Wednesday, January 11 2012
What to Expect When You’re Expecting a Vampire
The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part I is a gratifying escape from reality. Those who are familiar with the books will be pleased with Director Bill Condon's attention to detail.
Wednesday, November 2 2011
Before There Was ‘The Exorcist’, There Was ‘The Possession of Joel Delaney’
Once again, the film industry came in and took a perfectly creepy book and upped the sensationalism because nothing can ever be too shocking in Hollywood.
Tuesday, September 13 2011
Transforming the Metamorphosis
While Atanes's film comes across as somber and unintentionally funny, and the Capaldi film is bizarre and outright amusing. Both do a brilliant job of capturing the surreal, dark mood that The Metamorphosis is cocooned in.
Tuesday, July 5 2011
‘Norwegian Wood’ Is Pretty Onscreen, But Puzzling
Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood has been referred to as the "Japanese Catcher in the Rye", but J. D. Salinger said that his book was not actable and he would never sell the rights to Hollywood. Maybe Murakami should have listened to Salinger.
Tuesday, March 15 2011
‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’ at 34: Still Thrilling After All These Years
What makes Close Encounters of the Third Kind stand out to this day is that it isn’t the usual UFO tale of “us vs them”, like Spielberg’s later remake of War of the Worlds; rather, it's very much a story about Earthlings.
Monday, January 24 2011
A is for Axe: The Filmic Butchering of ‘The Scarlet Letter’
As is often the case with classics, what could have been a brilliantly updated film adaptation of The Scarlet Letter was consumed by the Hollywood machine that instead spits out a shallow and action-packed romp with a glossed-over ending.
Thursday, October 28 2010
‘Poltergeist’: Home Sweet Hell
James Kahn’s version of Poltergeist is a rare example of a book written after a movie is released, which results in a riveting read.
Wednesday, September 1 2010
‘Eclipse’: A Sort of Romantic Kind of Fairytale
When I saw Eclipse, a gaggle of teenage girls behind me giggled, gasped and squealed their way through most of the film. Each time their hysteria erupted, it happened during a romantic scene.
Monday, April 26 2010
Cracking the Spine: The Lovely Bones
The author's 'heaven' is a concrete and unexpected place with"lumbering women throwing shot put and javelin"; whereas the filmmaker's interpretation changes 'heaven' to something like a garish, 3-D Hallmark card.
Tuesday, February 23 2010
Chéri: Out of the Boudoir
Frears and Hampton puts the viewer into Chéri in a very real and sensual manner, paying homage to Collette's luxuriant corporeal details.
Thursday, January 28 2010
The Ice Storm: America Out in the Cold
Ang Lee captures the '70s on film the way Rick Moody captures the era in the book The Ice Storm. It's the midst of the sexual revolution, the Watergate scandal is erupting, and the country's social consciousness is changing.
Tuesday, January 5 2010
New Moon: Wherefor Art Thou Edward?
Bella and Edward's longing for each other is what makes the series so appealing. It fully encapsulates the bliss and agony of first love or any love that would make you lie down and die for the other person.
Thursday, December 3 2009
Little Women: Brilliant Book, Flawed Film
A scene shows Ryder blissfully tying up the manuscript and putting a rose under the string. That's rather like what Armstrong and the screenwriters did to the film: tied it up neatly with a pretty flower.
Wednesday, October 28 2009
A Ghost Story of Dubious Origins
No matter the vercity of the tale, The Haunting in Connecticut has just enough creep quotient to keep me engaged, especially since I grew up a few miles from the house.
Thursday, September 24 2009
The Handmaid’s Tale: Not So Sci-fi
The terrifying, 'it could happen today' message of this story is best told in the Atwood's book, rather than the film version.
Wednesday, September 2 2009
Not to be Silenced: To Kill a Mockingbird
'To Kill a Mockingbird' is more than an enlightening tale of the racial inadequacies in the South during the Depression -- it inspired people to study law.
Wednesday, July 29 2009
We All End Up in Diapers: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Comparing the book to the film, it’s as if Fitzgerald laid just the foundation, and from that Roth built a multi-storied house.
Tuesday, May 26 2009
Let the Right One In, But Only the Right One
Lindqvist’s book and Alfredson’s film adaptation both convey a sweet, dark version of puppy love. We don’t need the American remake.
