adaptation
The Blue RoomWednesday, 07 September 2016
"Did she bite you often?" Julien Gahyde (Mathieu Amalric) is being questioned about his affair in minute detail, over and over again, by lawyers and detectives. This is an ingenious flashback device. We don’t know yet what crime has been committed,... Read more... |
Blu-ray: Women in LoveFriday, 26 August 2016
Women in Love was Ken Russell’s first cinema film to directly reflect his work in television. He had directed The Billion Dollar Brain (1967), but that was an adaptation of a Len Deighton book. French Dressing (1964) was a few steps removed from a... Read more... |
JulietaThursday, 25 August 2016
Red, the colour of blood, passion, love and hate, is Almodóvar’s trademark and in Julieta, his 20th film (and surely one of his most visually lustrous), it’s never far away. It’s there in the opening sequence, a close-up of thick folds of red fabric... Read more... |
Swallows and AmazonsMonday, 15 August 2016
If one was going to write the recipe for a classic British children’s film, it would probably include the following: adapt much-loved novel; hire fresh-faced young actors and well-worn comedians; budget for steam trains chugging over viaducts;... Read more... |
Barry LyndonSaturday, 30 July 2016
Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon (1975), which has been re-released, is one of the most stately costume dramas films ever made. It is also a monument to tedium, a tale told so deliberately, ponderously, and humorlessly that it raises the question, as... Read more... |
Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Theatre Royal HaymarketFriday, 29 July 2016
Think of Holly Golightly, and it’s more than likely that the face you’re picturing is Audrey Hepburn’s. And, while this adaptation by Richard Greenberg of Breakfast at Tiffany's is much closer to Truman Capote’s novella, it doesn’t have an ounce of... Read more... |
Half A Sixpence, Chichester Festival TheatreWednesday, 27 July 2016
Watching Cameron Mackintosh’s joyful revision of this Sixties musical, it’s possible to believe for a moment that all the world needs now is love sweet love and a shit-ton of banjos. With a new book by Downton Abbey behemoth Julian Fellowes, new... Read more... |
The Mighty Walzer: ping-pong in the roundWednesday, 22 June 2016
It’s a little over two years since I was approached to adapt The Mighty Walzer by Howard Jacobson for Manchester Royal Exchange. I was living in Liverpool at the time and had recently seen That Day We Sang by Victoria Wood at the Exchange. It was... Read more... |
Alice Through the Looking GlassFriday, 27 May 2016
How much you enjoy this new version of Alice Through The Looking Glass will be directly proportional to how much you revere Lewis Carroll’s original text. If you love the original you will be perplexed, wondering if you have come into the correct... Read more... |
Love & FriendshipTuesday, 24 May 2016
Jane Austen’s early novel-in-letters Lady Susan has more in common with Vanity Fair or even Les Liaisons Dangereuses than it does with the author’s mature works. Austen’s familiar wit is there, certainly, but sharpened from embroidery needle to... Read more... |
The Hollow Crown: The Wars of the Roses - Richard III, BBC TwoSunday, 22 May 2016
Benedict Cumberbatch, it turns out, was born to play the blasted, blighted Richard III, as one might expect from an actor whose long-term apprenticeship to both classical theatre and television converged to bring the BBC's Hollow Crown series to a... Read more... |
A Hologram for the KingThursday, 19 May 2016
Tom Hanks is reaching world treasure status, like some third-century heritage site protected by UNESCO. His everyman allure makes him today’s only equivalent to James Stewart. Stewart shocked fans when he played a vengeful man-hunter in Winchester '... Read more... |
