bewildered, or at least a little confused, without some of the nuances of the book to fill it out. It will doubtless please the legions of fans who have devoured Meyers' novels. But discerning filmgoers may find that "Twilight" the movie leaves much to be desired.

Matthew Lucas, a student at Appalachian State University in Boone, is a correspondent for The Dispatch. He also has a blog site where he posts movie news, buzz and commentary at fromthefrontrow.blogspot.com.

William Shakespeare, Screenwriter

2008-12-02T08:51:00.002-05:00

Happy 444th Birthday, William Shakespeare, Screenwriter

Let's raise a toast and watch some clips to honor this one-man movie-making machine.

Joseph Fiennes as William Shakespeare in Miramax Films' 'Shakespeare in Love' - Miramax Films

Mark Bourne, Apr 22, 2008

With Wednesday, April 23, marking William Shakepeare's birthday, let's all raise a flagon of ale and wish a happy 444th to one of our favorite screenwriters.

Sure, the Western canon's greatest playwright may have lived centuries before movies came along, but he has proved himself time and again as one of our most prolific and popular writers for the big screen. So to commemorate his birthday, let's go to the DVD shelves and find a few of our favorites that ask "What light through yonder movie break?"

Kenneth Branagh's Henry V (1989)

With gritty realism and lavish production values, this directorial debut of 29-year-old actor Kenneth Branagh reinvigorated Shakespeare's great play of history and warfare for a new generation -- and made Branagh a darling of critics and audiences on two continents. The Bard's dialogue remains largely intact, and the strong top-to-bottom cast -- including Brian Blessed, Ian Holm, Christian Bale, Paul Scofield, Emma Thompson, Robbie Coltrane, and Judi Dench -- are fully equipped for the task. There's something about Branagh's delivery of the famous St. Crispin's Day speech -- issued to his battle-weary troops in the French countryside, as king and soldiers alike are covered in sweat, blood, and earth -- that sends a thrilled shudder up my spine every time.

Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet (1996)

Of course we can't pair Branagh and Shakespeare together without giving a nod to Branagh's production of Shakespeare's most famous tragedy. The first unabridged theatrical film version of the play, the running time is just over four hours, but it is spellbinding and powerful cinema. Branagh is, naturally, the thoughtful prince out to avenge his father's murder, supported by Derek Jacobi as King Claudius, Julie Christie as Queen Gertrude, Kate Winslet as Ophelia, Richard Briers as Polonius, Nicholas Farrell as Horatio, and -- in this clip -- Billy Crystal as the grave digger.

(Branagh's movie version of Much Ado About Nothing is pretty good too.)

Ian McKellen's Richard III (1995)

For some of us he'll always be Gandalf. For others, he's the evil mutant Magneto. But before Sir Ian McKellen was immortalized in a line of action figures, he was one of England's most respected Shakespeareans. His Richard III casts McKellen as the charismatic, murderous, clever, subtle, and often slyly humorous villain ascending to the throne in a Nazi-inspired 1930s England. In this brazen, fast-paced adaptation, the machine-gun pocked opening credits climax with McKellen driving a tank through a wall to kill King Henry VI and his son. One of the play's most famous lines -- "A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!" -- was recontextualised by the new setting: during the climactic battle, Richard's scout car becomes stuck, and his lament is cast as a plea for a mode of transport with legs rather than wheels.

In this clip, among the supporting cast we see Robert Downey Jr. as Lord Rivers, Annette Bening as Elizabeth, and Maggie Smith as the Duchess of York.

Perhaps no other title on this page better proves that Will Shakespeare would have loved writing for the movies.

Roman Polanski's Macbeth (1971)

Starring Jon Finch as Macbeth, Polanski's interpretation of "the Scottish play" is as bleak and bloody as they come. You can feel the dank misery of the Middle Ages in every scene. But of course it's most remembered for the nude scene with Lady Macbeth (Francesca Annis) freaking out and looking for a really good bar of soap. That's not this clip, alas. Still, we have Finch's "tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" speech (ah, flashbacks to high school English class) and a bloody good fight scene.

Julie Taymor's Titus (1999)

In Shakespeare's day, his early revenge tragedy Titus Andronicus was a hit "slasher film" of the era. This most gruesome of all Shakespeare's plays -- a real "Itchy & Scratchy" of the First Folio -- was a smash success that his company trotted out many times over the years to give the groundlings brutal, over-the-top thrills -- mutilations, beheadings, even a mother tricked into eating her own children that have been baked into pies. (Step aside, Sweeney Todd.)

Director Julie Taymor adapted her own tricked-out stage version for a powerful and wildly weird film starring Anthony Hopkins, Jessica Lange, and Alan Cumming. As one of the unfortunate sons, also here is Jonathan Rhys-Meyers (now TV's Henry VIII in The Tudors). The setting is an anachronistic "all times, all places" world that uses locations, costumes, and imagery from many periods of history, including ancient Rome and Mussolini's Italy. This clip is from the "Iron Chef" scene:

Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet (1968)

Whoa. After all that death and debauchery, let's move to some lighter fare. This movie adaptation of Shakespeare's most famous romance was directed by Franco Zeffirelli, and won Academy Awards for Best Cinematography and Best Costume Design, with nominations for Best Director and Best Picture. Shakespeare scholar Stephen Orgel describes the film as being "full of beautiful young people, and the camera, and the lush Technicolour, make the most of their sexual energy and good looks." Made at the height of the "British invasion" in U.S. pop culture, and aimed straight at the era's counterculture youth, a generation of teenagers thereafter grew up on this film. Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet is notable for being one of the first filmed versions of the play in which the main actors are near the ages of their characters -- Leonard Whiting (Romeo) was 17 during filming, and Olivia Hussey (Juliet) was 15. Zeffirelli had to get special permission for Hussey to appear nude in the film. Hussey later amusingly recalled that she was not permitted to view the film because it contained her own nudity.

On the other hand, if you like your Romeo and Juliet with a modern pop edge, there's Baz Luhrmann's Romeo+Juliet (1996) starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Claire Danes, and a soundtrack that successfully targeted the "MTV Generation."

Akira Kurosawa's Ran (1985)

Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa's Oscar-winning adaptation of Shakespeare's tragedy King Lear, moved to a sixteenth-century Japan of warloards and fierce battles, was the famed director's last great epic and remains one of the most gripping and beautifully made of all "Shakespeare movies." With a budget of $12 million, it was the most expensive Japanese film produced up to that time. Ran was hailed for its powerful images and use of color -- costume designer Emi Wada won an Academy Award for Costume Design for her work. Kurosawa loved filming in lush and expansive locations, and most of Ran was shot amidst the mountains and plains of Mount Aso, Japan's largest active volcano. Kurosawa was also granted permission to shoot at two of the country's most famous landmarks, the ancient castles at Kumamoto and Himeji. For the castle of Lady Sué's family, he used the ruins of the Azusa castle.

If you like Kurosawa's Ran, follow that film (after you recover) with his 1957 Throne of Blood, which transposes Macbeth to medieval Japan. It's one of Kurosawa's best films, and for many critics it's one of the best film adaptations of Macbeth, despite having almost none of the play's script. Washizu/Macbeth's famous death scene, in which his own archers turn upon him and fill his body with arrows, was in fact performed with real arrows, a choice made to help actor Toshiro Mifune display realistic facial expressions of fear.

And talk about pop culture cool! In an episode of TV's Smallville, Lex Luthor claims that a sword hanging on the wall of his study is a prop from Throne of Blood, his "favorite Akira Kurosawa movie."

King Lear with James Earl Jones at the New York Shakespeare Festival

There have been so many King Lears on film. There are versions set in post-Chernobyl Russia, at a Yiddish seder, and in the cornfields of Iowa. We've seen existential Lears, a Soviet Christian Marxist Lear, and a punk-apocalyptic Lear. Orson Welles was a fine screen king, and at 75 Laurence Olivier won the International and Primetime Emmy awards in a 1984 TV production co-starring Diana Rigg, John Hurt, and Stonehenge.

Then again, you may prefer your King Lear served straight up. In that case, I suggest the Broadway Theatre Archive DVD starring James Earl Jones (before he became Darth Vader), from a performance filmed before an audience in New York City's Central Park and broadcast in 1974 as a PBS Great Performances presentation. The supporting cast showcases Raul Julia as the seductive villain Edmund, Rene Auberjonois as Edgar/Tom o' Bedlam, Rosalind Cash as treacherous Goneril, Lee Chamberlain's loving and steadfast Cordelia, Douglass Watson as loyal Kent, and Tom Aldredge (The Sopranos) as the Fool, Lear's voice of observant wisdom. (The only weak link is, oddly, Paul Sorvino's lackluster Gloucester.) Here's a no-fripperies, full-speed-ahead King Lear that's accessible, exciting, haunting, moving, and crowd-pleasing in ways that merely reading the play in English class will never achieve.

Al Pacino's Looking for Richard (1996)

Al Pacino self-produced this terrific fly-on-the-wall documentary because, basically, he's a Shakespeare buff. In it, Pacino explores not just the gold and dirt within Shakespeare's text -- we watch him also dip into the well of his own skill and craft as an actor to see if he has what it takes to make the vile (but layered and nuanced) Richard III live for modern American audiences. Pacino embarked upon Looking for Richard by recruiting fellow actors -- such as Kevin Spacey, Alec Baldwin, and Winona Ryder -- and shooting small excerpts on film, be it conversations, debates, table-readings, or informal scenes in casual settings. Michael Mann lent some of his film crew from Heat to shoot the climactic Battle of Bosworth Field just outside of L.A. The result is a meditation on the value of the play, and of Shakespeare in general. It's a master class in acting, with behind-the-scenes conversations illuminating how much thought and planning goes into this sort of production.

Shakespeare in Love (1999)

Okay, sure, it's not strictly speaking "a Shakespeare movie," but this romance-comedy-drama does a great job taking us back to the days when Will Shakespeare -- just 29 years old with his career on the rise -- might forsake it all for the love of a higher-born woman. The witty script by Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard overflows with in-jokes for Shakespeare fans and theater buffs. Shakespeare in Love left the 1999 Academy Awards with seven statuettes, including the one for Best Picture. Joseph Fiennes (Ralph's brother) is Will, and Gwyneth Paltrow (ah, my Gwyneth, shall I compare thee to a summer's day?) has never been better.

Forbidden Planet (1956)

In 1956 with Forbidden Planet, MGM did for science fiction what it had done for musicals four years earlier with Singin' in the Rain. The studio took the stuff its audiences loved, gave it that high-polish MGM razzle-dazzle, and produced an enduring best-of-breed favorite, a CinemaScope spectacle that's terrifically entertaining, smartly written, memorably cast, briskly paced, and production-designed to the hilt. Instead of Gene Kelly's tap shoes or Debbie Reynolds' pertness, this time we get Leslie Nielsen as a proto-Captain Kirk, special effects photography that still knocks our socks off, Hollywood's most famous robot before Star Wars' less imaginative and interesting droids, and (the stuff space-kids' dreams are made on) leggy Anne Francis ably modeling miniskirts a decade early. It has aged well, and any dated elements -- that great flying-saucer design of the starship, the crew's baseball-cap uniforms, the casual Rat Pack-era sexism -- only add a quaint charm to the film's robust retro-future vibe. Oh, and its plot points -- and even some dialogue -- come lifted with an Amazing Stories spin from Shakespeare's The Tempest.

The 50th Anniversary Special Edition DVD is the one to get here. For a few bucks more you can get it in a big tin box with your own Robby the Robot miniature.

Pulp Fiction, Shakespeare Style

And finally, it's not a video clip, but it's too good to not mention. Via Boing Boing, we now know that Livejournal's Ceruleanst has given Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction the Bardolator treatment. Forthwith, here's the "Royale with Cheese" bit as written by William Shakespeare:

ACT I SCENE 2. A road, morning. Enter a carriage, with JULES and VINCENT, murderers.

J: And know'st thou what the French name cottage pie?
V: Say they not cottage pie, in their own tongue?
J: But nay, their tongues, for speech and taste alike
Are strange to ours, with their own history:
Gaul knoweth not a cottage from a house.
V: What say they then, pray?
J: Hachis Parmentier.
V: Hachis Parmentier! What name they cream?
J: Cream is but cream, only they say le crème.
V: What do they name black pudding?
J: I know not;
I visited no inn it could be bought.

Of course, social networking being what it is, others have joined in and further passages have been appended anon. And on and on and on. . . .

(With thanks to JJB at DVDJournal.com.)

Don't be stuffy over screen adaptations

2008-10-22T11:19:00.004-04:00

28.09.2008

A N Wilson pays tribute to the skill involved in turning books into film

Addicts, not merely of Evelyn Waugh's masterpiece, but also of the 1981 Granada Television version of Brideshead Revisited can only look forward to the new screen version with diluted enthusiasm.

We are told that the new version has Charles Ryder and Sebastian snogging; that the story turns into a "love triangle" between Charles, Sebastian and Julia. Religion is played down. And how could it be Brideshead without Geoffrey Burgon's superb music?

Still, it would be stuffy to say that no one should ever be allowed to adapt our favourite books for cinema or television. Think of the number of enjoyable Sherlock Holmes films, for example, starring Basil Rathbone, which bear only small relation to the books.

The reason Jane Austen films are so deadly is that they remove the chief attraction of the books - which is Jane Austen's own voice. Without the jokes in Pride and Prejudice, there is a sort of inevitability that you will end up with the flavourless Keira Knightley as Elizabeth Bennet.

Something of the same kind operates with Dickens. It takes real skill to adapt him, since there is so much more in the books than just the "characters".

The best Dickens adaptation, however, is also my favourite film - it is Christine Edzard's Little Dorrit, with its total faithfulness to the book, and its extraordinary line-up of great actors, including the totally unknown Sarah Pickering as the child-woman.

Joan Greenwood - Sibella from Kind Hearts and Coronets - never gave a finer performance than she did as Mrs Clennam. Max Wall and Patricia Hayes make the most superb Flintwinch and Affery. The sublime Miriam Margolyes simply is Flora Finching, and Derek Jacobi and Alec Guinness create marvellously understated Arthur Clennam and Dorrit.

The film looks as if it was made on a shoestring. When I speak of its total faithfulness, that is not to say that they have not made judicious cuts - all the lesbian intrigue between Miss Wade and Tattycoram goes, and so does the opening in the French prison and the plot which goes with it. The film is in two longish parts - the first Nobody's Fault sees the story from Clennam's viewpoint, and the second is Little Dorrit's Story.

I remember when it first came out spending almost all week in the cinema, viewing it repeatedly. I suppose I've watched the videos - and now a DVD is available - any number of times. Rather than starting in Marseilles, the film comes immediately to London, and it comes intimately indoors.

The interiors are beautiful - tiny, panelled rooms, sparsely furnished. Mrs Clennam's dark house, from whose black shadows Max Wall sinisterly hobbles, or Little Dorrit flits with her baskets of darning or trays of oysters, is a place which, once you have come to inhabit it, will haunt your dreams for ever.

The outside shots, Shotter Boys prints brought to life, are done in almost toy-theatre fashion. Dreamy shots of Borough High Street suggest the background that leads to the Marshalsea Prison, which is just a small yard when you get inside it. The roofscapes of London have a similar near-amateur brilliance. And crowd scenes are suggested by comparatively few actors passing and repassing shop windows.

Little Dorrit, my own personal favourite among Dickens's novels, is a sort of fairy story. Yes, it is "about" money - but not in the sense that Trollope or Balzac would have written about it, with their knowing worldliness. The exact nature of the Clennams' business transactions in China would have taken up pages of Balzac's time, but in Dickens, Arthur merely comes home with the uneasy sense that his father's money was gained unjustly.

Likewise all the Dorrit money arrangements - both Dorrit's ruin, and the sudden restitution - come about quite arbitrarily. Clennam and Mr Pancks could as easily have been fairies with magic wands, for all the interest which Dickens takes in the actual details of the debts. (In Trollope, we would be rummaging about looking for lost cheques and promissory notes).

The point of money in Little Dorrit - as in the last few weeks of excitement in the world markets - is the effect it has on the lives of human beings whose values are out of skew. That is why, though we have no Marshalsea prison any more, figures like Dorrit and Merdle are perennial, and the love between Dorrit and Clennam remains so hauntingly touching.