Tuesday, April 28 2009
‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’: Check, Please
I hate it when a film takes a brilliant literary work and turns it into what it thinks the literary work should be.
Tuesday, March 31 2009
Chok(ing) Onscreen and In Print
Whether served up on the page or on the screen, this is an intimate assessment of a twisted mother/son relationship with plenty of sardonic humor and scathing satire.
Sunday, March 1 2009
Woolf at the Door
Both Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway and Michael Cunningham's The Hours offer an illuminating look at the choices we make, the roles we play, and the hours that hinge our lives together.
Wednesday, January 7 2009
Twilight Takeover
The film is a successful adaptation of the book not only because Pattinson is so talented and dreamy, but also because Hardwicke knows a thing or two about filming adolescents.
Wednesday, December 3 2008
Hughes Oughta Know
The British Library bought Ted Hughes' literary archive, further inspiring film and literary speculation into his life with Sylvia Plath.
Wednesday, October 29 2008
Blinded by Science
While Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is a wonderful tale of a tortured man and his experiment, I’ll take Hollywood’s version of the block-headed monster any day.
Tuesday, October 7 2008
Bukowski: What Lies Beneath
During the rare moments when Charles Bukowski's vulnerable side are shown, they manage to break through the "dirty old man" parody of himself that he had become.
Monday, August 25 2008
He’s Lost Control
The kids who grew up in the '90s had the haunted Kurt Cobain; my generation had the tormented Ian Curtis.
Tuesday, July 29 2008
Rebel Rebel
The time is ripe for revisiting One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, as we're all aware that individual freedoms are still being suppressed by governments around the world.
Monday, June 30 2008
Love on the Rocks
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?'s dark, witty banter and assessment of human malice made my brain tick and also made me glad I wasn’t married.
Tuesday, May 20 2008
Living the Dream: The Life Before Her Eyes
Kaisischke's grotesque images of the natural world remind me of Sylvia Plath. She is a master of highlighting the splendor and tragedy working side-by-side in everyday life.
Monday, April 21 2008
Love in the Time of Record Shops
Technology may have changed the way we obtain music, but as Nick Hornby's High Fidelity reminds us, it can never alter our love affair with the medium.
Monday, March 24 2008
The Escape Artist
The desire to escape that lives in each of us, and the consequences of acting on that desire, is what makes us care for Chris McCandless (Into the Wild), and what makes his short life such a compelling story.
Wednesday, March 5 2008
Standing by Stephen King
Childhood and the end of innocence are vividly portrayed in Stephen King's novella The Body, and Rob Reiner's excellent interpretation, Stand by Me.
Thursday, February 14 2008
The Sins of the Sister
A director can translate a writer’s words to the screen beautifully, but he can never alter their power on the page. The book and film versions of Atonement prove this all too well.
Thursday, December 20 2007
The Good Shepherd
His comic look at life in the '50s formed the foundation for a seminal Christmas 'Story'. But there is more to Jean Sheperd than little boys and BB guns.
Wednesday, December 5 2007
Save the Drama for Your Mama
Sons and Lovers gave author D.H. Lawrence a chance to work out all his Oedipal issues. Too bad the film adaptations have been less than enlightening.
Thursday, October 25 2007
Every Rose Has Its Thorn
Flowers in the Attic is the perfect example of what happens to a favorite book when it gets pressed through the Hollywood machine. The results are enough to ruin a sly, scandalous thriller - and a reader's rich adolescent memories.
Wednesday, September 26 2007
One Hit Wonder - The Stone Reader
A favored book from one's past. An elusive author who seemingly never wrote anything since. Sounds like the components for a fascinating documentary? You'd be right.
Tuesday, August 14 2007
What’s Love Got to Do With It?
Circumstances may have brought them together, but a single 'enduring' emotion may be driving Ian McEwan's characters toward a deranged date with destiny.
Thursday, June 14 2007
The Lisbon Bunch
Purposefully ending one's life is often seen as a last act of personal desperation. But in Jefferey Eugenides' poignant, bewitching novel, it may actually be a form of salvation.
