They got it right

Just got back from a screening of Brick Lane, the British film based on Monica Ali's debut novel. It's good, if sad, and fairly true to the book. Opens in Miami on July 11, so if you want to see it, you'll have to see it fast because it probably won't play long. But if you're a fan of the book, about a Bangladeshi woman in London, it's definitely worth seeing. Over there to your right? That's the real Brick Lane, a neighborhood in East London.

I also reviewed Hancock, the fun new Will Smith movie. It's 92 minutes long! I dream of seeing movies of that length. Thank you, Peter Berg. Good job getting Jason Bateman in that movie, because he walked away with it.

The loom of fate, she is a tough mistress

  This is what I want to do every time I try to find one of my movie reviews on The Miami Herald website and fail. EVERY WEEK. But alas, I lack an arsenal.

Fortunately they do not lack weapons in the very silly movie Wanted, a Matrix wannabe that was adapted from comic books by Mark Millar, so it doesn't exactly count as being adapted from a book, but close enough. It's kind of entertaining but...silly. You can read my review here and decide for yourself if it would be worth ten bucks.

A disclaimer: I do remember Angelina Jolie took a serious role in A Mighty Heart, but besides that she seems to favor this sort of action-figure character. What the hell. She's got the lack of body fat to do it.

TGIF (That "Guru" is Frightening)

It's been one of those weeks you're glad to see come to an end.

Among myriad other fun events, I reviewed four movies, which film critic Rene Rodriguez has kindly linked to on his blog. Which you should definitely check out, even if you don't care what I thought of The Love Guru or Get Smart, because he has posted this enthralling poster with Javier Bardem and, I think, some women, though I'm not sure because I'm just looking at Javier Bardem. Which almost makes up for having to sit through The Love Guru.

One of the films I reviewed was When Did You Last See Your Father?, based on the memoir by British poet Blake Morrison. The movie wasn't bad but it sure was gloomy, so be warned. I can't say it made me want to pick up Morrison's book, but then, that subject matter is rough.

Beautiful "Pieces''

Fugitive Pieces, a lovely, heart-breaking film adapted from Anne Michaels' novel, opens in Miami Friday, and I'm happy to say for once I was pleased that screenwriter/director Jeremy Podeswa altered the ending a bit. The film, about a boy rescued during the Holocaust and the troubled man he grows up to be, is still full of sorrow, but Podeswa doesn't deliver the final crowning blow, for which I am grateful, because I do not think I could take it. The movie is sad enough as it is.

You can read my review here.

Of course, if you're like some people I know and loathe, you'd rather see Ashton Kutcher and Cameron Diaz in What Happens in Vegas. Seriously, what is wrong with you people? Read this before you spend your money.

Mea culpa, history fans

All right. I didn't really see this coming, but it appears I am hooked on the HBO series John Adams, which is adapted from David McCullough's book. I'm late starting it, thanks to my Wolf Creek vacation, but I've watched the first two episodes and been quite engrossed. So engrossed, in fact, that I'm dragging myself back to the Broward County Library website to try and reserve the audio book online (we all know how effective that will be - I STILL don't have the last few things I tried to reserve).

By the way, if that's really how they used to innoculate you against smallpox...yecch! Also, is it just me, or does this production make Tom Jefferson look like a wuss? Paul Giamatti, whose name I never quite get right, is terrific, though, and as always Laura Linney is good.

What about 1776 (the book, as opposed to the old "someone better open up a window" musical)? Is that an adequate substitute if I can't get my hands on John Adams?

And speaking of gore...

Check out Rene Rodriguez's review of The Ruins, a movie adapted from Scott Smith's ridiculously entertaining horror novel. Rene may be the only critic who got a good look at the movie before it was released today. He is Shiva, God of Death.

Read his story on the making of the film here.

Let me tell you about winds

Anthony Minghella died Tuesday at 54, and while he was best known as a director (winning an Oscar in 1996's The English Patient, which as everybody knows is the greatest film ever made), I feel the need to point out what a superb writer he was.

The English Patient is based on Michael Ondaatje's Booker Prize-winning novel, but its transformation to film is a thing of beauty. Minghella wrote the screenplay, with an assist from Ondaatje himself, and said that it was excruciating to leave out so much of the gorgeous novel. It bothered him greatly to excise so much of Kip's (the Indian sapper) story, but decisions had to be made, and he made every single one of them correctly.