Graphic Novels are Hollywood's Newest Gold Mine

2008-06-23T02:24:00.002-04:00

Thursday, Jun. 19, 2008 By REBECCA WINTERS KEEGAN
TIME magazine

Superman Leaped 40 years' worth of tall buildings on the printed page before he landed his first feature film, in 1978. In 2003, Wesley Gibson, the cubicle-dwelling assassin in Mark Millar's nihilist graphic novel Wanted, had producers circling before his first issue even went to print. Millar's work is unlikely source material for a big-budget movie; one of his obscenely named villains is made of fecal matter from 666 evildoers, including Adolf Hitler and Jeffrey Dahmer. Nevertheless, Wanted is now a glossy summer action movie starring James McAvoy, Angelina Jolie and Morgan Freeman, directed by new-to-big-studio-movies Russian Timur Bekmambetov.

Graphic novels--long comic books for grownups--have always had mostly cult appeal. Last year's most successful, the 13th volume in a Japanese manga adventure series--Naruto, by Masashi Kishimoto--sold 80,000 copies, far short of 2007's hottest novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini, which sold more than 1.5 million copies. The point of the comics was largely their transgressiveness. "They're the last pirate medium," says Millar, a Scottish writer who consults for Marvel Comics on more mainstream fare, like Iron Man. "They're the last medium for a mass audience where you can do anything you want."

But the creations of oddball loners like Millar scribbling at drafting tables have also become the movie industry's most reliable development tool. Thanks to the box-office success of A-list superheroes like Spider-Man and the X-Men, Hollywood's appetite for comics-fueled material is insatiable. Titles from the darker corners of the genre, including gritty graphic novels like Wanted and Alan Moore's watershed deconstructivist superhero tome Watchmen are getting the big-screen makeover. Stories and characters first written for an audience of a few hundred thousand geeks at most are reaching, at the box office and on DVD and cable, popcorn-chomping crowds that number in the tens of millions. "The dalliance between Hollywood and comics is becoming a marriage," says Frank Miller, creator of the graphic novels Sin City and 300. "The downside is in the heads of people who make comic books. Everybody wants money and fame."

Times weren't always so flush in Toontown. In 1997, "George Clooney killed comic-book movies," says Millar. Joel Schumacher's joyless Batman & Robin, in which Clooney legendarily donned a bat suit complete with rubber nipples, left fans feeling abused. Studios turned their attention to fantasy literature like Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings. But when Spider-Man bested two wizard movies and a Star Wars prequel in 2002 and X-2: X-Men United broke $200 million at the box office in 2003, hand-drawn heroes swung back into favor. The joke in Hollywood now is that in a risk-averse era, comic-book adaptations have a distinct advantage: the drawings mean studio execs can see beforehand what the movie will look like.

At first, it was the family-friendly superheroes who made the leap to multiplexes, with the help of directors like Bryan Singer and Chris Nolan. Slowly, lesser-known comic books got a shot. Some, like Sin City and Hellboy, became modest box-office successes by adhering to the distinctive spirit of their creators. Others, like Road to Perdition and A History of Violence, attracted audiences with sophisticated stories that few people knew were derived from graphic novels.

Then came the spear that pierced the industries of comics, movies and ab videos: 300. "I was pretty sure we were making a boutique movie," says director Zack Snyder of his R-rated, blood-spattered retelling of the Battle of Thermopylae. With no stars and a lot of leather bikini bottoms, 300 grossed more than $200 million in the U.S. alone. "The movie struck a chord because it was unapologetic," says Snyder, who is directing Watchmen for release next March. "It's difficult to find a movie that feels true to itself. You feel the hand of Hollywood, the moviemaking by committee, on everything."

In the case of 300, the hand audiences felt was really Miller's, since whenever Snyder made a creative decision, he asked himself, What would Frank do? Comic-book-movie directors like Snyder, who see themselves as stewards of another person's vision rather than architects of their own, have made comic-book creators Hollywood's latest big-budget auteurs. Because they work with such low overhead compared with moviemakers, comic writers and artists can take many more creative chances than directors. "You don't have endless development meetings that turn your brain into milk," says Miller. "You get to at least see what an individual has to offer." After co-directing Sin City with Robert Rodriguez in 2005, Miller is completing his comics-to-movies arc by directing The Spirit, an adaptation of a 1940s crime-fighting strip, for a December release.

The other axiom 300 proved to Hollywood is one the comics industry has known for decades: "The audience for comic-book movies is overweight guys in their mid-30s," says director, comic-book-store owner and overweight guy in his late 30s Kevin Smith. Actually, the average age of a comic-book buyer is 23, but Smith's point--that there are fans aplenty to support R-rated comics franchises--has been digested. Even PG-13 comic-book movies are maturing. Batman keeps getting darker scripts, like Nolan's The Dark Knight, starring Christian Bale and Heath Ledger (in his haunting last performance, as the Joker). Marvel Studios' first two movies, Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk, star Robert Downey Jr. and Ed Norton, Oscar-nominated actors with indie credibility. And Hellboy, who is back this summer for a sequel, is hardly your standard man in tights. He smokes cigars, drinks Red Bull and collects kittens. "Kids aren't kids anymore," says Hellboy creator Mike Mignola. "They're so exposed to everything. They wouldn't accept really simplistic superheroes." It's likely that a superhero movie like Watchmen or The Dark Knight couldn't be appreciated by audiences without the simpler fare that came before it. You can't deconstruct the superhero until someone has constructed him, rubber nipples and all. "Watchmen is thick and complicated and violent and political and critical of America," Snyder says. "It's huge."

to read full article please click

Film Semiotics: A Metalinguistic Analysis

2008-06-23T00:32:00.002-04:00

A language, by definition, is a semiotic process through which thought may be conveyed, but a language system (or linguistic system) enables a response to that thought using the degrees and kinds of signs and signifiers produced by the language. Film uses not only words, but also different kinds of shots, angles and speeds; therefore, while the audience can react to a film's semantic intent, that audience cannot address its concerns regarding the film in the same language the film used to convey its argument. For that reason, Robert Stam, Robert Burgoyne, and Sandy Flitterman-Lewis advance Christian Metz’s argument that while the means by which film expresses itself to its audience constitutes a language, it cannot constitute a linguistic system. Metz argues that

one might call ‘language’…any unity defined in terms of its matter of expression…Literary language, in this sense, is the set of messages whose matter of expression is writing; cinematic language is the set of messages whose matter of expression consists of five tracks or channels: moving photographic image, recorded phonetic sound, recorded noises, recorded musical sound, and writing…Thus cinema is a language in the sense that it is a ‘technico-sensorial unity’ graspable in perceptual experience. (37)

The language of cinema, as a result, cannot be answered by the language of literature because the two systems use different modes of expression. In support of this point, Raymond Bellour argues that film is the "Unattainable Text":

the film-text, unlike the literary text, is not ‘quotable.’ Whereas literature and literary criticism share the same medium – words – film and film analysis do not. While the film medium entails five tracks – image, dialogue, noise, music, written materials – the analysis of the film consists of a single track – words. Critical language is therefore inadequate to its object; the film always escapes the language that attempts to constitute it. (56)

To appropriately respond to a film, consequently, one would have to generate a film of his or her own using the same methods employed by the director in a manner dialogic to the film being addressed, and this is problematic for most of the viewing audience. In spite of our inability to respond to a film in its language through natural means of discourse, understanding the nature of film semiotics makes us critically aware of the language being used, and that results in an enhanced understanding of the way in which film is representative of cultural and counter-cultural values.

The book is divided into five parts, the first of which develops the terminology and history of semiotics in a chapter entitled "The Origins of Semiotics." It begins with an introduction of two seemingly interchangeable terms: semiology and semiotics. The former is defined by Ferdinand de Saussure as:

A science that studies the life of signs within society is conceivable; it would be a part of social psychology, I shall call it semiology (from Greek semeion ‘sign’). Semiology would show what constitutes signs, what laws govern them. (Course in General Linguistics 4)

The latter is derived from Charles Sanders Pierce, who proffered a similar definition of the term (4). Regardless of this semantic distinction in terminology, Stam et al. explains that the "sign is for Saussure the central fact of language, and the primordial opposition of signifier/signified constitutes the founding principle of structural linguistics" (8). The dichotomy between these two is reconciled in the following formula:

The identity of any linguistic sign is determined by the sum total of paradigmatic [involving choosing] and syntagmatic [involving combining] relations into which it enters with other linguistic signs in the same language system. (9)

The Paradigmatic is defined as "a virtual or ‘vertical’ set of units which have in common the fact that they entertain relations of similarity and contrast," and the Syntagmatic⁴ deals with "the sequential characteristics of speech, their ‘horizontal’ arrangement into a signifying whole" (9). This formula loosely resembles the linguistic system of Tagmemics, wherein diction and syntax are construed in a slot-plus-class (syntagm-plus-paradigm) relationship, which enables them to be better understood in their functional grammatology.

The use that Stam makes of this in its relationship to cinematic forms lies in the concept of translinguistics, which entails a "theory of the role of signs in human life and thought" (13), in that signs have multiple significances depending on the views of conflicting classes. This multi-accentuality⁴ is "the capacity of the sign to elicit variable social tones and ‘evaluations’ as it is deployed within specific social and historical conditions" (13). In contrast to Saussure’s structuralism, Derrida proposed a vision that went beyond it--post-structuralism. This line of thought "demonstrated a thoroughgoing distrust of any centered, totalizing theory, a radical skepticism about the possibility of constructing a metalanguage which might position, stabilize or explain all of the other discourses, since the signs of the metalanguage are themselves subject to slippage and indeterminacy" (23). By entailing "a critique of the concepts of the stable sign, of the unified subject, of identity and of truth" (23), post-structuralism

exists in both continuity and rupture with structuralism. It shares the structuralist premise of the determining, constitutive role of language, and generally continues within the structuralist problematic, especially the assumption that signification is based on difference. At the same time, it rejects structuralism’s ‘dream of scientificity,’ its hopes of stabilizing the play of difference within an all-encompassing master-system. (27)

The Saussure-Derrida disagreement’s significance to film is discussed in the second chapter entitled "Cine-Semiology," in which Christian Metz is introduced by way of transition.

The question which oriented Metz’s early work was whether the cinema was Langue (language system) or Language (language) and his well-known conclusion…was that the cinema was not a language system but that it was a language. (34)

His argument is that "langue is a system of signs intended for two-way communication, while the cinema allows only for deferred communication" (34). In today’s world, however, this assertion will eventually have to be rethought because it does not allow for interactive cinema (like porn chatrooms) or Internet conference calling where role play is being done by either party—either of which can technically be considered film-making, especially if the parts of dialogue and imagery are manipulated to produce a contrived result. Metz further argues that cinema is not a language system because "it lacks the equivalent of the arbitrary linguistic sign," replacing it instead with a ‘motivated’ sign. So, the relationship between signifier and signified differs from literature to film (35). Metz argues against the idea that the camera/cinematic shot is like the word while the sequence is like the sentence. He states as evidence that "(1) shots are infinite in number…(2) shots are the creations of the film-maker…(3) the shot provides an inordinate amount of information…(4) the shot is an actualized unit [meaning that it generates an exact representation of its intended meaning]…(and) (5) shots, unlike words, do not gain meaning by paradigmatic contrast with other shots that might have occurred in the same place on the syntagmatic chain" (35-6). Also, cinema "does not constitute a language widely available as a code" (35), for while all speakers of English can produce English, not all can produce the talent, training and access produced by filmic utterances (35). Again, this would have to be qualified in respect to advances in technology that put Internet cameras on everyone’s desktops or enabled lightweight camcorders to be used in independent film-making efforts like The Blair Witch Project. Stam argues further that language and film are both discursive "through paradigmatic and syntagmatic operations" (37).

Language selects and combines phonemes and morphemes to form sentences; film selects and combines images and sounds to form syntagmas, i.e. units of narrative autonomy in which elements interact semantically. (37)

The idea that there was one grand syntagmatic code, moreover, was refuted by others who argued that he was setting up a system too rigid to be viable. In response, Metz modified his argument to allow room for other cinematic codes. Stam explains that

like any artistic language, the cinema manifests a plurality of codes. In cinema, numerous codes remain constant across all or most films; unlike language, however, film has no ‘master code’ shared by all films. Filmic texts, for Metz, form a structured network produced by the interweaving of specific cinematic codes, i.e. codes that appear only in the cinema, and non-specific codes, i.e. codes shared with languages other than the cinema. (48-9)

The sense Metz makes of these codes, to give meaning to the plot of any given film, is discussed in the third chapter entitled "Film-narratology." Within this chapter, Stam explains the means by which the idea of a lengthy feature film is sold to an audience.

Metz argued that the organization of images into a narrative was one of the most important ways that film was like a language. The Grand Syntagmatic sought to designate and classify the specifically narrative segments of film language, which Metz understood in terms of sequences of shots, called syntagmas. These eight syntagmas [see footnote above], which were distinguished primarily through editing, expressed the spatial temporal and logical connections that form the universe of the fabula. (79)

Implicit in the need for a cohesive plot structure driven by a recognizable and powerful theme lies the necessity for these syntagmas to be sutured, or stitched, together in a way that enhances the flow of the film and generates the realism necessary for the audience to maintain credulity. The way in which those shots are sutured together is another form of communication between the film and its audience, but it is not a dialogue any more than the actors on the screen are influenced by the mood of the spectators sitting in the theater⁵. By choosing how to cut the story the film is trying to relate to the viewer, the director decides how that story is going to speak to the outside world.

That the outside world responds to film in a certain way is predicated upon its having been pre-conditioned through an innate desire to find the self in the gaze of the other. The fourth chapter, entitled "Psychoanalysis," describes one of the aims of psychoanalytic film theory as "a systematic comparison of the cinema as a specific kind of spectacle and the structure of the socially and psychically constituted individual" (123). Stam explains

If psychoanalysis examines the relations of the subject in discourse, then psychoanalytic film theory meant integrating questions of subjectivity into notions of meaning-production. Moreover, it meant that film-viewing and subject-formation were reciprocal processes: something about our unconscious identity as subjects is reinforced in film viewing, and film viewing is effective because of our unconscious participation. Moving from the interpretation of individual films to a systematic comprehension of the cinematic institution itself, some film theorists saw psycho-analysis as a way of accounting for the cinema’s immediate and pervasive social power. For them the cinema ‘reinscribes’ those very deep and globally structuring processes which form the human psyche, and it does so in such a way that we continually yearn to repeat (or re-enact) the experience. (124)

The idea that individuals can be influenced by films that mirror their latent desires within a broad range of their birth culture is interesting in the sense that it defines the culture as the macrocosm of the individual. It further seems to explain the voyeurism and vicarious living undergone by each audience member who sits alone surrounded by a crowd of other people who are alone, too. Theaters, therefore, are not social gathering places in the sense of a community’s coming together to enjoy a shared experience. They are, rather, places in which the lone individual, even if surrounded by his or her friends, can experience nascent predilections and explore formative moments within or outside of the safety of his or her own cultural norms. Spectators are able to do this as individuals either because they have already developed beyond the confines of their own understanding of the world and, therefore, are open to the suggestions of others that lay outside their realms of experience, or because they have yet to grow beyond their earliest attachments and rediscover those within the context of film.

This idea of the self as both a part of culture and as an autonomous unit with a very specific inner sense of identity helps us recognize the effect any given sequence of images may have upon us and distinguish the roles played by those images in relation to dominant cultural values. The book concludes with a chapter entitled "From Realism to Intertextuality," which lists the Comolli and Narboni taxonomy of the possible relations between a film and the dominant ideology of the culture in which the film was made. These include:

1) Dominant films, i.e. those films thoroughly imbued with dominant ideology

2) Resistant films, which attack the dominant ideology on the level both of the signified and of the signifier

3) Formally resistant films, those films which, while not explicitly political, practice formal subversion

4) Content-oriented political films, explicitly political and critical films...whose critique of the ideological system is undermined by the adoption of dominant language and imagery

5) Fissure films, i.e. films which superficially belong to dominant cinema but where an internal criticism opens up a ‘rupture’

6) Live cinema I, i.e. films depicting social events critically but which fail to challenge the cinema’s traditional ideologically conditioned method of depiction

7) Live cinema II, direct cinema films which simultaneously depict contemporary events critically and question traditional representation (196)

In each of these film types, there is a means for the spectator to either identify with or rebel against the image offered. The choice the movie offers is not necessarily compatible with the spectator’s ability to answer back with the language of the ideology, just like there is no possibility of the spectator’s being able to answer back in the language of the cinema. However, the spectator’s reaction to those choices helps that spectator define his or her place in that culture in comparison to or contrast with the values being witnessed. The signs and signifiers of the film media can, therefore, be accessed and responded to even though they engage the audience in a language the audience itself cannot speak.

