Only the second film in history to win all five major Academy Awards - including Best Picture, Best Actor and Best Director - One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest is considered by many critics to be among the best American films of all time.

About a criminal who gets himself transferred from a jail to a mental institution, it was based on the book by author Ken Kesey.

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Title Search ]]> http://outriderbooks.com/seethemovie/?feed=rss2&p=45 http://outriderbooks.com/seethemovie/?p=43 http://outriderbooks.com/seethemovie/?p=43#comments Sun, 31 Jan 2010 04:46:37 +0000 http://outriderbooks.com/seethemovie/?p=43 posted by Kim Voynar on Movie City News:

Thanks largely to a brave, raw performance by Saiorse Ronan, the film version of The Lovely Bones isn’t intolerably hard to watch, and may even end up being a successful sale to same teen market that’s been flocking to darker, moodier fare like the Twilight series...

… The biggest turn-off for me about the film was Jackson’s vision of Susie’s afterlife, which seemed to cull very heavily from What Dreams May Come with its vivid, saturated colors and slow-mo floating leaves and such surrounding Susie as she stares in wonderment at where she’s ended up.

The Lovely Bones ]]> http://outriderbooks.com/seethemovie/?feed=rss2&p=43 http://outriderbooks.com/seethemovie/?p=41 http://outriderbooks.com/seethemovie/?p=41#comments Mon, 28 Dec 2009 14:56:51 +0000 http://outriderbooks.com/seethemovie/?p=41 “The movie has given the book a whole new life,” the author of the 1996 novel, “Push,” told Bob Minzesheimer of USA Today.

Known simply as Sapphire, the author’s book about an illiterate and seriously overweight 16-year-old girl is set in Harlem in 1987. It was critically acclaimed and a modest bestseller when it was published in 1996

Directed by Lee Daniels, with Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry as executive producers, “Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire” has accelerated sales of the paperback movie tie-in edition, which has actress Gabourey Sidibe (who plays Precious) on the cover.

• Precious

It was to be expected that a beloved children’s book being made into a film–a live-action film at that–was to be suspect. Mostly because the book itself clocks in at a whopping forty-eight pages. And how do you make a feature film out of that, animated or otherwise? I only felt a glimmer of hope when I heard Spike Jonze had taken on the project, since I figured only he and Michel Gondry were the sort of director who could pull this off. And my faith was well-founded.

“The book was not filmable, and it was not easy. When Lee (Daniels, the director of Precious) asked me to adapt it, he told me it would be difficult not only in terms of translating it to film but in terms of the content, the language. It’s written in her voice, someone who is barely literate.

“It is also a perfect novel, so you’re asking for trouble when you’re trying to refashion perfection into another medium. I was both embarrassed and grateful I hadn’t heard about it before — embarrassed because this is a book I should have been aware of, because it’s a great work of art. But grateful because its stature and following might have intimidated me from taking the necessary dramatic and pronounced leaps from the source material to turn it into a real movie.”

screenwriter Geoffrey Fletcher
in The Miami Herald

]]> http://outriderbooks.com/seethemovie/?feed=rss2&p=37 http://outriderbooks.com/seethemovie/?p=34 http://outriderbooks.com/seethemovie/?p=34#comments Fri, 13 Nov 2009 16:05:51 +0000 http://outriderbooks.com/seethemovie/?p=34 It’s tricky material, adapted faithfully by Daniels from the novel “Push” by Sapphire. The book has widely been described (with sarcasm) as an example of pulpy urban lit, but that’s wide off the mark. Sapphire, a Brooklyn, N.Y., poet, wrote it in stylized street argot, meant to convey Precious’ untutored voice, a technique as old as “Huckleberry Finn,” who’s mentioned in the book, one that’s crammed with literary tributes and allusions.

