The same daredevil spirit that has informed many an apparently insane film or TV version over the past decade has seen adaptations of literary novels
When the Cannes film festival starts next week, William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, adapted and directed by James Franco, will be in the lineup. The Spider-Man star is known for mixing bookish projects with acting in blockbusters, but has nevertheless raised eyebrows by selecting a novel with 15 narrators that tells the seemingly uncinegenic story of a southern matriarch's death and burial.
This month will also see Paul Thomas Anderson begin to shoot his version of Thomas Pynchon's Inherent Vice, the first of Pynchon's dauntingly complex works to be filmed; and Steven Soderbergh recently announced plans for a 12-hour TV dramatisation of John Barth's The Sot-Weed Factor ("If it works, it'll be super-cool. And if it doesn't, you won't be able to...
When the Cannes film festival starts next week, William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, adapted and directed by James Franco, will be in the lineup. The Spider-Man star is known for mixing bookish projects with acting in blockbusters, but has nevertheless raised eyebrows by selecting a novel with 15 narrators that tells the seemingly uncinegenic story of a southern matriarch's death and burial.
This month will also see Paul Thomas Anderson begin to shoot his version of Thomas Pynchon's Inherent Vice, the first of Pynchon's dauntingly complex works to be filmed; and Steven Soderbergh recently announced plans for a 12-hour TV dramatisation of John Barth's The Sot-Weed Factor ("If it works, it'll be super-cool. And if it doesn't, you won't be able to...
- 5/11/2013
- The Guardian - Film News
The Master confirms Paul Thomas Anderson as the only American film-maker of his generation who could be mistaken for a junior member of Hollywood's golden age
Hollywood's prestige season is upon us and, despite a parade of heavy hitters, including Steven Spielberg's Lincoln and the Wachowski-Tykwer adaptation of David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, no potential Oscar winner is more ambitious – or more likely to provoke discussion regarding its meaning and intent – than Paul Thomas Anderson's sixth feature, The Master.
Anderson's subtly disorienting, deeply engrossing study of the symbiotic relationship between charismatic cult leader Lancaster Dodd, magnificently played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, and his disturbed follower Freddie Quell, indelibly embodied by Joaquin Phoenix, is a panoramic chamber drama. Punctuated by persistent close-ups, it's an extended two-shot epic in its sweep.
The first production to avail itself of the great clarity afforded by 65mm in the 16 years since Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet,...
Hollywood's prestige season is upon us and, despite a parade of heavy hitters, including Steven Spielberg's Lincoln and the Wachowski-Tykwer adaptation of David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, no potential Oscar winner is more ambitious – or more likely to provoke discussion regarding its meaning and intent – than Paul Thomas Anderson's sixth feature, The Master.
Anderson's subtly disorienting, deeply engrossing study of the symbiotic relationship between charismatic cult leader Lancaster Dodd, magnificently played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, and his disturbed follower Freddie Quell, indelibly embodied by Joaquin Phoenix, is a panoramic chamber drama. Punctuated by persistent close-ups, it's an extended two-shot epic in its sweep.
The first production to avail itself of the great clarity afforded by 65mm in the 16 years since Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet,...
- 11/3/2012
- by J Hoberman
- The Guardian - Film News
Certified Copy
2010
Abbas Kirostami
English, French, and Italian
Of all the dense, intertwined ironies in William Gaddis’s novel The Recognitions (some of which may not be ironies at all, but actual truth), the slyest but also least reticent comes out in a conversation between a young painter, Wyatt Gwyon, and the sinister art dealer Recktall Brown. “It’s a question of being surrounded by people who don’t have any sense that what they are doing means anything… If everybody else’s life is interchanged and nobody can stop and say, That is mine, this is my work, then how can they see it in mine,” Wyatt asks. The irony is that Wyatt is exclusively a forger, an incredibly talented one, mostly of Flemish masterpieces. His method, handed down to him, is to reject any semblance of originality – “The romantic disease” – and perfect the forms of the masters through repetition.
2010
Abbas Kirostami
English, French, and Italian
Of all the dense, intertwined ironies in William Gaddis’s novel The Recognitions (some of which may not be ironies at all, but actual truth), the slyest but also least reticent comes out in a conversation between a young painter, Wyatt Gwyon, and the sinister art dealer Recktall Brown. “It’s a question of being surrounded by people who don’t have any sense that what they are doing means anything… If everybody else’s life is interchanged and nobody can stop and say, That is mine, this is my work, then how can they see it in mine,” Wyatt asks. The irony is that Wyatt is exclusively a forger, an incredibly talented one, mostly of Flemish masterpieces. His method, handed down to him, is to reject any semblance of originality – “The romantic disease” – and perfect the forms of the masters through repetition.
- 3/23/2011
- by Louis Godfrey
- SoundOnSight
This weekend: sisters take over their family's alligator park in Swamplandia!, Allison Pearson visits the cruel fates of adolescent fandom, and the haunting novels of Albania's Ismail Kadare.
Into the Swamp
Related story on The Daily Beast: This Week's Hot Reads
Swamplandia!, the talented short-story writer Karen Russell's debut novel, gives us two more of those precocious children who overcrowd the last 60 years of American fiction. From J.D. Salinger's Glass children to William Gaddis' Jr to Jonathan Safran Foer's Oskar Schell, our literature has clamored with intellectually overdeveloped but socially stunted children. Through their eyes, we're traditionally afforded fresh perspectives-often poignant or satirical-on modern society. Swamplandia!'s unique twist is to present two youths who at first seem to be Everglades savants, but turn out to be just regular kids in swampy circumstances.
The children in question are 13-year-old Ava Bigtree and her older brother Kiwi,...
Into the Swamp
Related story on The Daily Beast: This Week's Hot Reads
Swamplandia!, the talented short-story writer Karen Russell's debut novel, gives us two more of those precocious children who overcrowd the last 60 years of American fiction. From J.D. Salinger's Glass children to William Gaddis' Jr to Jonathan Safran Foer's Oskar Schell, our literature has clamored with intellectually overdeveloped but socially stunted children. Through their eyes, we're traditionally afforded fresh perspectives-often poignant or satirical-on modern society. Swamplandia!'s unique twist is to present two youths who at first seem to be Everglades savants, but turn out to be just regular kids in swampy circumstances.
The children in question are 13-year-old Ava Bigtree and her older brother Kiwi,...
- 2/5/2011
- by The Daily Beast
- The Daily Beast
Honestly, what the hell is up with genre these days? It’s a tricky thing to get a handle on, but we all have an idea of what’s happening in the independent film world: as production financing has dried up in a world where cinema is, simply put, not generating as much revenue as it used to, independent filmmakers who might be more at home making “art” flicks have decided to mix their interests with more familiar genre narratives. Catfish, which generated more intellectual-thought-content-per-minute than any other 2010 release, was sold as (and contained elements of) a Blair Witch-esque thriller, set in internet-ville. Tiny Furniture and Breaking Upwards, the two other tiny indie sensations of the year that proved dreams still can come true, thrived in a territory staked out halfway between perceptive, quiet character study and Hollywood rom-com.
Now, as we enter 2011, we get what is perhaps the most...
Now, as we enter 2011, we get what is perhaps the most...
- 2/2/2011
- by Zachary Wigon
- Filmmaker Magazine - Blog
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