Works Cited

Stam, Robert, Robert Burgoyne, and Sandy Flitterman-Lewis. New Vocabularies in Film Semiotics: Structuralism, Post-Structuralism and Beyond. New York: Routledge, 1992.

Visitors by countries

2008-03-31T20:15:00.002-04:00

Visitors by countries (provided by Sitemeter)

Movie adaptations of Dr. Seuss stories

2008-03-22T10:43:00.007-04:00

Horton captures imaginations and Seuss' vision

Rameez Anwar

Issue date: 3/21/08

After the last two movie adaptations of a Dr. Seuss story - the forgettable How the Grinch Stole Christmas and the abominable The Cat in the Hat - it had become a legitimate concern as to whether it was possible to successfully convert one of Seuss's concise classics into a full-length film. However, Hollywood's latest attempt, Horton Hears a Who!, makes the prospect of a big screen Green Eggs and Ham much less frightening. While the movie is legitimately entertaining, and not even in a "so bad it's kind of good" way, it flags in energy whenever it strays from the concept of the original story and focuses on uninspired plot additions.

For the most part, the film focuses on Dr. Seuss' original plot: Horton the elephant (The Number 23's Jim Carrey) discovers a microscopic world on a speck of dust, befriends the mayor of tiny Whoville ("The Office"'s Steve Carell) and then embarks on a journey to find a safe place to store the speck of dust.

In addition to its faithful rendition of the original plot, the movie's vibrant animation excellently captures the tone of Seuss' trademark whimsical illustrations. The live-action adaptations of Seuss' work had neutered this essential quality with pounds of creepy makeup and expensive but drab set pieces. The success of Horton's visual style seems to indicate that Seuss' magic works best in a cartoon format.

Another aspect of the movie that separates it from The Grinch and The Cat in the Hat is its refusal to allow the story to be hijacked by any of its performers. Jim Carrey tones down his act to create a sweet and sometimes funny character without overstaying his welcome.

The voice acting in general is well done, with notable performances coming from Carell and from Will Arnett ("Arrested Development") as the vulture mercenary, Vlad.

The movie only temporarily loses its way whenever it forays into the subplots added in order to extend a 10-minute read into a 90-minute movie. For instance, the plotline involving the miscommunication between the mayor and his only son (out of 97 children) is clichéd and never really gets resolved.

Besides adding these ill-advised plot devices, the movie's only other shortcoming is that it never really strikes an appropriate balance between entertaining both children and adults. For a cartoon like Horton, keeping parents and nostalgic college students from groaning or falling asleep in their seats should be subservient to the primary goal of entertaining children. However, most of the laughs in the theater were coming from the adults, while the kids often sounded confused. That isn't to say they were never laughing; on the contrary, most of the kids seemed to enjoy the movie quite a bit, judging by the looks on their faces as they exited the theater. But it often seemed like there was a chorus of "huh?" accompanying the film's soundtrack.

Overall, Horton Hears a Who! is the best of the three recent Dr. Seuss adaptations. The general adherence to the original plot, engaging but never over-the-top voice acting and lively visuals easily offset the movie's few shortcomings.

ILLUSTRATED BOOKS Movie adaptations have happy endings

2008-03-20T11:16:00.005-04:00

ILLUSTRATED BOOKS

Movie adaptations have happy endings

Friday, March 14, 2008 3:06 AM

BY MARK FEENE

THE BOSTON GLOBE

What Horton the elephant hears in the Dr. Seuss story about him is, of course, a Who.

What 20th Century Fox hopes to hear with the movie adaptation of Horton Hears a Who!, featuring the voices of Jim Carrey and Steve Carell, is something quite different: the rustle of runaway box-office receipts.

That's what Hollywood has always wanted to hear when it adapts children's stories -- and why it's adapted so many. What's notable about Horton Hears a Who! is that it marks the latest instance of an increasingly common development in Hollywood's pursuit of the family market: the return of the illustrated children's book.

Using children's picture books and illustrated novels as inspiration is nothing new for Hollywood. Several early Disney animation features originated that way. Yet the past few years have seen picture books come to the screen as never before.

Seussian cinema, as one might call illustrated-book-derived movies, has practically become its own genre: The Cat in the Hat (2003) and How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000), among others, preceded Horton. No doubt this movie connection would please Seuss, who, as Maj. Theodor Geisel, headed the animation division of Frank Capra's Armed Forces Picture unit during World War II.

Rivaling Seuss as king of the illustrated-book movie genre is Chris van Allsburg. Adaptations of his books include Jumanji (1995), The Polar Express(2004) and Zathura (2005). Like Seuss, van Allsburg has a Hollywood connection: He was a layout designer on Disney's The Little Mermaid (1989).

The genre might have rival kings, but there's no argument about who its 800-pound gorilla is -- or, rather, 800-pound ogre: The three Shrek movies, featuring the title character of William Steig's 1990 picture book, have had worldwide grosses of $1.6 billion.

Almost since they began, movies have adapted both fairy tales (Cinderella in 1899) and children's classics (Heidi in 1920). And it was a fairy tale that Walt Disney turned to for his first feature-length animated film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937).

The bad thing about the genre is how it invariably abandons one of the most cherishable elements of the books it draws on: their elegant simplicity of storytelling.

In filling out the narratives for the screen, so much of the charm, grace and character of the books' storytelling gets lost. The Shrek movies are the worst offender, but they make up for it with their inventiveness. The creepiest children's book adaptation might be The Polar Express, with its weird animatronic computer graphics.

Almost since they began, movies have adapted both fairy tales and children's classics.

REVIEW: I am Legend

2008-01-12T22:09:00.000-05:00

I Am Legend (PG-13)

Ebert: Users:

Will Smith the sole human survivor in New York City in “I Am Legend.” He has a dog.

I Am Legend

/ / / December 14, 2007

Cast & Credits

Robert Neville: Will Smith
Anna: Alice Braga
Ethan: Charlie Tahan
Zoe: Salli Richardson
Marley: Willow Smith

Warner Bros. presents a film directed by Francis Lawrence. Written by Mark Protosevich and Akiva Goldsman. Based on the novel by Richard Matheson. Running time: 114 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for intense sequences of sci-fi action and violence). Opening today at local theaters.

By Roger Ebert

The opening scenes of "I Am Legend" have special effects so good that they just about compensate for some later special effects that are dicey. We see Manhattan three years after a deadly virus has killed every healthy human on the island, except one. The streets are overgrown with weeds, cars are abandoned, the infrastructure is beginning to collapse. Down one street, a sports car races, driven by Robert Neville (Will Smith), who is trying to get a good shot at one of the deer roaming the city. He has worse luck than a lioness who competes with him.

Neville has only his dog to keep him company. He lives barricaded inside a house in Greenwich Village, its doors and windows sealed every night by heavy steel shutters. That's because after dark the streets are ruled by bands of predatory zombies -- hairless creatures who were once human but have changed into savage, speechless killers with fangs for teeth. In his basement, Neville has a laboratory where he is desperately seeking a vaccine against the virus, which mutated from a cure for cancer.

The story is adapted from a 1954 sci-fi novel by Richard Matheson, which has been filmed twice before, as "The Last Man on Earth" (1964) starring Vincent Price, and "The Omega Man" (1971) starring Charlton Heston. In the original novel, which Stephen King says influenced him more than any other, Neville cultivated garlic and used mirrors, crosses and sharpened stakes against his enemies, who were like traditional vampires, not super-strong zombies. I am not sure it is an advance to make him a scientist, arm him and change the nature of the creatures; Matheson developed a kind of low-key realism that was doubly effective.

In "I Am Legend," the situation raises questions of logic. If Neville firmly believes he is the last healthy man alive, who is the vaccine for? Only himself, I guess. Fair enough, although he faces a future of despair, no matter how long his cans of Spam and Dinty Moore beef stew hold out; dogs don't live forever. And how, I always wonder, do human beings in all their infinite shapes and sizes mutate into identical pale zombies with infinite speed and strength?

Never mind. Given its setup, "I Am Legend" is well-constructed to involve us with Dr. Neville and his campaign to survive. There is, however, an event which breaks his spirit and he cracks up -- driving out at night to try to mow down as many zombies with his car as he can before they kill him. He is saved (I'm not sure how) by a young woman named Anna (Alice Braga), who is traveling with a boy named Ethan (Charlie Tahan).

He takes them home, and she explains they are trying to get to a colony of survivors in Vermont. Neville doubts that such a colony exists. I doubt that she and the boy would venture through Manhattan to get there. Yes, she has doubtless heard his nonstop taped voice on all AM frequencies, asking to be contacted by any other survivors. But we have seen every bridge into Manhattan blown up as part of a quarantine of the island, so how did they get there? Boat? Why go to the risk?

Never mind, again, because Anna and the boy import dramatic interest into the story when it needs it. And director Francis Lawrence generates suspense effectively, even though it largely comes down to the monster movie staple of creatures leaping out of the dark, gnashing their fangs and hammering at things. The special effects generating the zombies are not nearly as effective as the other effects in the film; they all look like creatures created for the sole purpose of providing the film with menace and have no logic other than serving that purpose.

"I Am Legend" does contain memorable scenes, as when the island is being evacuated, and when Neville says goodbye to his wife and daughter (Salli Richardson and Willow Smith), and when he confides in his dog (who is not computer-generated, most of the time, anyway). And if it is true that mankind has 100 years to live before we destroy our planet, it provides an enlightening vision of how Manhattan will look when it lives on without us. The movie works well while it's running, although it raises questions that later only mutate in our minds.

REVIEW: I Am Legend

2008-01-12T22:05:00.000-05:00

Posted Dec 14th 2007 12:01AM by James Rocchi

''When I started in movies, I said, 'I want to be the biggest movie star in the world.' The biggest movie stars make the biggest movies, so (my producing partner James Lassiter and I) looked at the top 10 movies of all time. At that point, they were all special-effects movies. So Independence Day -- no-brainer. Men in Black -- no-brainer. I, Robot -- no-brainer.'' -- Will Smith, Entertainment Weekly, "Hollywood's 50 Smartest," Nov. 28, 2007

And that's a fairly loaded turn of phrase, because to many movie fans, 'no-brainer' better describes the scripts and direction of Independence Day, Men in Black and I, Robot than it does the decision to star in them. And before seeing I Am Legend, a third Hollywood version of Richard Matheson's 1954 book following in the footsteps of 1964's The Last Man on Earth and 1971's The Omega Man, the specter and spectacle of Smith's track record in big-budget science fiction loomed like a dark cloud. I walked into I Am Legend cautious and underwhelmed, with Smith's past genre efforts in mind; I staggered out of I Am Legend impressed and enthused and a little wrung-out after a well-executed and perfectly pitched demonstration of brute-force big-money horror-action film making. I'm hesitant to say how well I Am Legend will endure the test of time, but while you're watching it, you're caught in an iron grip, moved and manipulated and carried away by film makers who know exactly how to make you sink into our seat with dread. I shivered and tensed throughout I Am Legend, and at the end of the credits, I was dumbstruck to learn it was PG-13; it felt far more gripping and grim and upsetting than that rating would suggest.

I Am Legend opens with a TV newsblip, as the disarmingly unpolished Doctor Krippen explains that she and her team have found a cure for cancer by re-engineering potent viruses to attack it. The cure works; it works every time. Dr. Krippen (played by an uncredited actress whose name I won't give, but she's perfect) smiles, nervous and nerdy in her moment of triumph, and then a title jumps us Three Years Later. We see Manhattan desolate and quiet. The tunnels are flooded; the bridges destroyed; cars rust and molder as weeds crack through the pavement; some buildings wear plastic sheeting like a burial shroud. And then we see one car -- just one, a Mustang GT -- racing through the ruined streets.

The driver's Dr. Robert Neville (Smith); Neville was a doctor for the U.S. Army, a virologist. Now, he's a survivor. He may be the last one. He and his dog Sam forage and worry, with all of New York as their empty playground during the daylight. Night time, as we gather from Neville battening down iron hatches over his doors and windows at the dimming of the day, is a different story. I Am Legend has almost no voice-over, and does its best to keep exposition to a minimum, both of which add to the slow-poison sense of dread in the movie. When Sam's raced into a darkened building chasing a wounded deer during one of their daytime excursions and Neville hesitates to follow, the only thing to explain the stakes to the audience is Smith's performance and the storytelling choices of director Francis Lawrence (Constantine) as a frightened Neville sneaks through the dark, desperate to find Sam and even more desperate to get out. Smith is a charming star, but he's not charming here; watching him in I Am Legend, he's constantly sad, scared or lonely; Neville is constantly at the edge of madness or the brink of death. And Smith, to his credit, turns a character that could have been an off-the-rack collection of action hero clichés into a real and affecting performance. If we believe I Am Legend's flights of dark fancy, it's in large part because Neville believes them, to the trembling core of his soul.

And Neville should be scared; flashbacks and current events explain to us that the Krippen Cure became the Krippen Virus, and literally decimated the human race; any who survived live on as seemingly mindless, colorless, blood-hungry revved-up predators that burn at the touch of the sun. Neville is one of the minuscule fraction of humans with natural immunity to KV, but that scattered and struggling group was swiftly wiped out by the monsters as near as Neville can tell. Neville is still trying to find a cure -- he mutters "I can fix this" repeatedly as he walks the ruined world -- but he's hardly hopeful. He thinks he's the last man alive, facing an army of mindless monsters. He's wrong about a lot of things.

Regrettably, if a monster movie is only as good as its monsters, then I Am Legend loses a few points for the execution of the KV-creatures. Making every appearance of the creatures computer-generated animation (with scattered exceptions of make-up and models in specific shots) means that the KV-creatures begin to look a little too similar, a little too familiar. When the creatures swarm, you can almost hear the mouse-click sound as they're copied and pasted over and over again, an army of the identical. And while the 28 Days Later adrenaline-zombie aesthetic may be overly familiar, it still works in scenes where the howling half-human KV-creatures race towards murder -- and Akiva Goldsman and Mark Protosevitch's script always makes the level of threat the creatures present scary, even as Lawrence leans on every B-movie trick in the book. One of the best things in I Am Legend is how firmly things go from bad to worse to far, far worse like an elevator to hell, smoothly oiled and gaining speed on the way down to the depths. Goldsman and Protosevitch also fill the film with tiny, quiet details -- an abandoned apartment is posted with public health warning from the beginning of the plague; Neville's working his way through the 'G' section at the video store; Neville's bunker-brownstone is decorated with pilfered masterpieces. And while the script may have a few groan-inducing moments where subtext is spoken as text, there's nothing here to compare with the worst moments of modern big-budget sci-fi, whether the staggering stupidity of Independence Day or the clumsy cloying closure of Spielberg's War of the Worlds.

Lawrence had the good judgment to fill his technical staff with professionals, from cinematographer Andrew Lensie (King Kong, The Lord of the Rings films) to second-unit director Vic Armstrong, whose stunt and action-director work makes him legend in and of itself. (Armstrong's resume ranges from Bond to Blade, Superman to Starship Troopers, and his work here is top-notch.) Not every decision Lawrence makes is perfect -- one of Smith's forays into Times Square is shot hand-held, which feels curiously distancing, subconciously implying that the Last Man on Earth is being followed by the Last Cameraman on Earth -- but at the same time, the film's mix of present-tense (in fact, very tense) action and flashbacks is well-handled and engrossing. As I cautioned before, I don't know how well I Am Legend will hold up on repeat viewings, or over time -- but while it's happening, I Am Legend is a slick, scary, superbly made action/science fiction/horror film with a lot more art, heart and smarts than you'd expect.