Minghella was the first person I ever interviewed for The Herald, at the Borders bookstore in Fort Lauderdale, in person, long before most people knew who he was (I did, if only for Truly Madly Deeply, which, combined with the powerful allure of blond highlights in Sense and Sensibility, caused me to fall deeply in love with Alan Rickman, an ailment that persists to this day. I kept wanting him to strangle Johnny Depp in Sweeney Todd.)

What I liked best about Minghella - he was funny and lively and friendly - was his absolute passion for Ondaatje's novel. It was clear that it had moved him and that he loved it and was also thrilled to have been able to adapt it to the screen. (I also suspect he had a little crush on Juliette Binoche, but really, who wouldn't?)

Minghella just wrapped the first film of Alexander McCall Smith's No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series. Who knows what other wonders he would have gone on to produce? Film lovers, especially those equally in love with books, will miss him like crazy.

Mma Ramotswe comes alive

Looks like HBO and the BBC are joining forces to make Alexander McCall Smith's delightful No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency into a series. Recently a two-hour pilot was filmed, directed by Anthony "The English Patient" Minghella and starring singer Jill Scott as Precious Ramotswe, the "traditionally built" lady who opens a detective agency in Botswana and solves problems for her neighbors and others as she drives around in her tiny white van.

In addition to the pilot, HBO has ordered 13 episodes that will begin filming this summer. Anika Noni Rose of Dreamgirls plays Mma Makutsi, Mma Ramotswe's loyal secretary (who got a 97 percent on her exam at the Botswana Secretarial College) and Lucian Msamati as Mr. JLB Matekoni, Mma Ramotswe's love interest. Also notable on the cast list: Idris Elba (Stringer Bell from The Wire)!

Nice job by Cormac McCarthy...

...writing that book that was adapted into that movie that won the Oscar.

OK, now that we've got that obligatory book reference over with, I have to say that my TiVo exploded in flames last night. Every time Javier Bardem appeared a little smoke came out. And then when he won best supporting actor and got up for his acceptance speech, the whole contraption caught fire. That's how smoking hot he is.

And I have to say that Katherine Heigl's dress - which we all know is the most important thing about the Oscars, and if you don't believe me, go check out gofugyourself.com and the geniuses who write that will agree - was the most spectacular. She looked fabulous!

Jane Austen alert!

Ladies and gentlemen, start your engines. Or at least your Netflix queues (did I spell that correctly?) The Jane Austen Book Club comes out on DVD Tuesday, and if you haven't seen this you'll want to get your hands on it immediately. It's a terrific romantic comedy - and if you have seen any modern romantic comedies you know how rare that is - AND the characters like to READ. And read JANE AUSTEN. Plus, look how adorable Hugh Dancy and Maria Bello are over there.

The movie is also one of those rare improvements on the book by Karen Joy Fowler. Its ensemble cast is excellent and also includes Kathy Baker, Amy Brenneman, Maggie Grace, Emily Blunt, Jimmy Smits and Marc Blucas (all hail Buffy the Vampire Slayer! Even though, let's just admit it, Mr. Blucas, by the end of your run on the show Riley was so annoying we were all hoping he'd implode). But I digress. The cast brings the characters to life in a way that makes them more appealing than they were on the page, especially Dancy as Grigg, the lone male member of the book club. He was a sort of tricky character in the book, didn't seem quite...real. Dancy changes all that, and he's wonderful with Bello.

It's a good way to get you through until April, when Fowler's new novel Wit's End hits the shelves.

3 out of 5

Three of the five Oscar-nominated films were all adapted from novels: Atonement (Ian McEwan); There Will Be Blood (Oil! by Upton Sinclair); and No Country for Old Men (Cormac McCarthy). Nothing unusual here; book adaptations always carry a bit of a pedigree that Oscar can't resist.

I'll let Rene Rodriguez blog about the nominations. You know, I just can't get that angry about any of them. Sure, I loved Russell Crowe in 3:10 to Yuma and American Gangster and feel that he should have been nominated for at least one of those performances, but who's going to complain about the guys who did get nominated? Not me. The Academy managed to realize that Sean Penn's Into the Wild was massively flawed (except for that nice performance by Hal Holbrook and the gorgeous mountain scenery); that's the only thing that would've set me off, that movie knocking Juno or Michael Clayton off the Best Picture list.

Can't stop what's comin'

Thanks to everyone who insisted I see No Country for Old Men before voting for the Florida Film Critics Circle; the movie definitely lived up to the hype. That so rarely happens to me anymore. I have not yet read the book - I got off track with Cormac McCarthy sometime after All the Pretty Horses and have not yet righted myself - but I hear much of the dialogue is taken directly from the book. True?

