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A Very Literary NY Film Festival

September 25, 2015 in Book Matters, Film Matters, Listing, Reviews

It’s that time again. Along with the autumnal equinox, the Jewish New Year, and, this year, the East Coast visit of the Pope, the New York Film Festival is kicking off its fifty-third lineup with a signature mix of high-brow fare from around the world and mainstream entertainment. As always, a significant portion of the program promises to be literary-minded, so I’ve compiled a list of the adaptations that intrigue me most.

“Arabian Nights Volumes 1, 2, and 3”
Portuguese writer/director Miguel Gomes (and co-writer Mariana Ricardo) uses folk tales from the eponymous book to paint a portrait of Portugal’s current (and rather bleak) economic realities. At roughly 338 minutes, it is not for the faint of heart (The New York Times’s Manohla Dargis called it an “indulgence“) but the ever-maverick Gomes channels a rich, intellectually rigorous absurdism that suits the film’s sketch-within-a-sketch anthology format. Continue Reading →

All Hail the Heroine’s Journey

September 1, 2015 in Book Matters, Film Matters, Listing, Reviews

It’s a special sort of movie that asks audiences to tag along on an extended trek by foot, as this month’s “A Walk in the Woods” does. An adaptation of Bill Bryson’s eponymous memoir, it stars Robert Redford as travel writer Bill Bryson, hiking the Appalachian Trail while reconnecting with an old friend, Stephen Katz (Nick Nolte). But the walkabout film is actually a beloved genre – perhaps because there is nothing more Hollywood than a hero’s (or heroine’s!) journey. Consider these other walkabout features, many of which, interestingly, are also literary adaptations. I’m deliberately omitting the “Lord of the Rings” and “Harry Potter” films (they get enough air time!) but what else do you think deserves mention?

“The Wizard of Oz” (1939)
Sure, “The Wizard of Oz” is another film that gets plenty of air time. But when was the last time you actually watched this adaptation of L. Frank Baum’s children’s novel? Dorothy (the great Judy Garland) and her ragtag crew get an awfully good workout as they wander through the emerald and straw-hued labyrinth of her exceptionally vivid subconscious. They even manage to warble a few catchy tunes along the way. See also: “The Wiz” (1978). Disco cities, disco soundtrack, young MJ, and D. Ross as Dottie? Um, yes please. Continue Reading →

A Midsummer Night’s Best

June 26, 2015 in Film Matters, Listing, Reviews, Theater Matters

It’s that time of year, at least in the Northern Hemisphere. The days are long, the weather is glorious, and gardens are overflowing with bounty that hasn’t yet over-ripened on the vine. In short, it’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream time, that moment in the year that inspired Shakespeare’s most joyously subversive comedy. About four Athenian lovers, six amateur stage actors, and the fairies who control them during a magical night in a forest, Midsummer is an oft-quoted yet oddly underestimated meta-play about the intersection of romance, gender, identity, power, performance, and fate – ideal fodder for Hollywood adaptations, in other words, though the quality of those adaptations is markedly uneven. Here’s our oh-so-subjective list of the best Midsummer-inspired films; suffice it to say it doesn’t include the hamfisted 1999 adaptation starring a deer-in-the-headlights Calista Flockart, the 2001 “10 Things I Hate About You” knockoff “Get Over It,” or this winter’s buffoonishly wrongheaded “Strange Magic.” Continue Reading →

"All, everything I understand, I understand only because I love."
― Leo Tolstoy