Review: I Am Legend is Decent but Way Too Short

2008-01-12T22:00:00.000-05:00

Dec 13, 2007 |

Laremy Legel

Warner Bros. Pictures

icle

You know, I figured I would hate this film. The trailers for I Am Legend have been nothing short of odd; the early word on the film was dismal; and there were rumors of the ending being re-shot less than a month ago. All in all I figured it would be a bit of a disaster. So perhaps those low expectations made this come off better than it would have otherwise. Whatever the case, this bad boy is fairly watchable and I won't even be bitter when it banks a large payday this weekend.

The story is based on the novel of the same name, though I'm told by those that have read the book that the stories are so dissimilar as to be considered different works. In this, the movie version, Will Smith is Robert Neville, the last man left on Earth. He's a scientist, and I believe an Army Lieutenant Colonel to boot. The movie jumps back and forth to explain what happened, why he's the only man left... and what Neville is trying to accomplish in the present day.

What really works here is the suspense level. It's difficult to ascertain what's going on, so every corner and dark shadow is filled with dread. Will Smith does well here too: he's a man beset by troubles, clearly coming unglued after years of solitary living in New York City. That's the other cool portion of the movie, imagining a giant city, and what would become of it without people. Evidently you'd get to hunt deer from a sports car! They should have cleared out Brooklyn years ago, eh?

What doesn't work is the depth and logic of the situation. With regards to the depth, there isn't any, this movie flies by at a brisk 92 minutes. It's no wonder they are adding the first six minutes of The Dark Knight on to the front of the film. Which leads to the problem of logic. There are many situations here where you think, "Hmm, I hope they explain/elaborate on this." But nope, whoooosh, it's on to the next setup. It works for keeping the tension up, but not so much for keeping you engaged.

With all that said I'm moderately recommending this film to you and yours. You could do worse on a holiday afternoon. You may roll your eyes a time or two but you probably won't yawn. The film moves well, and the only thing I'm truly appalled by here is the marketing. They've taken pains to hammer home that Will Smith is the last man in NYC, only the film really isn't about that. They should have said "It's just like Die Hard, only with less people!" It would have been more honest, and probably wouldn't have gotten this film so much bad press. As it stands I Am Legend is a decent flick - just not worthy of the book, and not worthy of much thought past the time you spend in the theater.

REVIEW: The power of trailers is legend

2008-01-12T21:54:00.000-05:00

Phelim O'Neill
Friday December 21, 2007
The Guardian

Batman returns... The Dark Knight

If you go to see Will Smith starring in the big-budget adaptation of Richard Matheson's influential apocalyptic vampire novel, I Am Legend, at an Imax cinema, you'll see some spectacular scenes - but perhaps not the ones you were expecting. You'll see an armed robber tear off his mask to reveal an even scarier visage: his whitened cheeks bearing scars cut from the corners of his mouth, with a crude, red smear of lipstick. This terrifying apparition, taking up all of the colossal Imax screen, marks moviegoers' introduction to the Joker, as played by Heath Ledger.

If you've read I Am Legend or seen the previous movie adaptations (The Last Man On Earth and The Omega Man), then you'll recall that Batman's nemesis has thus far been conspicuous by his absence. That's still the case, sadly, but Warners has tagged on to the programme seven minutes of its new Batman movie, The Dark Knight (six minutes being the introduction to the Joker, with the rest made up from snippets of key sequences), way ahead of the movie's July 2008 opening date.

This experiment marks the convergence of two trends in film marketing. Firstly, the practice of delivering exclusive footage with another film. You may recall the fuss when George Lucas's Star Wars: The Phantom Menace trailer hit cinemas. In the US, for many weeks, you could only view it in theatres playing the Denzel Washington thriller, The Siege. Washington's pre-9/11 piece of scaremongering had nothing in common with Lucas's space opera - yet screenings were packed with Star Wars fans who had paid admission simply to catch the two-minute trailer before leaving en masse as the main feature unreeled.

The Phantom Menace trailer leads us to the second of the new marketing schemes. Trailers are traditionally, by and large, as misleading and dishonest as they can legally be: they cut together the best shots of a film without giving anything close to a true representation of what it is about. So now, usually on the internet, it's becoming common to release a few minutes, often from the movie's opening, to give the audience a proper taste of what to expect. This has worked exceedingly well for films with impressive opening sequences that seemed almost tailor-made to stand alone and leave viewers wanting more, such as the remake of Dawn of the Dead or Joss Whedon's feature version of his cancelled TV show Firefly, Serenity. Perhaps that was always the intent.

It was definitely the intent this time: director Christopher Nolan was clearly looking for the big bang of the Imax trailer effect when he made The Dark Knight. Four of the film's big action scenes were filmed in the format, a first for a blockbuster. The air was sucked out of the room by a collective gasp from those attending the preview in London recently as Gotham city appeared in razor sharp detail on a 20-metre screen.

So what has the Dark Knight footage done for the buzz about its parent film? Apart from anything else, it has silenced any doubts viewers might have had about the controversial casting of Ledger as the Joker. It may not sound particularly vital, but the core fan groups of genre - and particularly comic book-adapted movies - are incredibly vocal on the internet and can be merciless on a perceived casting mistake or thematic alteration from source material long before cameras have even stopped rolling. The effect such criticism has is palpable: the studios have run scared since the demolition job aintitcool.com did on Batman & Robin in 1997. And one happy side effect for Will Smith? It may just give I Am Legend the extra push he needs to survive a box office apocalypse.

REVIEW: I am Legend

2008-01-12T21:45:00.000-05:00

So, is it third time lucky for Richard Matheson’s acclaimed 1954 novel? Anyone who’s read I Am Legend will already know that cinema has not been kind to his masterwork. Vincent Price hammed it up in 1964’s The Last Man On Earth, while Chuck Heston was watchable in 1971’s The Omega Man. Yet neither flick managed to capture the novel’s finely tuned suspense, or its depiction of one man’s psychological nightmare after a virus has turned the world’s population into vampires. Alas, Francis Lawrence’s (Constantine) version is little improvement.

To its credit, it does at least try. The superior first half sees Will Smith give a convincing, angsty performance as Robert Neville, a scientist trying to find a cure for the hordes of Infected swarming the Earth. His only companions are a gaggle of mannequins and a dog, who not only gives the Fresh Prince someone to talk to, but also helps him hunt the iffy CGI deer now roaming the deserted streets of Manhattan.

As Neville goes about the day-to-day business of survival in this new New York, Andrew (Lord Of The Rings) Lesnie’s dazzling cinematography overshadows his every move. Bathed in a champagne glow, the Big Apple has rarely looked more eerily beautiful. While many of the effects are achieved through CGI, real location filming in sealed-off sections of New York lend the film a believable air.

Sadly, this only lasts until we catch our first glimpses of the Infected. Moving with that daft super-speed that can only come from a hard drive and about as scary as a pack of boy scouts after too many M&Ms, the virus-carrying creatures are nowhere near as threatening as they should be. They’re also unintentionally amusing, head-butting everything in sight like demented football hooligans. Factor in the syrupy moralising (via Bob Marley, of all things) of the film’s final scenes and I Am Legend emerges a valiant effort, annoyingly undermined by a misplaced faith in its computerised bad guys and a script that stutters halfway through. Read the book instead.

MODERNIST MONTAGE: The Obscurity of Vision in Cinema and Literature

2008-01-05T20:16:00.001-05:00

Writer: P. Adams Sitney
Columbia University Press, 262 p, 1990
Modernism (Literature)
ISBN 0231071833

Writer: P. Adams Sitney

Columbia University
Press, 262 p, 1990

Modernism (Literature)

ISBN 0231071833

These are the front and back covers of this highly recommended book.

BOOK: The Eye's Mind: Literary Modernism and Visual Culture

2008-01-05T19:55:00.000-05:00

Karen Jacobs
Cornell University Press
Modernism (Literature)
426 p, 2001
ISBN 0801486491

Karen Jacobs

Cornell University Press

Modernism (Literature)

426 p, 2001

ISBN 0801486491

The Eye's Mind significantly alters our understanding of modernist literature by showing how changing visual discourses, techniques, and technologies affected the novels of that period. In readings that bring philosophies of vision into dialogue with photography and film as well as the methods of observation used by the social sciences, Karen Jacobs identifies distinctly modernist kinds of observers and visual relationships.

This important reconception of modernism draws upon American, British, and French literary and extra-literary materials from the period 1900-1955. These texts share a sense of crisis about vision's capacity for violence and its inability to deliver reliable knowledge. Jacobs looks closely at the ways in which historical understandings of race and gender inflected visual relations in the modernist novel. She shows how modernist writers, increasingly aware of the body behind the neutral lens of the observer, used diverse strategies to displace embodiment onto those "others" historically perceived as cultural bodies in order to reimagine for themselves or their characters a "purified" gaze.

The Eye's Mind addresses works by such high modernists as Vladimir Nabokov, Virginia Woolf, and (more distantly) Ralph Ellison and Maurice Blanchot, as well as those by Henry James, Zora Neale Hurston, and Nathanael West which have been tentatively placed in the modernist canon although they forgo the full-blown experimental techniques often seen as synonymous with literary modernism. Jacobs reframes fundamental debates about modernist aesthetic practices by demonstrating how much those practices are indebted to the changing visual cultures of the twentieth century.

Fahrenheit 451, François Truffaut (Full Movie)

2007-12-24T17:30:00.000-05:00

to read the information about movie please click here.

The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1945 (Full Movie)

2007-12-22T13:25:00.000-05:00

The movie is divided in to several parts. You can see and watch the parts by clicking on "MENU" button.

Adaptations of The Picture of Dorian Gray

2007-12-22T13:10:00.000-05:00

Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) has inspired many cinematic, literary, and artistic adaptations.

Film

Listed in chronological order of release.

Dorian Grays Portræt (1910)
Directed by Axel Strøm
Starring Valdemar Psilander as Dorian Gray
The Picture of Dorian Gray (1913)
Directed by Phillips Smalley
Starring Wallace Reid as Dorian Gray
The Picture of Dorian Gray (1916)
Directed by Fred W Durrant; screenplay by Rowland Talbot
Starring Henry Victor as Dorian Gray; Sydney Bland as Basil Hallward; Jack Jordan as Henry Wotton; Pat O'Malley as Sybil Vane
Das Bildnis des Dorian Gray (1917)
Directed by Richard Oswald; screenplay by Richard Oswald
Starring Bernd Aldor as Dorian Gray; Ernst Ludwig as Basil Hallward; Ernst Pittschau as Henry Wotton; Lea Lara as Sibyl Vane
Az Élet királya (1918)
Directed by Alfréd Deésy; screenplay by József Pakots
Starring Norbert Dán as Dorian Gray; Gusztáv Turán as Basil Hallward; Bela Lugosi (credited as Arisztid Olt) as Henry Wotton; Ila Lóth as Sibyl Vane

Albright's painting of Dorian Gray, from the 1945 film

The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945)

Directed by Albert Lewin; screenplay by Albert Lewin
Starring Hurd Hatfield as Dorian Gray; Lowell Gilmore as Basil Hallward; George Sanders as Henry Wotton; Angela Lansbury as Sibyl Vane. Lansbury was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Considered by many to be the best version, although a love interest not found in the novel appears; Basil Hallward's niece played by Donna Reed. The film won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography, and is remarkable for its crisp black-and-white photography, and a handful of technicolor shots of the portrait, which was painted originally by Henrique Medina. Ivan le Lorraine Albright made the changes during the production. The picture took Albright a year to finish and currently hangs at the Art Institute of Chicago.
Dorian Gray, also known as The Evils of Dorian Gray or The Secret of Dorian Gray (1970)
Directed by Massimo Dallamano; screenplay by Marcello Coscia; Massimo Dallamano and Günter Ebert
Starring Helmut Berger as Dorian Gray; Richard Todd as Basil Hallward; Herbert Lom as Henry Wotton; Marie Liljedahl as Sybil Vane
The Picture of Dorian Gray (1973) (made-for-television)
Directed by Glenn Jordan; screenplay by John Tomerlin
Starring Shane Briant as Dorian Gray; Charles Aidman as Basil Hallward; Nigel Davenport as Henry Wotton; Vanessa Howard as Sybil Vane
The Picture of Dorian Gray (1976) (made-for-television)
Directed by John Gorrie; screenplay by John Osborne
Starring Peter Firth as Dorian Gray; Jeremy Brett as Basil Hallward; John Gielgud as Henry Wotton; Judi Bowker as Sibyl Vane
Le Portrait de Dorian Gray (1977)
Directed by Pierre Boutron; screenplay by Pierre Boutron
Starring Patrice Alexsandre as Dorian Gray; Denis Manuel as Basil Hallward; Raymond Gérôme as Henry Wotton; Marie-Hélène Breillat as Sybil
The Sins of Dorian Gray (1983) (made-for-television)
Directed by Tony Maylam; screenplay by Ken August and Peter Lawrence
Starring Belinda Bauer as Dorian Gray; Anthony Perkins as Henry Lord
Dorian, also known as Pact with the Devil (2001)
Directed by Allan A Goldstein; screenplay by Peter Jobin and Ron Raley
Starring Ethan Erickson as Louis/Dorian; Malcolm McDowell as Henry Wotton; Amy Sloan as Sybil
The Picture of Dorian Gray (2002)
Directed by David Rosenbaum; screenplay by David Rosenbaum
Starring Josh Duhamel as Dorian Gray; Rainer Judd as Basil Ward; Branden Waugh as Harry Wotton (changed from Henry for unknown reasons); Darby Stanchfield as Sybil Vane; Brian Durkin as James Vane
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003)
Directed by Stephen Norrington
Written by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill
Starring Stuart Townsend as Dorian Gray
Dorian (2004)
Written and Directed by Brendan Dougherty Russo
Starring Andrew Vanette as Dorian Gray; Stephen Fontana as Basil Hallward; Michael Multari as Henry; Danielle Matarese as Sibyl Vane
The Picture of Dorian Gray (2004)
Directed by David Rosenbaum; screenplay by David Rosenbaum
Starring Josh Duhamel as Dorian Gray
The Picture of Dorian Gray (2006)
Directed by Duncan Roy; screenplay by Duncan Roy
Starring David Gallagher as Dorian Gray
The Picture of Dorian Gray (2007)
Directed by Jon Cunningham; screenplay by Jon Cunningham and Deborah Warner

Literature

The Detritus of Dorian Gray appeared in a book of poems with the same title written by Kevin Max.
Dorian, an Imitation (2002) is a modern take of the original book, written by Will Self.

Plays and musicals

A theatrical production of The Picture of Dorian Gray was staged by John Osborne in the mid 1970s.

The Hungarian playwright Matyas Varkonyi wrote a musical of the book. It was premiered in 1990. Website.

The Canadian playwright Ted Dykstra, along with lyricist Steven Mayoff, wrote a musical titled Dorian based upon the book. The musical premiered in 2002 and is set in the late 1900s, with the character of Dorian transformed from a member of the idle rich to an aspiring young model.[1].

In 2006 a Czech musical based on the novel premiered in Prague [2].

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

2007-12-22T12:49:00.000-05:00

The Picture of Dorian Gray is the only published novel written by Oscar Wilde, and first came out as the lead story in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine on June 20, 1890.[1] Wilde later revised this edition, making several alterations, and adding new chapters; the amended version was published by Ward, Lock, and Company in April 1891.[2]

The novel tells of a young man named Dorian Gray, the subject of a painting by artist Basil Hallward, who is greatly impressed by Dorian's physical beauty and becomes strongly infatuated with him, believing that his beauty is responsible for a new mode in his art. Talking in Basil's garden, Dorian meets Lord Henry Wotton, a friend of Basil's, and becomes enthralled by Lord Henry's world view. Espousing a new kind of hedonism, Lord Henry suggests that the only thing worth pursuing in life is beauty, and the fulfilment of the senses. Realising that one day his beauty will fade, Dorian cries out, wishing that the portrait Basil has painted of him would age rather than himself. Dorian's wish is fulfilled, subsequently plunging him into a series of debauched acts. The portrait serves as a reminder of the effect each act has upon his soul, with each sin being displayed as a disfigurement of his form, or through a sign of aging.