And much as everybody loves Javier Bardem and his heinous haircut in this movie, I have to say my favorite character in it was good ol' reliable Tommy Lee Jones, acting as a Greek chorus in cowboy boots to cluck and marvel over the pure force of the evil in the land.

And, as I stated to a backpacking buddy right after I saw the movie: Next time we are out in the desert, and we come across a bunch of dead drug runners and a suitcase with $2 million in cash in it, I am perfectly OK with just leaving it and getting the hell out of there.

I drink your milkshake!

OK, now, if you had told me that I would be completely mesmerized by a film version of Upton Sinclair's Oil, I would have said: "That is unlikely to happen." Or perhaps something even more colorful involving the words "crack" and "idiot."

But Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood is spectacular, with a performance by Daniel Day Lewis that blows away any other contenders. Sorry, Mr. Clooney. I love you but. Sorry, Mr. Washington. Liked American Gangster, but it's not in the ballpark.

There are no female characters to be found in this movie - a pet peeve of mine - and yet I didn't mind for one second. Unrelentingly cynical in its portrayal of humankind, There Will Be Blood actually makes me want to read an Upton Sinclair book. About oil and the greed that lies in the hearts of men. I'm shocked. Shocked!

You may be Legend, but I'm just Scared

I am mainlining coffee this morning - not that that's all that odd inasmuch as I do it pretty much every morning of my life - because I did not sleep much, due to the the fact that Monday night I saw movie adaptation of Richard Matheson's I Am Legend. Now why I went to see an apocalyptic film that I don't have to review I can't really tell you; end of the world movies freak me out. I am cool with zombies and vampires and serial killers who murder young women with muscle cars but a last-man-on-earth scenario unnerves the hell out of me. I blame it on my slight crush on Will Smith.

Anyway, the movie is beyond nerve-wracking and so loud you'll be half-deaf when you get out, but I can't say I wasn't drenched with sweat, adrenaline pumping, by the end of the movie. The CGI is sometimes distracting in a way it was not in something like 28 Days Later (although to its credit I Am Legend doesn't have a ridiculous ending like 28 Days Later). Also: there is a heroic dog! Though it is a shepherd and should be a Doberman.

I haven't read Matheson's novel (really a novella, from what I can tell), but I did flip to the last page, and it's safe to say the ending of the movie is somewhat different, though equally bleak in its way. Love the bleak endings, even if they keep me up half the night.

Matheson published I Am Legend in 1954 (he also wrote A Stir of Echoes, Hell House, The Shrinking Man and What Dreams May Come, all made into films) and gets props from Stephen King, who says Matheson is one of his influences.

If Joe Wright can read (and love) 'Atonement,' so can you

One fact that didn't make it into my story on Atonement director Joe Wright: Wright, who directed 2005's Pride and Prejudice, loves Ian McEwan's novel. You know, the one that many of you keep telling me: I tried to read it, but I couldn't get through it.

Wright, who calls the book "An extraordinary piece of literature," is dyslexic, according to The Internet Movie Datebase. He left school without O levels, though he did attend the Camberwell College of Arts.

The man is dyslexic, which makes reading difficult to say the least, and yet he was able to make it through Atonement. So maybe you could give it another try...though I will still advocate seeing the movie first.

I wouldn't stop for red lights

So last night I saw Charlie Wilson's War, based on the book by George Crile, but I didn't see it to decide how adept the adaptation was, or for Tom Hanks or Julia Roberts or Philip Seymour Hoffman (who definitely deserves a best supporting nomination). I saw it because: 1. It was written by Aaron Sorkin and 2. it was about politics.

The film is based on a true story of a congressman who helped stop the Cold War by covertly getting funds approved to help Afghanistan rid itself of the Soviets. It's a good movie, funnier than you'd expect. But it made me absolutely heartsick for The West Wing. Heartsick, I tell you! The NBC show has been over now for more than a year and I still miss CJ and Josh and Toby and Leo and Donna and Charlie and Jed and Sam and Will, whose name I can hardly ever remember because I still think he's Jeremy from Sports Night. I even miss the blond chick who came on toward the end as the National Security adviser, and I never liked her. Did I mention that I miss Josh (who is a man of occasion!) and Donna (who sometimes hates his breathing guts)* and fully expect never to be as satisfied with any long-term TV show relationship as I was with that one? Even though I would have liked ONE MORE YEAR to see how things turned out once they finally hooked up?

