• Kevin Kelly digs into the J.J. Abrams “Dark Tower” project. [Cinematical]
• In honor of “Julie & Julia,” 10 blogs that could be movies. [Film School Rejects]
• Liam Neeson walks his first red carpet since the death of wife Natasha Richardson. [Associated Press]
• Patrick Goldstein revisits a collection of filmmakers’ tributes to John Hughes, “the Tolstoy of American teenagers.” [The Big Picture]
• The irrepressible Pedro Almodovar talks aging, Cruz and “Broken Embraces.” On a side note, how sweet is the photo to the right? [Daily Telegraph]
• Meryl Streep has a problem with male bloggers. Love you anyway, Meryl. [Salon]
I just came back from one of the most expertly written films of the year (Guillermo Arriaga’s “The Burning Plain”) to the sad news that one of the great screenwriters of our time, Budd Schulberg, has passed on from this mortal coil. At 95 years old, he seemed to get everything you can possibly get from life. He is perhaps best known and remembered for “On the Waterfront,” for which he won an Oscar and gave us the immortal line: “I coulda had class. I coulda been a contenda. I coulda been somebody.” He will be missed.
As Sunday’s Oscars bear down upon us with a measure of both inevitability and indifference, I can’t be the only one fed up of watching, talking or even thinking about certain 2008 nominees — even some of the ones I liked. The sooner we can begin putting some much-needed distance between ourselves and these films, the better, I say.
So it was with great pleasure this evening that I plunged into the refreshing waters of both classic Oscar history and a different medium altogether — by going to see Steven Berkoff’s quite stunning reconceptualisation of Elia Kazan’s “On the Waterfront” on the West End stage.
The source, of course, needs no introduction: Kazan’s searing 1954 study of corruption and violence amid the longshoremen of Hoboken boasts any number of immediately quotable lines, arguably Marlon Brando’s signature performance and, of course, eight Academy Awards. It remains, for me, one the Best Picture category’s finest hours.
Turning such a flavourfully urban example of realist cinema into a heightened physical theatre exercise may seem a foolhardy task, but Berkoff’s interpretation is equal parts devoted tribute (Budd Schulberg’s original screenplay is transferred largely intact, while thumping jazz cues speak to Leonard Bernstein’s iconic score) and wildly stylised reinvention.