The Picture of Dorian Gray is considered one of the last works of classic gothic horror fiction with a strong Faustian theme.[3] It deals with the artistic movement of the decadents, and homosexuality, both of which caused some controversy when the book was first published. However, in modern times, the book has been referred to as "one of the modern classics of Western literature."[4]

Plot summary
The novel begins with Lord Henry Wotton observing the artist Basil Hallward painting the portrait of a handsome young man named Dorian Gray. Dorian arrives later, meeting Lord Henry Wotton. After hearing Lord Henry's world view, Dorian begins to think that beauty is the only worthwhile aspect of life, and the only thing left to pursue. He wishes that the portrait of him which Basil is painting would grow old instead of him. Under the influence of Lord Henry, Dorian begins an exploration of his senses. He discovers an actress, Sibyl Vane, who performs Shakespeare in a dingy theatre. Dorian approaches her, and very soon, proposes marriage. Sibyl, who refers to him as "Prince Charming", rushes home to tell her skeptical mother and brother. Her protective brother, James, tells her that if "Prince Charming" ever harms her, he will kill him.

Dorian then invites Basil and Lord Henry to see Sibyl perform in Romeo and Juliet. Sibyl, whose only previous knowledge of love was through the love of theatre, suddenly loses her acting abilities through the experience of true love with Dorian, and performs very badly. Dorian rejects her, saying that her beauty was in her art, and if she could no longer act, he was no longer interested in her. Once he returns home, Dorian notices that Basil's portrait of him has changed. After examining the painting, Dorian realizes that his wish has come true - the portrait's expression now bears a subtle sneer, and later ages with each grave sin committed, whilst his own outward appearance remains unchanged. He decides to reconcile with Sibyl, but Lord Henry arrives in the morning to say that Sibyl has killed herself by swallowing prussic acid. Over the next eighteen years he experiments with every vice, mostly under the influence of a "poisonous" French novel, a present from Lord Henry. Wilde never reveals the title but his inspiration was likely drawn from Joris-Karl Huysmans's À rebours (Against Nature) due to the likenesses that exist between The Picture of Dorian Gray and À rebours.[5]

One night before he leaves for Paris, Basil arrives to question Dorian about the rumours of his indulgences. Dorian does not deny the debauchery. He takes Basil to the portrait which is revealed to have become ugly under Dorian's sins. In a fit of anger, Dorian blames the artist for his fate, and stabs him to death. He then blackmails an old friend named Alan Cambell, who happened to be a chemist, into destroying the body. Wishing to escape his crime, Dorian travels to an opium den. James Vane happens to be nearby, and hears someone refer to Dorian as "Prince Charming". He follows Dorian out and attempts to shoot him, but he is deceived when Dorian asks James to look at him in the lane, saying that he is too young to have been involved with his sister eighteen years ago. James releases Dorian, but is approached by a woman from the opium den, who chastises him for not killing Dorian and tells him that Dorian has not aged for the past eighteen years.

Whilst at dinner one night, Dorian sees Sibyl Vane's brother stalking the grounds and fears for his life. However, during a game-shooting party the next day James is accidentally shot and killed by one of the hunters. After returning to London, Dorian informs Lord Henry that he will be good from now on, and has started by not breaking the heart of his latest innocent conquest, a vicar's daughter in a country town, named Hetty Merton. At his apartment, he wonders if the portrait would have begun to change back, losing its senile, sinful appearance, now that he has changed his immoral ways. He unveils the portrait to find that it has become worse. Seeing this he begins to question the motives behind his act, whether it was merely vanity, curiosity, or seeking new emotional excess. Deciding that only a full confession would truly absolve him, but lacking any guilt and fearing the consequences, he decides to destroy the last vestige of his conscience. In a fit of rage, he picks up the knife that killed Basil Hallward, and plunges it into the painting. Hearing his cry from inside the locked room, his servants send for the police, who find Dorian's body, suddenly aged and withered, beside the portrait, which has reverted to its original form; it is only through his rings that the corpse can be identified.

Characters
In a letter, Wilde stated that the main characters of The Picture of Dorian Gray are in different ways reflections of himself: "Basil Hallward is what I think I am: Lord Henry what the world thinks me: Dorian what I would like to be—in other ages, perhaps."[6]

* Dorian Gray - an extremely handsome young man who becomes enthralled with Lord Henry's idea of a new hedonism. He begins to indulge in every kind of pleasure, moral and immoral.
* Basil Hallward - an artist who becomes infatuated with Dorian's beauty. Dorian helps Basil to realise his artistic potential, as Basil's portrait of Dorian proves to be his finest work.
* Lord Henry Wotton - a nobleman who is a friend to Basil initially, but later becomes more intrigued with Dorian's beauty and naivety. Extremely witty, Lord Henry is seen as a critique of late Victorian culture espousing a view of indulgent hedonism. He corrupts Dorian with his world view, as Dorian attempts to emulate him. Basil calls him "Harry".
* Sibyl Vane - An extremely poor but beautiful actress with whom Dorian falls in love. Her love for Dorian destroys her acting career, as she no longer finds pleasure in portraying fictional love when she has a true love in reality.
* James Vane - Sibyl's brother who is to become a sailor and leave for Australia. He is extremely protective of his sister, especially as his mother is useless and concerned only with Dorian's money. He is hesitant to leave his sister, believing Dorian will harm her.
* Mrs. Vane - Sibyl and James's mother, an old and faded actress. She has consigned herself and Sibyl to a poor theatre house to pay her debts. She is extremely pleased when Sibyl meets Dorian, being impressed by his status and wealth.
* Alan Campbell - once a good friend of Dorian, he ended their friendship when Dorian's reputation began to come into question.
* Lady Agatha - Lord Henry’s aunt. Lady Agatha is active in charity work in the London slums.
* Lord Fermor - Lord Henry's uncle. He informs Lord Henry about Dorian's lineage.
* Victoria, Lady Henry Wotton - Lord Henry's wife, who only appears once in the novel whilst Dorian waits for Lord Henry. She later divorces Lord Henry in exchange for a pianist.
* Victor - a loyal servant to Dorian. Dorian's increasing paranoia, however, leads him to use Victor to complete pointless errands in an attempt to dissuade him from entering the room that houses Dorian's portrait.

Aestheticism and duplicity

Aestheticism is a strong theme in The Picture of Dorian Gray, and is tied in with the concept of the double life. Although Dorian is hedonistic, when Basil accuses him of making Lord Henry's sister's name a "by-word", Dorian replies "Take care, Basil. You go too far"[7] suggesting that Dorian still cares about his outward image and standing within Victorian society. Wilde highlights Dorian's pleasure of living a double life, describing how Dorian returns home sometimes to look at his portrait, and, when looking at the disfigurement of the portrait, "[grows] more and more enamoured of his own beauty, more and more interested in the corruption of his own soul."[8] Not only does Dorian enjoy this sensation in private, but he also feels "keenly the terrible pleasure of a double life" when attending a society gathering just 24 hours after committing a murder.

This duplicity and indulgence is most evident in Dorian's visits to the opium dens of London. Wilde conflates the images of the upper class and lower class by having the supposedly upright Dorian visit the impoverished districts of London. Lord Henry asserts that "crime belongs exclusively to the lower orders...I should fancy that crime was to them what art is to us, simply a method of procuring extraordinary sensations", which suggests that Dorian is both the criminal and the aesthete combined in one man. This is perhaps linked to Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, which Wilde admired.[9] The division that was witnessed in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, although extreme, is evident in Dorian Gray, who attempts to contain the two divergent parts of his personality, this is a recurring theme in many of the gothic novels of which "The Picture Of Dorian Gray" is one of the last.

Homoeroticism

The name "Dorian" has connotations of the Dorians, an ancient Hellenic tribe. Robert Mighall suggests that this could be Wilde hinting at a connection to "Greek love", a euphemism for the homoeroticism that was accepted as everyday in ancient Greece. Indeed, Dorian is described using the semantic field of the Greek Gods, being likened to Adonis, a person who looks as if "he were made of ivory and rose-leaves." However, Wilde does not mention any homosexual acts explicitly, and descriptions of Dorian's "sins" are often vague, although there does appear to be an element of homoeroticism in the competition between Lord Henry and Basil, both of whom compete for Dorian's attention. Both of them make comments about Dorian in praise of his good looks and youthful demeanour, Basil going as far to say that "as long as I live, the personality of Dorian Gray will dominate me."[10] However, whilst Basil is shunned, Dorian wishes to emulate Lord Henry, which in turn rouses Lord Henry from his "characteristic languor to a desire to influence Dorian, a process that is itself a sublimated expression of homosexuality."[11]

The later corruption of Dorian seems to make what was once a boyish charm become a destructive influence. Basil asks why Dorian's "friendship is so fatal to young men", commenting upon the "shame and sorrow" that the father of one of the disgraced boys displays. Dorian only destroys these men when he becomes "intimate" with them, suggesting that the friendships between Dorian and the men in question become more than simply Platonic. The shame associated with these relationships is bipartite: the families of the boys are upset that their sons may have indulged in a homosexual relationship with Dorian Gray, and also feel shame that they have now lost their place in society, their names having been sullied; their loss of status is encapsulated in Basil's questioning of Dorian: speaking of the Duke of Perth, a disgraced friend of Dorian's, he asks "what gentleman would associate with him?"[7] The novel is considered groundbreaking in the context that, in literature, "Dorian Gray was one of the first in a long list of hedonistic fellows whose homosexual tendencies secured a terrible fate."[12]

Tannhäuser

At one point, Dorian Gray attends a performance of Richard Wagner's opera, Tannhäuser, and is explicitly said to personally identify with the work. Indeed, the opera bears some striking resemblances with the novel, and, in short, tells the story of a medieval (and historically real) singer, whose art is so beautiful that he causes Venus, the goddess of love herself, to fall in love with him, and to offer him eternal life with her in the Venusburg. Tannhäuser becomes dissatisfied with his life there, however, and elects to return to the harsh world of reality, where, after taking part in a song-contest, he is sternly censured for his sensuality, and eventually dies in his search for repentance and the love of a good woman. It might even be argued that the end of the opera, in which a miracle announces the salvation of Tannhäuser's soul, suggests, perhaps, a more optimistic interpretation of Dorian's end than might otherwise be thought of.

Faust

Wilde himself stated that "in every first novel the hero is the author as Christ or Faust." As in Faust, a temptation is placed before the lead character Dorian, the potential for ageless beauty; Dorian indulges in this temptation. In both stories, the lead character entices a beautiful woman to love them and kills not only her, but also that woman's brother, who seeks revenge.[13] Wilde went on to say that the notion behind The Picture of Dorian Gray is "old in the history of literature" but was something to which he had "given a new form".[14]

Unlike Faust, there is no point at which Dorian makes a deal with the devil. However, Lord Henry's cynical outlook on life, and hedonistic nature seems to be in keeping with the idea of the devil's role, that of the temptation of the pure and innocent, qualities which Dorian exemplifies at the beginning of the book. Although Lord Henry takes an interest in Dorian, it does not seem that he is aware of the effect of his actions. However, Lord Henry advises Dorian that "the only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing";[15] in this sense, Lord Henry acts as the devil's advocate, "leading Dorian into an unholy pact by manipulating his innocence and insecurity."[16]

Tír na nÓg

Another Irish tale which was of influence is of Oisín and Tír na nÓg (Land of Eternal Youth), a salutory tale of temptation and consequences.[citation needed] See also the Japanese folktale, Urashima Tarō, which shares some similarities, and Rip van Winkle.

Shakespeare

When Dorian is telling lord Henry Wotton about his new 'love', Sibyl Vane he refers to all of the Shakespearean plays she has been in, referring to her as the heroine of each play. At a later time, he speaks of his life by quoting Hamlet.

Joris-Karl Huysmans

Dorian Gray's "poisonous French novel" is most likely Huysmans' À rebours.

Literary significance

The Picture of Dorian Gray began as a short novel submitted to Lippincott's Monthly Magazine. In 1889, J. M. Stoddart, a proprietor for Lippincott, was in London to solicit short novels for the magazine. Wilde submitted the first version of The Picture of Dorian Gray, which was published on 20 June 1890 in the July edition of Lippincott's. There was a delay in getting Wilde's work to press whilst numerous changes were made to the manuscripts of the novel (some of which survive to this day). Some of these changes were made at Wilde's instigation, and some at Stoddart's. Wilde removed all references to the fictitious book "Le Secret de Raoul", and to its fictitious author, Catulle Sarrazin. The book and its author are still referred to in the published versions of the novel, but are unnamed.

Wilde also attempted to moderate some of the more homoerotic instances in the book, or instances whereby the intentions of the characters may be misconstrued. In the 1890 edition, Basil tells Henry how he "worships" Dorian, and begs him not to "take away the one person that makes my life absolutely lovely to me." The focus for Basil in the 1890 edition seems to be more towards love, whereas the Basil of the 1891 edition cares more for his art, saying "the one person who gives my art whatever charm it may possess: my life as an artist depends on him." The book was also extended greatly: the original thirteen chapters became twenty, and the final chapter was divided into two new chapters. The additions involved the "fleshing out of Dorian as a character" and also provided details about his ancestry, which helped to make his "psychological collapse more prolonged and more convincing."[17]The character of James Vane was also introduced, which helped to elaborate upon Sibyl Vane's character and background; the addition of the character helped to emphasise and foreshadow Dorian's selfish ways, as James foresees Dorian's character, and guesses upon his future dishonourable actions (the inclusion of James Vane's sub-plot also gives the novel a more typically Victorian tinge, part of Wilde's attempts to decrease the controversy surrounding the book). Another notable change is that, in the latter half of the novel, events were specified as taking place around Dorian Gray's 32nd birthday, on 7 November. After the changes, they were specified as taking place around Dorian Gray's 38th birthday, on 9 November, thereby extending the period of time over which the story occurs. The former date is also significant in that it coincides with the year in Wilde's life during which he was introduced to homosexual practices.