Gary Thompson
Philadelphia Daily News

Choke, screenplay by Clark Gregg (author of screenplay What Lies Beneath, and novel by Chuck Palahniuk (author of Fight Club) is as disgusting as it is funny, serious as is it sad, and nowhere near as good as the book…. Right from the start it is evident that the movie will not follow the story in the book page for page and takes a much more comical tone than what was represented in the book…

With this comical overtone, the movie is missing some of the most powerful character defining moments from the story. People familiar with the book will remember a moment at which Victor (Sam Rockwell) wipes the nose, and pull’s up the pants of Denny (Brad William Henke). Scenes like this later deeply played into the development and understanding of his character. Without them, Victor comes across as a simple minded fool who falls into situations that ironically give him the opportunity to help others…

Another thing in which I felt the movie lacked was the narration by Vince. “What would Jesus not do?” This line from the book was used only once in the film, which is such an under usage it is almost annoying.

I did find the book a lovely read and memoir. I thought the movie was almost non-existent: a series of pastiches of the life and lives of the family, with Marley the dog getting the occasional spotlight.

But…

The one thing the movie did was remind us that Marley, like Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones, is an everydog (instead of everyman)….

And therein lies what does work about Marley, the movie (and probably the book, too). That is, if you have, or have had a dog you loved and lost, my guess is that Marley and Me the movie will work for you, no matter what.

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On July 20, 1944, no one in the German anny laid better claim to the status of war hero than Colonel Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg. A career staff officer since 1926, he had served with distinction during the takeover of Czechoslovakia in 1938, the invasion of Poland in 1939, and the 1940 conquest of France. Assigned to the Tenth Panz­er Division under Field Marshal Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Corps in early 1943, he suffered the loss of his left eye, right hand, and two fin­gers of his left hand when Allied planes attacked a convoy and strafed his vehicle during the battle of the Kasserine Pass.

Promoted to Colonel in June 1944, he was appointed Chief of Staff to the Commander of the Home Army (reserves), by General Friederich Fromm.

At this time, when Allied forces were expanding from D-Day beachheads in France and the high command was receiving increasingly disturbing reports about the army’s involvement in mass executions of Jews and others in the countries of eastern Europe, a group of generals and important civilians agreed that the only way to save Germany from complete destruction was to remove Hitler from power, declare a new government, and seek an armistice. The basis for such a scheme was an already-existing plan. Called “Operation Valkyrie,” it had been devised for the purpose of dealing with any anti-Nazi uprising that might occur.

…two attempts to kill Hitler had been made in March 1943. In the first, a bomb planted in Hitler’s plane failed to explode. A second bombing was to be at an exhibition of captured Soviet equipment. The plan fizzled when the show was postponed. On March 11, 1944, a plan to shoot him at his Obser­salzberg mountain retreat had to be called off because the assassin, Hauptmann Ebehard von Breitenbuch, couldn’t get close enough.

Because Stauffenberg was a genuine war hero with a spotless record as a staff officer, and was now in a position that frequently required him to attend Hitler’s military strategy briefings, he was seen by the conspirators as the ideal individual to carry out the first stage of Operation Valkyrie by assassinating Hitler.

How Stauffenberg was approached, and by whom, isn’t certain. General Franz Halder said later that he had “recognized in Claus von Stauffenberg a born leader, one whose outlook on life was rooted in a sense of responsibility toward God, who was not prepared to be satisfied with theoretical explanations and discussions, but who was burning to act.”

Hitler himself may have persuaded Stauffenberg. After observing Hitler during one of his meetings with his generals, Stauffenberg said, “Fate has offered us this opportunity, and I would not refuse it for anything in the world. I have examined myself before God and my conscience. It must be done because this man [Hitler] is evil personified.”

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• History’s Greatest Conspiracies : One Hundred Plots, Real and Suspected, That have Shocked, Fascinated, and Sometimes Changed the World by H. Paul Jeffers

Don’t stop at the movie either: read the book. You will find more appreciation and love for life in those quick 132 pages than any motivational speaker could ever contrive. And Jean-Dominique Bauby…God…the man could have easily given up and wallow in self-pity but he chose to strive on, to keep trying. Every word was so carefully chosen, each idea entirely thought out. I do not believe it is possible for a more beautiful and perfect work to be created.

• The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
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