In Contention

Tag: Adaptation

  • Blank

    It’s probably largely to do with the inherent sense of understanding, but there’s also something universal about it, about the tragically imperfect’s search for perfection. In any case, I find this to be one of the best, if simplest, slices of genius on the page in our time. Anyway, as you were. I’m just bored here.

  • The best films of a decade

    Tom Cruise in Minority ReportThis column has been the elephant in my living room for months.

    Putting together a list of the year’s best films is easy. It’s fresh. It’s in your mind. It’s, in many ways, the expected culmination.

    Putting together a list of the decade’s best films is a different chore altogether. Yearly rankings fly out the window as a proper gauge, because tastes shift and impacts either dwindle or deepen. Revisiting films is called for, but fitting in the works you missed along the way is also imperative. It can be maddening.

    And the truth is, you can’t see everything. All you can do is try to be as honest about how you feel as you can. And even then, no list can be definitive on a personal level, let alone authoritative.

    And so the whittling begins, and in many ways, the process is the reward. The ultimate collective is a mere reminder of the journey through 10 years of film product. But some things stuck out along the way.

    (more…)

  • Charlie Kaufman on Charlie Kaufman

    Charlie KaufmanFlipping through Empire Online’s typically entertaining list of features recently, I stumbled across this portrait of filmmaker Charlie Kaufman (whose brilliant “Synecdoche, New York” opened in the UK this weekend) giving one-offs on the six features sprung from his twisted mind to date.

    There’s talk of his working relationship with director Michel Gondry on their first effort, “Human Nature” (which I still haven’t seen), the agony of adapting Susan Orlean’s “The Orchid Thief” into 2002’s “Adaptation” and meeting Harvey Keitel and Pierce Brosnan at the Oscars in 2004 (when Kaufman one the original screenplay award for his masterpiece, “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”).  My favorite is this aside about “Being John Malkovich”:

    “There’s something about John Malkovich that’s odd and unknowable. There’s a look in his eye that makes me imagine there’s someone else looking out from inside his head. His name is funny, you know – when people say ‘Malkovich, Malkovich, Malkovich’, it’s funnier than any other name I’ve tried. And I’ve tried other names, because we didn’t know if we can get him. We also thought of Christopher Walken, we thought about Willem Defoe. I don’t know what that group is exactly, but they’re serious actors, they’re good actors, but they’re slightly odd. So it’s funny, but it’s not a joke in the way it would be if it were, say, Jerry Lewis.”

    Kaufman also calls “Synecdoche” a “horror film,” which I’d be willing to go along with.  I’d be willing to go along with just about anything he has to say on that film, to be honest.  It’s the most bizarrely brilliant film that I can’t qualify to come across my path in a long, long time.  And suddenly I want to see it again.