The Millions writes about an upcoming HBO series based on Jeffrey Eugendies’ Middlesex. Oh, that makes me nervous. I love, love, love Middlesex and would hate to see it ruined. Although, I don’t have cable, let alone HBO, so maybe I’ll never know.
Thursday night I watched The Virgin Suicides for the first time. I thought it was a decent adaptation of the book and it seemed to capture beauty in its own way. Some novels feature technical aspects that can’t and shouldn’t translate on screen, so it’s nice to see a movie preserve what it can and take advantage of film’s techniques.
In this article about Sofia Coppola, there is a great description of what she does versus what her father does. If you could apply either description to a book, story, or film, I’ll probably like it.
“Where her father’s great themes — the struggles of Man and Patriarchies in the Modern World — are vast and epic, Sofia’s themes, like the happenstance encounters and quiet epiphanies that can haunt the rest of your life, are more intimate, if no less profound. She doesn’t sweep across history or build to dramatic climaxes like her father but rather has her camera search out meaning in small details. She writes scripts that establish, sustain and then gently shift tone and atmosphere — not Tolstoy but Chekhov. Her films are sophisticated and plangently romantic, and the emotions she stirs up linger.”
Thanks for highlighting adaptations as seperate works and celebrity offspring as more than coattail riders. It’s unfortunate they’re often critiqued only in comparisons.
Comment by steph — 8 July 2009 @ 11:59 pm