Preface
The preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray was added, along with other amendments, after the edition published in Lippincott's received criticism. Wilde used it to address these criticisms and defend the novel's reputation.[18] It consists of a collection of statements about the role of the artist, art itself, the value of beauty, and serves as an indicator of the way in which Wilde intends the novel to be read, as well as traces of Wilde's exposure to Daoism and the writings of Zhuangzi. Shortly before penning the preface, Wilde reviewed Herbert A. Giles's translation of the writings of the Chinese Daoist philosopher.[19] In his review, he writes:

The honest ratepayer and his healthy family have no doubt often mocked at the dome-like forehead of the philosopher, and laughed over the strange perspective of the landscape that lies beneath him. If they really knew who he was, they would tremble. For Chuang Tsǔ spent his life in preaching the great creed of Inaction, and in pointing out the uselessness of all things.[20]

Criticism
Overall, initial critical reception of the book was poor, with the book gaining "certain notoriety for being 'mawkish and nauseous,' 'unclean,' 'effeminate,' and 'contaminating.'"[21] This had much to do with the novel's homoerotic overtones, which caused something of a sensation amongst Victorian critics when first published. A large portion of the criticism was levelled at Wilde's perceived hedonism, and its distorted views of conventional morality. The Daily Chronicle of 30 June 1890 suggests that Wilde's novel contains "one element...which will taint every young mind that comes in contact with it." Although the element is not named explicitly, the homoeroticism of the novel, especially of the first edition, seems the likely subject. The Scots Observer of 5 July 1890 asks why Wilde must "go grubbing in muck-heaps?” Wilde responded to such criticisms by curtailing some of the homoerotic tendencies, and by adding six chapters to the book in an effort to add background.[22]

Allusions from other works

* Numerous songs and band names reference The Picture of Dorian Gray or its title character.
o Morrissey has made many references to Wilde's works; in the song "Glamorous Glue", Morrissey quotes Dorian's affirmation that he is "too much in love" to marry.[23]
o The Libertines also mention Dorian in their song "Narcissist", questioning the worth of being narcissistic.
o U2 also reference Dorian Gray in the song "The Ocean"
o Television Personalities has a song named "A Picture of Dorian Gray"
o Critical Mass has a song called "Dorian Gray", dealing with pornography
o James Blunt used the line "hides my true shape, like Dorian Gray" in his song "Tears and Rain"
o an industrial metal electronica group have also named themselves after the lead character Dorian Gray
o in "Scream," a song about lost love, the band Kill Hannah mention Sibyl Vane as an allusion to committing suicide
o in "You Ruined Everything," the American singer-songwriter Kristeen Young also alludes to Sibyl and her loss of artistic power after falling in love
o in Liz Phair's H.W.C., a song about the youth-giving effects of a male's semen, she sings: "Without you, I'm just another Dorian Gray"
o the song "Dorian" by the band Demons and Wizards, which specifically recalls the story of Dorian Gray
o INXS alludes to the novel in their song 'Who Pays The Price' which includes the lines 'As the years go by/Will it show on your face/Or stay hidden behind some door'
o The Futureheads have a song named 'A Picture of Dorian Gray'
o Farewell Flight also have a song named after Dorian Gray- 'The Murder of Dorian Gray' with the lyrics "Stare back, Dorian Grey, Your picture tells the story well...Stare back, Dorian Grey, Your mirror tells the story well"
o The American rock band Styx alludes to the book on their 1978 album Pieces of Eight. The song "Sing for the Day", written by Tommy Shaw, features the line: 'Ageless and timeless as Dorian Gray'
o A Swedish rock band named Dorian Gray also exists, with the first of their albums being titled The Sounds of Dorian Gray.
o Singer/songwriter Darren Hayes mentions Dorian Gray in his song "The Future Holds a Lion's Heart" from his fourth album. It features the line: 'When my heart was in the attic like The Picture of Dorian Gray'
o American glam metal band Mötley Crüe references Dorian Gray in their song "New Tattoo" in the line: "I could be your Dorian Gray."
o Heavy Metal band Savatage refers to Dorian Gray in the song Tonight He Grins Again from the album Streets: A Rock Opera: Something cold as pain, Burning inside my veins, I walk away, A shadow of Dorian Gray
* Will Self updated the novel by placing events in June 1981, a time according to Self when "Britain was in the process of burning most of its remaining illusions."[24] In Self's novel, the homoeroticism that was merely an undertone of the original work becomes an overt theme: Self's Dorian indulges in homosexual orgies. The portrait of Dorian is replaced with a postmodern piece of art involving video cassette recorders and televisions
* In Amanda Filipacchi's novel Nude Men, one of the main characters is Lady Henrietta, a painter of nude men, who is a female version of Lord Henry from The Picture of Dorian Gray. Like Lord Henry, she states her philosophies (which some might find immoral), in ways that make them sound very logical.
* Rick R. Reed also wrote A Face Without a Heart, a variation on The Picture of Dorian Gray; in lieu of a portrait, Reed has a sophisticated hologram which changes with each sin that Dorian commits
* The Picture of Dorian Gray was also parodied by contemporary journalist and novelist Robert S. Hichens in The Green Carnation
* The 2006 Irvine Welsh novel The Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs has a number of similarities with The Picture of Dorian Gray
* In Jasper Fforde's book The Fourth Bear, the protagonist Jack Spratt purchases a new car from a car dealership run by Dorian Gray. The car does not get damaged in accidents with a painting of the car in the boot getting damaged instead. The cars odometer also goes backward with it eventually been destroyed when it reaches zero.
* The American comic book series Starman has the unageing anti-hero The Shade discuss his own friendship with Oscar Wilde. The Shade insists that Dorian Gray is based on a real being, an immortal man who uses a demonic poster to steal souls. Interestingly the author made an error in having the character refer to the novel as the "Portrait of Dorian Gray." Although an unintentional mistake by the author this was later incorporated into a major plot elements for the character.
* Dorian Grey is also mentioned in the film The Seven Year Itch.
* In the third book of the Nancy Drew Girl Detective Super Mystery book series, Nancy participates in a TV reality show about solving mysteries. The name Dorian Gray and Oscar Wilde appear several times as clues (with one of the other cast members mentioning that it was a famous 19th century novel), and Nancy visits Wilde's grave in Paris.
* The character Dorian in the British science-fiction series Blake's Seven channels all his negative emotions and acts into a hideous creature living far beneath the surface of the planet Xenon, in much the same way as Dorian Gray. When the creature is killed, Dorian dies an horrific death.
* In the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode Man of the People, Ambassador Alkar channels all his negative emotions into female 'receptacles' with whom he has bonded. The receptacles suffer from accelerated aging. When the bond is severed Alkar dies of sudden old age.
* In the American TV series Get Smart there is an episode from the fifth season called "Age Before Duty". In this episode, there is a scientist named Felix, who develops a paint that he calls "Dorian Gray". When this paint is used on a picture of somebody to retouch the picture, in order to make the person in it look old, the person ages extremely fast in real life (in a matter of hours; for instance, the episode begins with a man dying of old age, even though he is only 28 years old).
* Dr. John Dorian, the main character on the television show Scrubs, is a reference to Dorian Gray as Dr. Dorian frequently wanders off in fantasy daydreams. Dr. Robert Kelso, the chief of medicine at the fictional hospital in Scrubs is named after Lord Kelso.

Film, television and theatrical adaptations

Main article: Adaptations of The Picture of Dorian Gray

The Picture of Dorian Gray has been the subject of several film remakes.

* According to the BBC, the most notable adaptation was Albert Lewin's 1945 film The Picture of Dorian Gray,[25] which won an Oscar for "Best Cinematography, Black-and-White".[26] One of the most noted aspects of this version was Lewin's choice to portray the film in black and white despite the fact that technicolor was available at the time. Instead, he shot the film in black and white, and used a "breathtaking" technicolor effect to show the effects Dorian's actions have on the portrait.[27]
* The BBC created a highly regarded TV version in 1976, with Peter Firth as Dorian Gray.
* Dorian Gray was a character portrayed by Stuart Townsend in Stephen Norrington's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, which was based on the graphic novel of the same name, written by Alan Moore. Dorian Gray was not originally included in Moore's graphic novel, and Dorian's inclusion was a decision made by Norrington. A "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" is assembled in an attempt to stop the villain "The Fantom" from destroying Venice. Dorian Gray is selected for his immortality; however, the film version expands upon the novel by suggesting that not only does the portrait keep Dorian from aging, but also from suffering injuries. In addition, Dorian is unable to look at his own portrait; if he does, then the "spell" will be broken, and his powers will be lost — effectively killing him, as he had already reached an age impossible for any mortal being, as well as suffered numerous injuries. During the film, he is revealed to have had a past relationship with fellow immortal Mina Harker — here a vampire — but it is later revealed that he is actually a double agent, secretly working for the Fantom, who has stolen his portrait to blackmail him into acquiring samples of the other League members so that he can duplicate their powers. At the conclusion of the film, Dorian fights Mina in a duel, which ends when he is pinned to the wall with his own sword and forced to look at his portrait, turning him to dust in a matter of seconds.[28]
* A new film version of The Picture of Dorian Gray is currently in production, directed by Jon Cunningham and filmed in the Czech Republic.[29]
* The Faustian theme of The Picture of Dorian Gray has also made it a popular choice for television, being adapted for use as a storyline for episodes in some television series':
o The theme of being able to remain young forever was used in the British science fiction TV show Blake's 7 in the episode Rescue which debuted season 4. In it a character named Dorian forces others to absorb his physical and mental defects via a monster he holds in a cave.
o Star Trek: The Next Generation also used the novel as inspiration for its 129th episode Man of the People. In the episode, an Ambassador Vel Alkar uses women as an object to which all of his negative aspects can be channelled. This results in the women's dispositions changing, each becoming more and more irritable. They also begin to age much more quickly, until they "burn out" and die. Deanna Troi becomes a near victim, until a plan is created to cause Vel Alkar to receive all of the emotions he has channelled away from himself. When this occurs, he rapidly ages and dies from his own emotions, much in the same way Dorian Gray does after confronting his portrait at the end of The Picture of Dorian Gray
* An operatic version of The Picture of Dorian Gray was staged by Lowell Liebermann. Liebermann wanted to base a play on The Picture of Dorian Gray because "the book made an impression on [him] as no other book has yet done".[30] Premiered at the Monte Carlo Opera in 1996,[31] Liebermann put a lot of emphasis on the musical score of the play, saying:

The entire opera is based on a twelve-note row which is used not serially, but tonally. It is first heard at the beginning of the opera in pizzicato cellos and basses. It is harmonised as Dorian's theme and then as the painting theme. As the painting disintegrates and becomes corrupted, so does its theme. The twelve consecutive scenes of the opera occur in the keys of the consecutive pitches of the note-row. In this manner the entire opera becomes one grand passacaglia, a variation of Dorian's theme, a picture of the picture---the tonal structure generated by a non-tonal device, a further metaphor for the form/content divide that generates the novel's dramatic structure.
—Opera World

* The afternoon ABC daytime drama Dark Shadows (1966-1971) featured a storyline clearly inspired by Wilde's novel, in which a portrait of Quentin Collins aged grotesquely while Collins himself remained youthful. ABC also presented an adaptation of Dorian Gray itself as a 1973 entry in its Movie of the Week series directed by Glenn Jordan, produced by Dan Curtis and starring Shane Briant.
* The Sins of Dorian Gray is a 1983 ABC television movie featuring Belinda Bauer as an actress whose first screen test as a young starlet ages, while she becomes a star known for remaining unusually youthful.

Footnotes and references

1. ^ The Picture of Dorian Gray (Penguin Classics) - Introduction
2. ^ Notes on The Picture of Dorian Gray - An overview of the text, sources, influences, themes and a summary of The Picture of Dorian Gray
3. ^ glbtq >> literature >> Ghost and Horror Fiction - a website which discusses ghost and horror fiction from the 19th century onwards (retrieved 30 July 2006)
4. ^ Books of the poet: Oscar Wilde - a website which gives synopses for several books, including The Picture of Dorian Gray (retrieved 27 August 2006
5. ^ Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray. Highbeam Research. Retrieved on 2007-04-26.
6. ^ The Modern Library - a synopsis of the book coupled with a short biography of Oscar Wilde (retrieved 6 July 2006)
7. ^ a b The Picture of Dorian Gray (Penguin Classics) - Chapter XII
8. ^ The Picture of Dorian Gray (Penguin Classics) - Chapter XI
9. ^ The Picture of Dorian Gray (Penguin Classics) - Introduction
10. ^ The Picture of Dorian Gray (Penguin Classics) - Chapter I
11. ^ glbtq >> literature >> Wilde, Oscar - an analysis of the works of Oscar Wilde (retrieved 29 July 2006)
12. ^ Meloy, Kilian (2007-09-24). "Influential Gay Characters in Literature". AfterElton.com. Retrieved on 2007-10-09.
13. ^ Oscar Wilde Quotes - a quote from Oscar Wilde about The Picture of Dorian Gray and its likeness to Faust (retrieved 7 July 2006)
14. ^ 'The Picture of Dorian Gray (Penguin Classics) - Preface
15. ^ The Picture of Dorian Gray (Penguin Classics) - Chapter II
16. ^ The Picture of Dorian Gray - a summary and commentary of Chapter II of The Picture of Dorian Gray (retrieved 29 July 2006)
17. ^ The Picture of Dorian Gray (Penguin Classics) - A Note on the Text
18. ^ GraderSave: ClassicNote - a summary and analysis of the book and its preface (retrieved 5 July 2006)
19. ^ The Preface first appeared with the publication of the novel in 1891. But by June of 1890, Wilde was defending his book (see The Letters of Oscar Wilde], Merlin Holland and Rupert Hart-Davis eds., Henry Holt (2000), ISBN 0-8050-5915-6 and The Artist as Critic, ed. Richard Ellmann, University of Chicago (1968), ISBN 0-226-89764-8 — where Wilde's review of Giles's translation is incorrectly identified with Confucius.) Wilde's review of Giles's translation was published in The Speaker of 8 February 1890.
20. ^ Ellmann, The Artist as Critic, 222.
21. ^ The Modern Library - a synopsis of the book coupled with a short biography of Oscar Wilde (retrieved 6 July 2006)
22. ^ CliffsNotes::The Picture of Dorian Gray - an introduction and overview the book (retrieved 5 July 2006)
23. ^ IMEAT - Morrissey's Sources - a site that chronicles The Smiths and Morrissey lyrics. This page deals sepecifically with the allusions to other works that can be found in Morrissey and The Smiths' lyrics (retrieved 26 August 2006)
24. ^ Observer review: Dorian by Will Self - a review of Will Self's reworking of The Picture of Dorian Gray (retrieved 26 August 2006)
25. ^ BBC - Films - review - a review of Albert Lewin's film version of The Picture of Dorian Gray (retrieved 27 August 2006
26. ^ Awards for The Picture of Dorian Gray - a list of awards presented to Albert Lewin's film version of The Picture of Dorian Gray (retrieved 27 August 2006)
27. ^ Movie Review - Picture of Dorian Gray, The - a review of Albert Lewin's film version of The Picture of Dorian Gray (retrieved 27 August 2006)
28. ^ Dorian Gray, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen - an overview of Dorian Gray as he is presented in the film The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (film) (retrieved 27 August 2006)
29. ^ IMDB listing for new movie (retrieved 21 June 2007)
30. ^ OperaWorld.com's Opera Insights: The Picture of Dorian Gray - a discussion of The Picture of Dorian Gray, and the play by the same name composed by Lowell Libermann (retrieved 30 August 2006])
31. ^ us Operaweb - The Picture of Dorian Gray - an overview of the operatic version of The Picture of Dorian Gray, with quotes from the composer (retrieved 30 August) 2006

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Reviews: Atonement

2007-12-18T23:03:00.000-05:00

	Dec 7, 2007 5:20 AM to read more please click on titles Atonement / ** (R) from RogerEbert Headlines "Atonement**" (R, 122 minutes) An event on the lawn of an English country house is misinterpreted by a 13-year-old girl, and leads her to a wicked lie that destroys all possibility of happiness her herself, hr older sister (Keira Knightley) and her sister's lover (James McAvoy). Begins in sheer happiness, ventures through the horror of the war in France and London, ends in darkest irony. One of the year's best films, a certain best picture nominee. Rating: Three stars. The daughter of an upper-class British family (Keira Knightley) falls for a housekeeper’s son (James McAvoy), with tragic results.


	Dec 6, 2007 8:44 PM Review: Atonement Sizzles In A Most Pleasing Manner from Film.com Movie Blog Atonement is great, but it's great like a magic trick in that I'm afraid talking about it, even a little, will disturb your experience. I'd like you to have the same journey I did - not knowing much about it, then perhaps giving it grudging respect midway through before finally succumbing fully to its charms as the final credits roll. This is the sort of film that's constructed to impress an audience without expectations of what it is... or what it's supposed to be. The story, based on Ian


	Dec 7, 2007 11:10 AM Movie Review \| 'Atonement': Lies, Guilt, Stiff Upper Lips from NYT > Movie Reviews by A. O. SCOTT “Atonement” is an almost classical example of how pointless, how diminishing, the transmutation of literature into film can be.

Romeo and Juliet on screen

2007-12-17T09:50:00.000-05:00

Franco Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet (1968)

In putting Romeo and Juliet on screen, the director must set the action in a social context that illuminates the characters, and mediates between the Renaissance play and modern audiences.[1] In 1970, George Cukor commented on why his "stately" and "stodgy" 1936 adaptation had not stood the test of time, saying that if he had the opportinity to make it again he would "get the garlic and the mediterranean into it".[2] Yet that performance (featuring Norma Shearer and Leslie Howard, with a combined age over 75, as the teenage lovers) had garnered no fewer than four Oscar nominations.[3]

The films' openings highlight each director's care to establish authenticity: Cukor introduces his characters in a shot of a scene played on a proscenium stage; Renato Castellani's 1954 version opens with John Gielgud, famous as a stage Romeo, as the Prologue in Elizabethan doublet and hose; Zeffirelli sets his scene with an overview of Verona, and his Prologue, in voiceover, was another famous stage Romeo: Laurence Olivier. In contrast, Baz Luhrmann's 1996 film, Romeo + Juliet, was targeted at a young audience, and opens with images of television and print journalism.[4]

A particular difficulty for the screen-writer arises towards the end of the fourth act, where Shakespeare's play requires considerable compression to be effective on the big screen, without giving the impression of "cutting to the chase".[5] In Franco Zeffirelli's 1968 version, Juliet's return home from the Friar's cell, her submission to her father and the preparation for the wedding are drastically abbreviated, and the tomb scene is also cut short: Paris does not appear at all, and Benvolio (in the Balthazar role) is sent away but is not threatened.[6] In Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet, the screenplay allows Juliet to witness Romeo's death, and the role of the watch is cut, permitting Friar Lawrence to remain with Juliet and to be taken by surprise by her sudden suicide.[7]

In total, Shakespeare's play has been filmed over 40 times. In addition, several reworkings of the story have also been filmed, most notably West Side Story, Prokofiev's ballet and Romanoff and Juliet. Also, several theatrical films, such as Shakespeare in Love and Romeo Must Die, consciously use elements of Shakespeare's plot.

