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Book-to-film adaptations: 6 – ‘The Prestige’

The James Tait Black Memorial Prize winning and World Fantasy Award winning novel “The Prestige” is a fascinating story of a pair of turn-of-the-century magicians who develop an intense personal and professional rivalry, sabotaging each other’s performances and lives until tragedy costs them both in ways neither could imagine. Written as a pair of journals (one by each magician) and framed by a modern-day story involving the magicians descendants, The Prestige has its own set of literary illusions and tricks that seek to hide it’s admittedly dull secrets in plain sight.

Brilliantly written and employed, these tricks of the written word would simply not work cinematically. Only so much drama can be derived from scenes of fellas sitting around reading each other’s diaries. Such is the perils of literary adaptation, as things that work on the page and in the theater of the mind would not work on the most silver of screens.Continue Reading …

Florida Film Festival 2013 movie review: ‘SOMM’

“SOMM” is a documentary about four young gentlemen all in the midst of attempting to pass the Master Sommelier’s Exam, a test established in the 1960s and which only about 200 people have ever passed, a test so hard that people have lost years of their lives to the devotion of all things wine just so they can have a dream of passing it. And if they can pass it, oh boy, do those doors of opportunity swing wide open for a certified Master Sommelier.

“SOMM” is an interesting combination of a mostly no-frills, just meat and potatoes documentary, and a much flashier, artier doc. It’s all footage of these four people, all in different places in their lives, all with very different personalities, all trying to help each other do the same thing, which involves lots of studying and wine tasting and the occasional shit talking, mixed with interviews of copious amounts of people involved in the wine industry, and this is all wrapped in a warm blanket of art, as we are treated to dreamy, slow-motion photography and a wonderful, jazzy cum classical score. I guess it makes plenty of sense to couple wine with jazz. They seem to go hand in hand.Continue Reading …

Book-to-film adaptations: 5 – ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’

When discussing the best book-to-film adaptations, “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” stands out as a success in wrangling a wild narrative and boiling it down to a workable movie, especially because the wrangling was done by a director with a history of wild and unhinged films (several of which contain their own decidedly non-wrangled narratives). Then again, in hindsight, it seems that maybe this movie could have only happened this way.

Book-to-film adaptations: 4 – ‘Dreamcatcher’

If you’re playing along at home, you’ll notice that this series is a back and forth type of deal. No Country for Old Men was a best of, I Am Legend was a worst of and most recently, The Warriors was a best of installment. To keep the pendulum going, entry four brings us back to the worst of side, where we find ourselves staring into the gaping maw of Evil Otto himself…Dreamcatcher.Continue Reading …

Book-to-film adaptations: 3 – ‘The Warriors’

Installment one was a “best” and installment two was a “worst.” So here’s another example of one of the best: Walter Hill’s The Warriors is an adaptation of Jewish-American writer Sol Yurick’s novel of the same name. Walter Hill, as we already know, makes manly movies about manly men. And The Warriors is populated with manly gang members, as well as younger kids trying to be men by being in gangs. Importantly, it must be noted that this write up of The Warriors will be of the original film and not the recent “Ultimate Director’s Cut DVD,” which itself (coupled with the director’s cut of Donnie Darko) is an example of a director not realizing what makes their film great. But that’s a completely different article. So with that out of the way…Continue Reading …

Book-to-film adaptations: 2 – ‘I Am Legend’

Most people who saw the film I Am Legend probably had no idea the movie was based on a book. And even if they did, there’s a chance they had no idea what kind of impact Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend had on the horror community, both written and filmed.

Written in 1954, Matheson’s book followed a lone survivor of a horrible plague. The survivor was everyman Robert Neville and the plague was vampirism; as the lone human in a world of vampires, the book followed Neville’s daily ritual and his evolution as this survivor, and great swaths of information and characterization happen solely in the head of Robert Neville through his stream of consciousness and thought processes. The Omniscient Reader stays deep within Neville’s thoughts as he uses all the spare time that he has to kill as many vampires as possible during the day and do hours and hours of research to find a cure for this horrible problem. And The Omniscient Reader is so thoroughly into the mind of Robert that when he comes to his ghastly end, the Reader is right there with him.

Book-to-film adaptations: 1 – ‘No Country For Old Men’

“The book was better.”

How many times has that phrase been uttered? Films and books are two different forms of media, and there is no reason why one should be better than the other. As long as films have been made, filmmakers have been turning to books for inspiration. And why not? There’s nothing wrong with going with the old book to film route, and as history as shown, it’s a coin flip, a toss up, it could go either way. There are so many things at work on any given film that when one is made well it’s a bona fide miracle. Continue Reading …

So what’s up with The Hangover Part III?

Have you guys seen this trailer yet for “The Hangover Part III?” While giving very little in terms of plot specifics, it seems pretty clear in that this is going to be more than just a rehash of the previous two movies in this most unexpected of comedy film franchises. But just what the hell is this thing actually about?Continue Reading …

2013 Oscar Picks

The 85th Academy Awards are here (though apparently the Academy wants to just call it The Oscars this year) and what’s more thrilling than compiling a scorecard of all the categories and trying to pick the winners ahead of time? Answer: everything. But because it IS that time of year and because keeping track of these things does manage to make the actual show itself more entertaining, here are some predictions for this year’s 85th Acada- uh…the Oscars.Continue Reading …

Crespodiso Around Town

The only Mila Kunis approved movie podcast.

The street team has been hard at work, and here is another collection of pictures from around the globe, showing off the many places Cinema Crespodiso has invaded, conquering eyeballs and earholes with stickers and podcasts.

Enjoy.

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