Monday, April 16 2007
We Like to Watch
Far more prescient today than it was 36 years ago, Jerzy Kosiński’s darkly comic novel of media and politics, Being There, lives on, thanks in part to Hal Ashby's marvelous 1979 motion picture adaptation.
Wednesday, February 21 2007
Soulless
James Redfield's 'prophetic' novel, The Celestine Prophecy, as manifested in film... maybe it means something. I see soft-focus imagery and swirling colors. I'm getting a feeling. It's...it's... nausea.
Thursday, November 30 2006
Stumbling with Nail Clippers
It was one of the most talked about tomes upon its release. Unfortunately, our literary liaison for all things film thinks that Augusten Burrough's mesmerizing memoir was definitely defanged in the cinematic translation.
Tuesday, October 31 2006
Vamping It Up
From folklore to fright icon, a certain naughty neckbiter remains one of literature -- and film's -- most fascinating fear factors.
Wednesday, September 20 2006
Lolita’s Balls!
Between the scandalous novel and it's equally inflammatory big screen adaptation, Vladimir Nabokov's classic story of unnatural, obsessive love still has chutzpah.
Wednesday, August 9 2006
The Da Vinci De-Bacle
As I sat there in the theater watching The Da Vinci Code, I wondered how it would be possible to follow the knotty narrative if you hadn't read the book first.
Tuesday, July 11 2006
“Thunder”‘s Blunder
The Box Office Belletrist -- Thunder's Blunder -- Hyams and company managed to take an excellent metaphor for man's technological hubris and strip it of all importance.
Thursday, June 1 2006
Bradbury on Fire
Though it was written over a half century ago, and the only film adaptation was helmed during the tumultuous and turbulent '60s, Fahrenheit 451 remains a classic sci-fi treasure. Our literary lady of letters believes that now just might be the right time for a remake.
Tuesday, April 25 2006
Swimming Home
Sometimes, the written word can be far more evocative than the most memorable motion picture. Such is the case with John Cheever's classic short story about alienation amongst the sun-drenched swimming pools of suburbia.
Tuesday, March 28 2006
Sympathy for the Devil: In Cold Blood
Truman Capote crafted a masterpiece in human ambiguity with his classic 'nonfiction' novel. Our leading lady of letters argues that the recent cinematic exploration of the book's creation is an equally unnerving experience.
Monday, February 27 2006
Vintage Venom
Looking for a classic bit of 'cruelty' with 'intentions' that are all too clear? Our resident literary 'liaison' argues the case for this 1988 masterwork of manipulation.
Tuesday, January 17 2006
Love Is Risky Business
With all the Oscar buzz swirling around Ang Lee's taboo-busting drama, our literary liaison wants us to not forget the stellar short story it's based upon.
Thursday, December 15 2005
Austen’s Powers
Despite Jane Austen's obvious skill as a storyteller, her novel, Pride and Prejudice, is somewhat asexual. Thankfully, the new film version of the literary classic introduces some much needed physicality into this far too courteous romance.
Thursday, November 17 2005
Everything Is (Sort Of) Illuminated
In the rare case of a book and its cinematic adaptation complimenting each other, Makowsky looks at the link between the literary and celluloid versions of Jonathan Safran Foer's acclaimed novel.
Tuesday, October 11 2005
Trick or Treat, Trick or Treat, Give Us Something Good to Read
Interested in some chilling All Hallows Eve fare? Our resident lady of literature attempts to glean the thrills from the spills as she searches the shelves -- both book and video -- for a good scare.
Wednesday, September 14 2005
Mirror Mirror on the Wall, Who’s the Dullest of Them All?
In this month's installment, Makowsky wonders why, in either kid-friendly or mainstream motion picture versions, the Brothers Grimm just can't get any respect.
Thursday, August 11 2005
‘Chick Lit’ Overload
Makowsky laments the continuing influence of 'Chick Lit' in both bookstores and movie houses worldwide.
Wednesday, July 13 2005
‘WOW’ of the Worlds
The 2005 War of the Worlds may be one of the few times where the credits 'based on the book by...' actually has a legitimate meaning.
Tuesday, June 14 2005
Re-Judging a Book by Its Cinematic Cover
Like most bibliophiles, I often cringe when a favorite book is transformed for the big screen. It doesn't mean I won't give it a chance though.