Performances

* Romeo and Juliet (USA, silent, 1908)
o J. Stuart Blackton director
o Florence Lawrence as Juliet
o Paul Panzer as Romeo
* Romeo and Juliet (USA, 1936)
o George Cukor director
o Norma Shearer as Juliet
o Leslie Howard as Romeo
o John Barrymore as Mercutio
o Andy Devine as Peter
+ The film received four Academy Awards nominations:
# Best Picture - Irving Thalberg, producer
# Best Actor in a Supporting Role - Basil Rathbone - as Tybalt
# Best Actress - Norma Shearer
# Best Art Direction - Cedric Gibbons, Fredric Hope and Edwin B. Willis
* Romeo and Juliet (UK, 1954)
o Renato Castellani director
o Susan Shentall as Juliet
o Laurence Harvey as Romeo
o Flora Robson as the Nurse
o Mervyn Johns as Friar Laurence.
* Romeo and Juliet (Italy, 1968)
o Franco Zeffirelli director
o Olivia Hussey as Juliet
o Leonard Whiting as Romeo
+ The film won two Academy Awards:
# best cinematography
# best costume design.
+ It had two further Academy Award nominations:
# Best Director
# Best Picture.
* BBC Television Shakespeare Romeo and Juliet (TV, UK, 1978), released in the USA as part of the "Complete Dramatic Works of William Shakespeare" series.
* The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet (USA, 1983)
o William Woodman director
o Blanche Baker as Juliet
o Alex Hyde-White as Romeo
* Romeo and Juliet (TV, UK, 1988)
o Joan Kemp-Welch director
o Ann Hasson as Juliet
o Christopher Neame as Romeo
* The Animated Shakespeare Romeo and Juliet (TV, Russia and UK, 1992)
o Efim Gamburg director
o Felicity Kendall as narrator
o Clare Holman as the voice of Juliet
o Linus Roache as the voice of Romeo
* Romeo+Juliet (aka “William Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet”) (USA, 1996)
o Baz Luhrmann director
o Claire Danes as Juliet
o Leonardo DiCaprio as Romeo
+ The film received one Oscar nomination for Best Art Direction and Set Decoration (Catherine Martin and Brigitte Broch)

Adaptations

* Beneath the 12 Mile Reef (USA, 1953) transposes the general plot of the play to rival fishing families in Depression-era Florada.
* Romanoff and Juliet (USA, 1960) is a film of Peter Ustinov's theatrical Cold War adaptation.
* West Side Story (USA, 1961) is the film of a Broadway musical adaptation of the Romeo and Juliet story, set in 1950s New York, by Stephen Sondheim and Leonard Bernstein
o Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins directors
o Natalie Wood as Maria
* Romie-0 and Julie-8 (Canada, 1979) is a made-for-television animated film in which the two leads are depicted as robots who fall in love.
o Clive A. Smith, director
o Greg Swanson as the voice of Romie-0
o Donann Cavin as the voice of Julie-8
* The Sea Prince and the Fire Child (Japan, 1981) is an anime adaptation.
* Tromeo and Juliet (USA, 1996) is a "trash" adaptation, tagged: Body Piercing, Kinky Sex, Dismemberment. The Things That Made Shakespeare Great.
o Lloyd Kaufman director
o Lemmy from Motörhead as narrator.
o Jane Jensen as Juliet Capulet
o Will Keenan as Tromeo Que
* Love Is All There Is is a comic take on the tragic story, set in The Bronx, involving two Italian immigrant families who own opposing restaurants.
o Nathaniel Marston as Rosario (the Romeo character)
o Angelina Jolie as Gina (the Juliet character)
* Romeo Must Die (2000) is a martial arts film variation on the Romeo and Juliet theme.
o Andrzej Bartkowiak director
o Jet Li as Han
o Aaliyah as Trish O’Day
* حبك نار (Hobak Nar or Your love is fire) (Egypt, 2004) is an Egyptian film, setting the tragedy in modern Cairo.
* Pizza My Heart (USA, TV, 2005) is a comic adaptation set in Verona, New Jersey.
* Romeo & Juliet: Sealed with a Kiss (USA, 2006) is an animated adaptation of the story told with seals and features a kid-friendly happy ending.
* Romeo x Juliet (Japan, TV, 2007) is an anime series derived from the play.

Significant Parallels

* Theatre of Blood features a Shakespearean actor who takes poetic revenge on the critics who denied him recognition, including a fencing scene inspired by Romeo and Juliet.
* Shakespeare in Love dramatises the writing and first performance of Romeo and Juliet.

Films featuring performances

A number of films feature characters performing scenes from Romeo and Juliet, including the 1912 and 1982 film versions of Charles Dickens's Nicholas Nickleby, Cured Hams (1927), Drama De Luxe (1927), Broadway Fever (1928), The Hollywood Revue of 1929, Playmates (1941), Time Flies (1944), Les Amants de Verone (1944), Marjorie Morningstar (1958), Carry on Teacher (1959) Shakespeare Wallah (1965) and, significantly, Shakespeare in Love (1998).[8]

References

1. ^ Tatspaugh, Patricia "The Tragedy of Love on Film" in Jackson, Russell "The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Film" (Cambridge University Press, 2000, ISBN 0-521-63975-1) p.135
2. ^ Tatspaugh, p.136
3. ^ Tatspaugh, p.136
4. ^ Tatspaugh, p.136
5. ^ Jackson, Russell "From play-script to screenplay" in Jackson, Russell "The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Film" (Cambridge University Press, 2000, ISBN 0-521-63975-1) p.30
6. ^ Russell, p.30
7. ^ Russell, p.31
8. ^ McKernan, Luke and Terris, Olwen (eds.) "Walking Shadows: Shakespeare in the National Film and Television Archive" (British Film Institute, 1994, ISBN 0-85170-486-7) pp.141-156

Further reading

* Martin, Jennifer L. "Tights vs. Tattoos: Filmic Interpretations of 'Romeo and Juliet'." The English Journal. 92.1 Shakespeare for a New Age (Sep 2002) pp. 41-46 doi:10.2307/821945.
* Lehmann, Courtney. "Strictly Shakespeare? Dead Letters, Ghostly Fathers, and the Cultural Pathology of Authorship in Baz Luhrmann's 'William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet'." Shakespeare Quarterly. 52.2 (Summer 2001) pp. 189-221.

The text from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Review: The Kite Runner: A Stirring Tale of Redemption

2007-12-16T17:29:00.001-05:00

By Laura Flanders, AlterNet. Posted December 15, 2007.

from: Alter.net

Khaled Hosseini's moving novel and film hits on all the right themes for a tale about the West and Afghanistan.

Within the first five minutes of the newly released film The Kite Runner, the leitmotif is laid out in a Karachi-to-California telephone call. Come home to Afghanistan, the protagonist, a young writer "Amir" is told by an ailing uncle. It won't be an easy journey, the uncle explains, but it's not too late: "There is a way to be good again."

At the level of metaphor, the film adaptation of Khaled Hosseini's best-selling novel is right on target. Abuse of power, remorse, shame, grief, guilt and the dream of redemption: They're exactly the right emotions to stir in a movie about the United States and Afghanistan. The Kite Runner is a tear-jerker for the politically conscious. Unfortunately, when it comes to real-life U.S.-Afghan relations, the metaphors hit more bases than what's actually on the screen.

Scripted by David Benioff (Troy) and directed by Marc Forster (Monster's Ball), the Kite Runner mostly follows the narrative of Hosseini's surprise hit, published in 2001. In 1970s Afghanistan, a wealthy widower's son, "Amir," romps through lush, cosmopolitan Kabul with his best (perhaps only) friend "Hassan," the family servant's son.

Kite Runner (theatrical trailer)

Clouds are gathering, of course, over the boys and their country. Afghanistan is slipping from a modern secular state into an internationally fuelled civil war. The elegant city of Amir's affluent father "Baba" is crumbling. (Playing the aristocrat turned gas station attendant, "Baba," Iranian Homayoun Ershadi turns in the standout performance of the film.) As ethnic tensions are stoked, loyal Hassan is brutally attacked by a gang of bullies while young Amir watches and does nothing. Soon afterwards, the Soviets invade Afghanistan, and the world does the same.

Hosseini has said that his story is about global indifference, "It foretells what happens to Afghanistan in the ensuing decade after the Soviet invasion. Afghanistan like Hassan, served a purpose. And once that purpose has been served, it is abandoned and brutalized and people just stand around and watch."

The symbolism is obvious. Hassan is loyal, adoring, obedient to a fault. He tells his master/friend Amir that he'd eat dirt if asked. Used, victimized and abandoned, Hassan is a transparent stand-in for Afghanistan, the buffer state brutalized in successive "Great Games" -- first between the Russian and British, and then the Soviet and U.S. empires.

There's just one glitch. Neither the Americans nor the British make an appearance. Religious zealots inexplicably emerge, cruel counterparts to cruel communists. Secular Kabul's caught in between. "The Mullahs want to control our souls. The communists say we have no souls," says Baba. There's no third player in this tale. There's no covert U.S. assistance to rebel Mujahadeen, for example, no paying of bullies to serve the Cold War.

We know from President Carter's advisor Zbigniew Brzezinkski that the official version of Afghan history is hokum. U.S. intervention didn't follow the Soviet Army's invasion, it preceded it. In a 1998 interview with Le Nouvel Observateur, Brzezinski recalled:

We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would ... That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Soviets into the Afghan trap ... The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter. We now have the opportunity of giving to the Soviet Union its Vietnam War.

The only "American" in The Kite Runner is Amir, the guilt-ridden refugee who does as his uncle tells him. He goes to Afghanistan, performs an act of rescue and returns home redeemed. He gains his "manhood" while he's about it, proving he's not quite the pushover his father feared him to be.

Redemption for the United States will come harder.

In November 2001, Laura Bush promised rescue. "Our hearts break for the women and children in Afghanistan," she told the world in the middle of her husband's post 9-11 bombing campaign. "The fight against terrorism is a fight for the rights and dignity of women," said the First Lady. The U.S. Air Force was dropping 15,000-pound "daisy cutter" bombs on medieval Afghanistan at the time. Hillary Rodham Clinton wrote in Time Magazine: "We, as the liberators, have an interest in what follows the Taliban."

Ironically, or perhaps not so ironically, the talented child actors in The Kite Runner are now living in exile in the United Arab Emirates after their guardians voiced anxieties that they could be ostracized or targeted by ethnic and religious extremists. In the real world, what's "followed" the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan are more heavily armed warlords, more theocracy and more Taliban.

Some will say it's unfair to hold the movie of a novel to task for repeating the propaganda version of U.S. history, but the myth of the United States as macho rescuer is not only misleading, it's deadly -- for people in Afghanistan and around the world. Shed all the tears you like as you're watching, but don't leave the remorse in the cinema. Try as it might, Hollywood can't purge our guilt, or dissuade us of the need to act.

Top five movie adaptations of comic books

2007-12-16T16:13:00.000-05:00

Movies meant for both the comic book enthusiast and the average moviegoer

By Mike Riga, Brandeis University's Community Newspaper

So while we’re all anticipating the upcoming sequel to Batman Begins, The Dark Knight and the Watchmen adaptation, let’s take a moment to look back at what the latest comic book-inspired movie binge has brought us. It has brought us total and utterly unfaithful and terrible adaptations of comics like Judge Dredd and the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. We’ve seen visual power trips like the unintentionally hilarious 300, and some just general big time let-downs (The Incredible Hulk and every Spiderman movie come to mind).

However, regardless of how true the filmmaker keeps to source material, comics have provided a literary blueprint for many a movie, some of which have been excellent. There have been attempts at morbid dramas, like David Cronenberg’s A History of Violence, or some intentional romps into cliché and goof like Ghost Rider and the Fantastic Four series. However, here are five of my favorite recent comic book adaptations that have found themselves on the big screen.

5. Constantine

For a movie as critically panned as this one, I ask the reader to look past the source material. Certainly there are the discrepancies between the Hellblazer comic the movie is based on and the movie itself, most of all replacing a blonde, grumpy, British lead with Keanu Reeves (casting Reeves at all was probably not the best choice).

At the same time, however, director Francis Lawrence provides an action-packed, murky, and visually interesting thriller, with great supporting turns from Tilda Swinton, Peter Stormare, Rachel Weisz, and scene-stealer extraordinaire Shia LeBouf. The movie also keeps the interesting dynamic between heaven and hell going, and its depiction of Hell as well as Satan himself, is well-thought out and executed. It’s not a perfect movie, but fun nonetheless.

4. Sin City

Yes, it’s graphically violent, and most certainly not for everyone (or a large percentage of everyone for that matter), but Sin City is a totally absorbing experience. One of the signs of a successful film is its ability to transport the viewer into a world that is different from the one they know. Director Robert Rodriguez pulls this off using the latest in CGI and green-screen studio technology.

Following a series of lowlifes and noble scumbags in the murderous Basin City, the film is beautiful, gloriously and intentionally unrealistic, and full of eye candy, weapons, ridiculous stunts, and some great acting from an ensemble cast along the way. If you don’t like blood, guts, and sex stylized and deconstructed, don’t watch this movie. If you do, you will love Sin City.

3. Hellboy

Let’s get this straight; Hellboy is one of the most lovable superhero’s out there. A big cuddly red demon, which devours vats of spaghetti in one meal and loves kittens, Hellboy, played with a gruff, goofy, and lovable bravado by Ron Pearlman, exudes screen presence. Where movies like Sin City get by on frowns and action, Hellboy plays like a monster version of Indiana Jones, with adventure, humor, and romance. We don’t just get Hellboy fighting evil dog zombies, but we also get to see him toss little pebbles from rooftops at his ex’s new suitor and match wits with Arrested Development’s Jeffrey Tambor. It’s just a fun movie from director Guillermo del Toro, who would later move on to greater things, such as last year’s amazing Pan’s Labyrinth. If you are looking for just a great, cornball, popcorn film, Hellboy is it.

2. Road to Perdition

Many of you probably never thought the Tom Hanks crime and family thriller originated as a graphic novel, but it did. Following up his Oscar-winning film, American Beauty, Sam Mendes gave us this. What “this” is is a story of a father (Hanks) and son on the run from the father’s employer (Paul Newman), a mob boss. Hanks, who is the handy man for Newman, is pursued by Newman’s son, a spoiled, murderous brat, and a psychopathic assassin, played by Daniel Craig and Jude Law, respectively. The movie not only has great character depth, something Mendes has always been masterful with, but also has moments of nervous tension as pursuers meet pursued, tempered with small tender moments between father and son. It’s a brilliantly put together movie, with two or three scenes so well executed by the director that they should not be missed.

1. Batman Begins

The pinnacle of all superhero movies to this date, Batman Begins is the first Batman movie to stay true to the brooding, dark nature of the comics. Bruce Wayne, now played by the world’s best young actor, Christian Bale, is shown becoming Batman, and this allows director Christopher Nolan to expound upon the detailed nature of his hero’s psyche. There are no overtly comic quirks that plagued the Burton and Schumacher films, and the Dark Knight is portrayed as realistically as he possibly can be. You can almost imagine this film taking place in real life.