This blog is supposed to be about books, but I think good writing is fair game, too (plus, who's going to tell me to shut up?), and West Wing had some of the best, snappiest dialogue ever heard on TV. Maybe Sorkin didn't fare well with his Studio 60 (which I will still defend, despite its myriad problems) so it's great to hear his smart, savvy patter again, even if I have to watch Julia Roberts to do so.

Charlie Wilson's War opens Dec. 21. See for yourself.

* This entire post is a cheap excuse to run a photo of Josh and Donna. You knew it was going to happen sooner or later. Will Buffy be next???

Book movie of the year?

It is with a heart leaping with joy that I report that Atonement - due in theaters Dec. 21 - is a faithful, gorgeous, heart-breaking, wonderful adaptation of Ian McEwan's novel set just before and during World War II. It's so rare that filmmakers get an adaptation exactly right, that every element meshes perfectly - casting, sets, screenplay, sound, cinematography, costumes - but here, Joe Wright has accomplished such a feat. He may well have made the movie of the year.

McEwan helped to adapt the screenplay, along with Christopher Hampton, who's adapted a few others, notably a fine version of Graham Greene's The Quiet American in 2002.

Some will feel they should read the book before seeing the movie, but in this case it's not necessary and may in fact pack more of an emotional punch if you haven't read the book. It's that easy to be swept away by this story of love and guilt and war. I'm usually anal retentive about such things but here, don't worry about the novel. Read it later. Just don't miss this film.

'Tis the season

Every copy editor I know just shouted: You've used it for the year! Now nobody else is allowed! (Sorry, insider copy editing humor is very complex.)

In Friday's Weekend section Herald movie critic Rene Rodriguez offers a sneak preview of the films that  will be released between now and the end of the year (or, if you live at the end of the earth, like, say, in Miami, possibly next January).  Shocked at how many are book adaptations? Don't be. This is the season for Oscar hopefuls to come roaring out of the woodwork, and plenty of those originated as books. Some began life as aching novellas and then inexplicably lost the Oscar for Best Picture because those knuckleheaded Hollywood leftists needed to soothe their liberal guilt (I still feel for you, Brokeback Mountain).

Here's a partial list of books taken from movies that are looming: The Mist, The Golden Compass, I Am Legend, The Kite Runner, Atonement. Do we count Sweeney Todd? And there are others: Just this weekend we review Love in the Time of Cholera (told you I'd link to it), and Rene has reviewed what is shaping up to be the movie of the year, No Country for Old Men. That's the one I'm looking forward to most: Coen Brothers! Cormac McCarthy! Javier Bardem! Tommy Lee Jones!

And then there's Atonement. I fear for Atonement. But look how cool Keira Knightley looks! I still think Ian McEwan deserved the Booker Prize for that novel, not his slight and ultimately forgettable Amsterdam. Which is so forgettable I fear I may have missed the point, since I'm still baffled by that win. But as I mentioned before, I am going to try and have faith in director Joe Wright.

The scent of bitter almonds

I saw Love in the Time of Cholera last night, and while I won't launch into a movie review here - you'll have to wait for Friday for that - it did get me thinking about film adaptations of great books. (As did that unfortunate post about The English Patient being horrible, but I'm trying to put that behind me.) Why is it some adaptations work so spectacularly, and others don't? It can't merely be a matter of the screenplay; obviously changes are needed when you're jumping from one medium to another. The English Patient deviated from the book because it had to. The Harry Potter movies instantly improved when the screenwriters stopped trying to cram every single page of the books into the movies.

Some films deviate less successfully. I understand why Tom Perrotta changed the ending of his Little Children for the screen, but I didn't much like it, as it skewed the entire satiric point of the book.

And some adaptations are simply so breathtaking that you're dazzled all over again. I was shaken by Mira Nair's The Namesake in a way I was not moved by Jhumpa Lahiri's fine novel, though I did like the book quite a bit. But seeing those characters and feeling a part of their lives, especially through Nair's wonderfully vivid lens, was more powerful than reading about them in the first place.

Unfortunately that's not an experience that happens often. Gabriel Garcia Marquez's story of Florentino Ariza's eternal devotion for Fermina Daza (who is, let's face it, something of a bitch) feels more like telenovela than the grand love story it is. Javier Bardem is terrific, as always, but something's missing, and it's hard to say what it is.