Adaptation: Five Books That Must Never Be Adapted For Film
When David Cronenberg turned William Burroughs’s masterwork Naked Lunch into a somewhat linear, entertaining narrative, literary fans everywhere were pleasantly, if not resentfully surprised. Cronenberg, in doing so, proved himself not only a master storyteller, but able to do something that few directors could, adapt dense, postmodern classic novels into solid films. On the other hand, when director Gary Walkow attempted to turn William Burroughs’s seminal novel Queer into a film by combining it with the story of Burroughs’s wife’s […]
Our Collective Woody Allen Fetish Is A Bit Much
Obviously we are just as guilty as the next person when it comes to our love for New York’s favorite step-daughter marrying ball of neurosis (look at our logo!), but a Woody Allen tanktop? Haven’t we moved past this as a people?
Merrie Melodies Go To The Library
Spend your lunch going to the library with this 1938 Merry Melodies cartoon.
The Richard Lester / Donald Bartheleme Collaboration That Never Was
Every few years, I return to Steven Soderbergh’s Getting Away With It, a book that juxtaposes Soderbergh’s journals in the time just before he made Out of Sight with a series of conversations between Soderbergh and Richard Lester. (If Lester’s name doesn’t ring a bell, watch A Hard Day’s Night or The Knack…And How to Get It or, er, Superman 3, all of which he directed.)
That Definitely Sounds Like A Movie Bret Easton Ellis Would Write
The Canyons “will follow a small group of Los Angeles twenty-somethings, in a psycho-sexual thriller that will have both crime and redemption elements” — and a note that the earlier established requisite of a male lead being “full-frontal naked banging girls and guys” won’t be “employed salaciously.” (Via Vulture)
The Dream of Dystopia 1985 is Alive in a Back to the Future 2 DVD
The Detroit City Council hasn’t built a half-man/half-robot to patrol the streets (if there was, I’m sure it would be voiced by Clint Eastwood), we aren’t yet at a Road Warrior level of totally fucked with our fuel supplies, and New York isn’t one big maximum security prison like John Carpenter imagined*. We also don’t have hoverboards, something promised to us in one of the most overlooked dystopian films of its time, Back to the Future 2.
I Saw God And/Or Alvy Singer Or: The Time I Stalked Woody Allen
I’ve been waiting a really long time to see Woody Allen in the flesh, and the other night I finally got to.