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things I have watched this week
Apr. 21st, 2012 10:54 pmAdaptation
Watched this in my film class, and it is amazing. The backstory is that the screenwriter, Charlie Kaufman (Being John Malkovich, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), was commissioned by Columbia Pictures to adapt the bestselling book The Orchid Thief, by Susan Orlean, into a Hollywood film. The problem is that The Orchid Thief, which I am reading now, is not a novel; it's a non-fiction book about an orchid poacher, with no real plot and a sprawling structure. Finding himself unable to adapt the book in a conventional way, Kaufman wrote Adaptation, a film about a screenwriter, Charlie Kaufman, who is attempting to adapt The Orchid Thief. The script that he ends up writing over the course of the film is, in fact, the film Adaptation, which can itself be considered an adaptation of The Orchid Thief. On top of all that, the movie is meta on about five other levels. It is the most metafictional thing in existence, holy crap. And I love it.
Captain Corelli's Mandolin
Errrrgh. This is the movie of my favorite novel (also called Corelli's Mandolin in the US), by Louis de Bernieres. I watched it only so that I could use it for a paper on literary adaptation into films. Although it was very "faithful" to the novel in a lot of ways—it is structured very much the same and a lot of the scenes from the novel are reproduced with dialogue taken verbatim—in my opinion, the filmmakers pay lip service to the book without understanding it. Both of the novel's major themes are absent from the film, and many scenes seem to be included for the sake of the plot and lack the deeper significance that they hold in the novel. A large part of this is that many scenes are totally off-tone, and the tone of those scenes is ultimately more important to the novel than what occurs in them. I would have preferred a looser adaptation with a greater mind toward what the novel was actually trying to say.
Legend of Korra
I had a minor freakout today because Nick.com seemed to have temporarily taken episode three off of their site, and the only other stream I could find was extremely low quality, with the sound cutting out quite often. But the episode went back up, and although it was amusing and had some cool fight scenes, I wasn't as impressed by it as I was by the first two (which were PERFECT). Other thoughts: I was under the impression that creating lightning is difficult to learn, seeing as how Zuko, who was supposed to be a very good firebender in the first series, never managed to do it, so those workers at the power plant must be super pro. Also, I noticed that Korra, Bolin, and Mako all have eye colors to match their dominant elements! I found it kind of silly when I first noticed, but come to think of it, that was true in the first series, too. It was just less blatant because there weren't any mixed-element families.
LOST
Started watching this again. I'm up to 2x08 "Collision" now and, boy, is Ana Lucia irritating. I almost never dislike characters unless they're racist or misogynist or otherwise abhorrent in some very obvious way. Granted, this episode gave some insight into why she is the way she is, so I'm starting to appreciate her, but I would still rather not have her around. I hope her personality improves soon because she is driving me up a wall. The end of the episode nearly moved me to tears, though. I think I have a couple of ships for this show.
Watched this in my film class, and it is amazing. The backstory is that the screenwriter, Charlie Kaufman (Being John Malkovich, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), was commissioned by Columbia Pictures to adapt the bestselling book The Orchid Thief, by Susan Orlean, into a Hollywood film. The problem is that The Orchid Thief, which I am reading now, is not a novel; it's a non-fiction book about an orchid poacher, with no real plot and a sprawling structure. Finding himself unable to adapt the book in a conventional way, Kaufman wrote Adaptation, a film about a screenwriter, Charlie Kaufman, who is attempting to adapt The Orchid Thief. The script that he ends up writing over the course of the film is, in fact, the film Adaptation, which can itself be considered an adaptation of The Orchid Thief. On top of all that, the movie is meta on about five other levels. It is the most metafictional thing in existence, holy crap. And I love it.
Captain Corelli's Mandolin
Errrrgh. This is the movie of my favorite novel (also called Corelli's Mandolin in the US), by Louis de Bernieres. I watched it only so that I could use it for a paper on literary adaptation into films. Although it was very "faithful" to the novel in a lot of ways—it is structured very much the same and a lot of the scenes from the novel are reproduced with dialogue taken verbatim—in my opinion, the filmmakers pay lip service to the book without understanding it. Both of the novel's major themes are absent from the film, and many scenes seem to be included for the sake of the plot and lack the deeper significance that they hold in the novel. A large part of this is that many scenes are totally off-tone, and the tone of those scenes is ultimately more important to the novel than what occurs in them. I would have preferred a looser adaptation with a greater mind toward what the novel was actually trying to say.
Legend of Korra
I had a minor freakout today because Nick.com seemed to have temporarily taken episode three off of their site, and the only other stream I could find was extremely low quality, with the sound cutting out quite often. But the episode went back up, and although it was amusing and had some cool fight scenes, I wasn't as impressed by it as I was by the first two (which were PERFECT). Other thoughts: I was under the impression that creating lightning is difficult to learn, seeing as how Zuko, who was supposed to be a very good firebender in the first series, never managed to do it, so those workers at the power plant must be super pro. Also, I noticed that Korra, Bolin, and Mako all have eye colors to match their dominant elements! I found it kind of silly when I first noticed, but come to think of it, that was true in the first series, too. It was just less blatant because there weren't any mixed-element families.
LOST
Started watching this again. I'm up to 2x08 "Collision" now and, boy, is Ana Lucia irritating. I almost never dislike characters unless they're racist or misogynist or otherwise abhorrent in some very obvious way. Granted, this episode gave some insight into why she is the way she is, so I'm starting to appreciate her, but I would still rather not have her around. I hope her personality improves soon because she is driving me up a wall. The end of the episode nearly moved me to tears, though. I think I have a couple of ships for this show.