Gotham City is firmly realized, not as an industrial wasteland, or a bilious party town, but a dirty, working class metropolis peppered with interesting characters like Lt. Gordon (finally given respect by Gary Oldman) and the frightening Dr. Jonathan Crane (Cilian Murphy is creepy!). Overall, this may not be the greatest movie ever made, but it is hands down the best adaptation of a comic book to the big screen to this date, although my money is on The Dark Knight, where Batman meets his nemesis, the Joker, for the first time, creating some serious competition.

Comic book movies can be a lot of fun as pure popcorn entertainment, and can stretch from genres as wide as vampires (30 Days of Night) to outsider existentialism (Ghost World, American Splendor). Some comic book movie might even make you think. There are about 3 million more of these films coming out in the near future, so it is a good time to drop what you are doing and become a comic book geek while it’s still a subculture.

Interview: 'The Kite Runner' Novelist Khaled Hosseini

2007-12-15T18:40:00.000-05:00

from: Cinematical.com

Posted Dec 15th 2007 9:31AM by James Rocchi

Born in Afghanistan in 1965, Khaled Hosseini left in 1976 as his family was relocated to Paris as part of his father's work for the diplomatic service. It was fortunate timing; while preparing to return to Kabul in 1980, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan plunged the nation into decades of chaos some would suggest it has yet to emerge from. Gaining political asylum in America, Hosseini's family moved to San Jose, California; after attending medical school, Hosseini worked as doctor in Los Angeles -- and wrote his first novel. Not only was The Kite Runner published, but it was on the New York Times best-seller list for over two years, and eventually printed in over 42 languages. Now, after years of development and no small share of controversy, The Kite Runner has come to the silver screen; after screening the film for the closing night of the 30th annual Mill Valley Film Festival, Hosseini spoke with a roundtable of journalists in San Francisco about the challenges of adaptation, the genesis and possible fallout of the film's controversial scene of sexual assault and his own memories of Afghanistan. Cinematical's questions are indicated.

Cinematical: What did you learn about the process of movie making going through this experience?

I underestimated the sheer amount of labor it takes to shoot the seemingly simplest scene, just the amount of work that goes just into setting up a scene and how each member of the team has to do their job exactly right, otherwise the whole thing falls apart. It's very labor intensive. It's also very monotonous. It's exciting in a way, but -- you're doing the same thing over and over and over again. So there's a sense of monotony. I underestimated how exhausting it was. The hours are very long and physically it's very demanding. I don't know how some of these guys do it for 10, 20, 30 years, especially the crew. It's a lot of hard work.

How involved were you in the process?

I was kind of a cultural consultant, a story consultant. Maybe the best way to illustrate it is with an example; I went to L.A. and sat in an office with the producers and we looked at hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of pictures that a scout had taken around the world. And they wanted me to kind of chime in and say if there was any locale that could be used to as stand in for 1970s Kabul. And we looked at Turkey and Tunisia, Morocco and India, Pakistan, but western China, the minute those pictures started coming up, I said, 'This place.' So they went out there and the Afghans who have seen the film are startled at the resemblance.

So that kind of thing – questions about dress, about food, about the way a home is decorated, a variety of things of that nature. But I didn't write the screenplay. Obviously, David (Benioff) did. I read the screenplay and we all kind of chimed in our ideas and David wrote another draft, but really it's his creation.

How do you feel the film captures Amir's betrayal of Hassan, the scene where the boy is attacked? From the work you had do creating that scene, how do you feel about seeing it on screen?

I think the scene was shot tastefully. I think in other hands, it could have really been exploitative, kind of graphic, and I don't think there's any need for that. When the boy walks out of the alley and you see the droplets of blood in the snow, I always feel this incredible moment in the audience where they go, 'Oh!' Suddenly, it elevates the film to another level. The stakes are raised at that moment. It's really a devastating moment.

(KH Continued:) We might as well talk about that scene. You probably have questions about it, since it's been in the news. But I feel that that scene is pivotal to the movie. There's been talk, people say, 'Maybe you should take away that scene. Take it out of the movie.' But then I think you have to scrap the whole movie, because what happens in that alley is so reprehensible that it scars the central character in a way and he carries the guilt of what happened there for the rest of his life, and is in many ways, it's the reason he goes back there and puts himself in danger's way to rescue a boy he's never met. I think if it was just a simple beating in the alley, it would stretch the limits of plausibility that he would be so affected by that. So I think the scene is pivotal.

On the other hand, I think that, because of the circumstances around that scene, because of the real-life circumstances that I'm sure we're going to talk about, that scene can't overshadow the story. Because even though that scene is pivotal, the movie is not about that scene, no more than the book is about that scene. This is not something – some of the headlines have said, 'The Kite Runner, a story about rape and sexual predators.' It's not a story of rape. It's not a story about sexual predators at all. And it's not a story about kites! [Laughs] It's a story about fallible people who make mistakes and pay for it in all sorts of way. It's a story about people and their children. It's a story about people losing their homeland. It's about forgiveness. It's about honor and cowardice. We have to look at the story in a more panoramic way, rather than myopically, focusing on one scene and having that scene kind of overshadow the story you're trying to tell. The film denounces that. The story denounces what happens in that alley.

Some people have said, you know, 'this film supports rape.' That's preposterous, absolutely preposterous. The spirit in which this film was made, the people involved in this film, the story of the film, is so antithetical to those charges.

How hard was it to create that scene in the book? Did you have alternative ways you wanted to do it? Or was that always the way you wanted to show it?

It was important to me that was happened in that alley was rape, because I can't think of an uglier crime. It's a crime where one person exerts their will in the ugliest, strongest fashion over another human being. To me, the scene when I was writing it, has a kind of allegorical dimension to it, as well, in many ways. A lot of Afghans feel, whether it's right or not is debatable, but nevertheless that's how they feel, what happens to Hassan in that alley -- after he runs that kite for Amir and after he has served his purpose – he is abused and raped, while Amir watches; they felt that is what happened in Afghanistan. Once a million Afghans died and the Soviets were defeated, which is no small way contributed to the end of the Cold War, once that happened, the international community just kind of watched while the Afghan community was brutalized by these warlords and by the extremists and the Taliban and they did nothing.

When I went to Afghanistan after I wrote the book, before it was published, it was chilling for me, because people would use that word 'rape.' In conversation, they would say, 'You know, people came and raped this country and nobody did anything.' It was just incredible for me to hear that, given that I had just written this novel with this scene, with that idea, and that I would hear it echoed in these people. It was a really remarkable experience.

Cinematical: Your protagonist is a writer, which can work very well in books. Writers are reactive, they're observational, they keep to themselves. Normally, the writer-protagonist doesn't terribly work well in film, because those very qualities don't work well on-screen. Do you feel like that jump translated on screen, or do you worry that audiences are going to watch Amir as a boy and as a man say, 'Why didn't he do something sooner?' Is film a slightly more dynamic medium than fiction for you?

I don't know. Amir is a writer. That's important in the novel, but I don't think it's all that central. It ties in with some of the themes in the story, Amir reading Hassan his new story and the power dynamics that were present. I find it hard, as well, to watch writers on screen and there are a whole slew of movies about writers, but I think Marc's approach to not focus too much on that was probably the right one, because it's a difficult thing to pull off. I think it's done with the right amount of balance. Actually, one of the things that is different about this film is that you actually get to hear some of his writing. Usually, you see the writers writing, but you never hear their actual writing, but there's that lovely piece that David Benioff wrote that he reads for his father at the bedside in the hospital. But, anyway, there are films about writers and some work really well and some that don't, but I don't really think this movie is per se about writers and writing.

Has the book been widely read in Afghanistan? Has it been translated?

To the extent that it can be read in a country where 70% of the people are illiterate. There's virtually no awareness of it, I think, in the countryside. Within the urban areas, much more, but even then, basically among the educated professionals. A lot of people are [illiterate]. That's hopefully changing how. I think one of the successes of Mr. Karzai's regime has been in the field of education. That tide is turning.

There is awareness. I was in Kabul last month and I found that the awareness of my book was largely in the expat community. But film was different. Film is a whole different medium.

Cinematical: If you hear that there are pirated copies of the film The Kite Runner being sold in Kabul, will you feel depressed or vindicated?

That's a fait accompli. That's going to happen within days of the film's release. Nobody can kid themselves about that. That's just reality. It's not my film per se, so I won't feel any more – there are pirated copies of my book, you know, in Iran, where it's had multiple printings. They're written my letters that said, 'We're going to publish your book. Unfortunately, we don't have copyright laws, so we're going to publish your book. We just wanted to let you know.'

The imagery that really comes across in the book and the film is of the kite flying and the kite running. Can you speak about where you came up with that?

That's one of the central images of my own childhood. I spent a lot of winters in my childhood flying kites with my brother, with my cousins, with friends in the neighborhood. It's what we did in the winter. Schools close down. There was not much to do. There was a movie theater that played the same film for three or four weeks, so you had to find something – we flew kites is what we did. And the way they're shown in the film is really kind of exhilarating that you're up there with the kite. It's quite thrilling the way the special effects guys have pulled that off. Visually, it's pretty breathtaking.

There was a kite master on the set, a guy whose life is – he's a kite fanatic. He's from Afghanistan and he's a master kite flyer himself. He was on the set throughout the shoot in China. He helped choreograph all the kite scenes and he taught the kids how to hold string and how to do it convincingly. A lot of energy went into creating those scenes.

How many years was it from the time you left Afghanistan until you were able to visit again, and what was the most shocking thing you found on returning?

27 years. I left when I was 11. I went back when I was 38. The most shocking thing was actually seeing with my own eyes and walking and feeling with my own hands just the devastating effect of two decades of war. And seeing the people who were affected by it. And seeing the neighborhoods that I knew from the '70s demolished, obliterated essentially. It was quite shocking. It's one thing to see it on TV. It's another thing to actually walk in the streets and see those homes completely razed and imagine what is must have been like the moment a rocket hit that home, who was present, who was inside that home. People would say "There are still bodies underneath those things."

Cinematical: When they signed Marc, did you breathe a huge sigh of relief that you didn't have to think about imagining Michael Bay's The Kite Runner or some other worst-case scenario?

That was never a real fear, because I didn't option the book to people who would hire Michael Bay to direct The Kite Runner. Bill Horberg and Rebecca Yeldham are very literate, well read, smart, eloquent people who have adapted several novels to the screen and haven't gone that route. I enjoyed all three of Bill Horberg's adaptations, The Quiet American, Cold Mountain, and The Talented Mr. Ripley. I thought all were classy production and had a lot of merit, so I didn't really fear that that was going to happen.

Review: Love in the Time of Cholera

2007-12-13T12:50:00.000-05:00

from Cinematical.com

Posted Nov 16th 2007 1:02PM by Jeffrey M. Anderson

One of the most beloved literary classics of the 20th century -- and rightfully so -- the 1985 novel Love in the Time of Cholera by the Colombian-born Gabriel García Márquez made its first cinematic appearance in 2001. In Peter Chelsom's Serendipity, it was the book in which the playful Sara (Kate Beckinsale) wrote her name and phone number, in the hopes that her would-be lover Jonathan (John Cusack) would find it. He spends years searching for it, flipping through every copy of the book that he can find. That movie doesn't have many fans, but I'm fond of it, and in a way, it's truer to the spirit of Márquez's novel than Mike Newell's more straightforward movie adaptation that opens in theaters this week. Whereas Chelsom's film attempted to capture the feel of the novel, Newell's film attempts nothing more than a translation.

That's a big problem right there. The novel was originally written in Spanish, and though the English translation is quite beautiful, it's still a translation. The new movie is filmed in English, so it's an adaptation of a translation. Then, we have a director from England, Mike Newell, who has absolutely no cultural connection to the Caribbean, where the story is set. Of course, no director could perfectly, accurately represent the novel on the screen, but it's possible to start from a slightly better vantage point. On top of that, the story takes place over fifty years, which in a novel is no problem. But in a movie it requires layers of age makeup, a process that, as movie technology gets better and better, seems to get worse and worse (imagine how awful this will look on HD-DVD or Blu-Ray six months from now). And, on an emotional level, stories that cover that kind of immense time span tend to leave out life's most innocuous, but telling and truthful, moments in favor of great plot lurches and story highlights. It becomes like a Reader's Digest "condensed novel."

Javier Bardem plays Florentino Ariza, the slightly awkward but practical young man who falls for Fermina Daza (Giovanna Mezzogiorno) and waits for her for over half a century. During that time, because of family conflicts, Fermina marries Dr. Juvenal Urbino (Benjamin Bratt). While Florentino waits for their nuptial ties to unravel either by death or divorce, he watches his fortunes grow and becomes a lover extraordinaire, so accomplished in bed that Hugh Hefner would tip his hat. Oddly, the movie chooses to cast another actor (Unax Ugalde) as the young Florentino, then slathers him in makeup to give him something closer to Bardem's blocky face; he looks like the Elephant Man. (How Fermina could fall for this beast in the early parts of the film is a mystery.) Meanwhile, Miss Mezzogiorno is expected to carry the entire fifty years all by herself, without the benefit of younger or older look-alikes. Both actors struggle with the age aspect; Bardem tries to act gawky and awkward while young, and in old age, both make various attempts to be creaky and stooped. None of it works, and the actors only appear vaguely comfortable during the middle section, and closer to their own real ages. (Mezzogiorno is 33 and Bardem is 38.)

Yet, in spite of all these layers of problems, the journeyman Newell gives the movie a very welcome light touch, as opposed to the severe, reverential approach that, say, Merchant-Ivory would have brought to such an important novel. After all, the story is slightly absurd and slightly magical, and Newell seems to understand that (perhaps it helps that he just came off of a Harry Potter movie). He keeps it sunny and a bit goofy: in one sequence, working as a letter-reader and letter-writer for the illiterate peasants, Florentino serves a man and a woman in love with one another and winds up writing letters to himself! In another, when Dr. Urbino unexpectedly pays a call, Florentino attempts to keep his cool, but allows himself a few seconds of panic while searching through a drawer.

Aside from the makeup troubles, Bardem manages to keep a wry smile behind his line readings, as if he were amused by the whole charade. He grows more and more comfortable with his seductions, and his ease and confidence rubs off on us. Likewise, the casting of the slightly loony John Leguizamo as Fermina's father and the easygoing Bratt as Fermina's lawful husband makes the movie more relaxed and lively. However, these small points are only an oasis in a sea of troubles. Marquez's work is huge, passionate, amazing and magical, and it's difficult for movies to capture all that without resorting to spectacle or bombast. Newell gets points for approaching it with calmness and confidence, but I suspect that the true man for the job should have been Alfonso Cuaron (another Harry Potter vet), whose collective films embody broad humor, erotic passion and magical realism as well as a beautiful intimacy. As with Serendipity, Cuaron might have found a device to get closer to the essence of Florentino and Fermina without letting all that makeup get in the way.

Cinema and Literature

Film version of popular teen novel disappoints

William Shakespeare, Screenwriter

Happy 444th Birthday, William Shakespeare, Screenwriter

Don't be stuffy over screen adaptations

Graphic Novels are Hollywood's Newest Gold Mine

Film Semiotics: A Metalinguistic Analysis

Visitors by countries

Movie adaptations of Dr. Seuss stories

Rameez Anwar

ILLUSTRATED BOOKS Movie adaptations have happy endings

REVIEW: I am Legend

REVIEW: I Am Legend

Review: I Am Legend is Decent but Way Too Short

REVIEW: The power of trailers is legend

REVIEW: I am Legend

MODERNIST MONTAGE: The Obscurity of Vision in Cinema and Literature

BOOK: The Eye's Mind: Literary Modernism and Visual Culture

Fahrenheit 451, François Truffaut (Full Movie)

The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1945 (Full Movie)

Adaptations of The Picture of Dorian Gray

Film

Literature

Plays and musicals

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

Reviews: Atonement

to read more please click on titles

Atonement / **** (R)

Review: Atonement Sizzles In A Most Pleasing Manner

Movie Review | 'Atonement': Lies, Guilt, Stiff Upper Lips

Romeo and Juliet on screen

Review: The Kite Runner: A Stirring Tale of Redemption

Top five movie adaptations of comic books

Interview: 'The Kite Runner' Novelist Khaled Hosseini

Review: Love in the Time of Cholera