adaptation
The Ladykillers, Gielgud TheatreThursday, 08 December 2011
The great Ealing film comedies are often viewed as sacred cows, no matter that a small but significant number of them were decidedly sacrilegious. Indeed, one of the studio’s last productions, Alexander Mackendrick’s The Ladykillers (1955), was also... Read more... |
The Deep Blue SeaThursday, 24 November 2011
The Deep Blue Sea, the latest from justly esteemed British director Terence Davies, shares its name with a Renny Harlin movie about genetically modified sharks (well, give or take a definite article). Both films deal in high anxiety and the looming... Read more... |
Q&A: Director Terence Davies on The Deep Blue SeaThursday, 24 November 2011
The trajectory of Terence Rattigan’s standing finds two peaks separated by a deep trough. From the late Thirties to the mid Fifties, he gave a voice to a social class which liked to keep its feelings under lock and key. Then in 1956 Rattigan was... Read more... |
Festen, Barbican Pit TheatreFriday, 11 November 2011
Family occasions can be fraught affairs, as playwrights from Harold Pinter to Alan Ayckbourn have convincingly proved, but the mother of all family meltdown dramas must be Thomas Vinterberg’s Danish Festen, a Dogme 95 film made in 1998. Soon after,... Read more... |
Wuthering HeightsMonday, 07 November 2011
You can forget “I am Heathcliff”. And abandon hope of “I cannot live without my soul” and “I love my murderer” while you’re at it. Andrea Arnold’s newest addition to the canon of Wuthering Heights adaptations is the story flayed so raw you can see... Read more... |
DVD: The OutsidersFriday, 04 November 2011
Based on the novel by SE Hinton, The Outsiders is a tender coming-of-age movie set against a tough backdrop of flick-knives, rumbles and gang warfare. In Francis Ford Coppola’s vision, it’s also a romantic cinematic homage to Gone with the Wind.... Read more... |
The HelpTuesday, 25 October 2011
The source material for a film like The Help - a story about the black maids who worked for white families in the American South and raised their children as their employers busied themselves with making money and playing bridge - would... Read more... |
Tinker Tailor Soldier SpyFriday, 16 September 2011
Tomas Alfredson’s riveting, stately adaptation of John le Carré’s classic spy novel is an immaculately measured teaser, delivered one carefully heaped spoonful at a time. Primped, polished and with the tension ratcheted up a notch for the big screen... Read more... |
Jane EyreFriday, 09 September 2011
As fresh and enchanting as the first flushes of spring, Cary Joji Fukunaga’s imaginative retelling of Charlotte Brontë’s 19th-century proto-feminist novel captures the thrill of attraction with rare perception, sweep and tenderness. It foregrounds... Read more... |
The Lion King's West End ReignSunday, 04 September 2011
The stage musical The Lion King has been seen by nearly 10 million people in the UK - almost 60 million worldwide – and Lord only knows how many must have seen Walt Disney’s animation. I have a friend who reckons he has seen it at least 26 times and... Read more... |
theartsdesk MOT: The Railway Children, Waterloo StationMonday, 15 August 2011
This warm-hearted production of E Nesbit’s most famous novel premiered to glowing reviews at its site-specific venue last summer. I didn‘t catch it last year, but I doubt this swift revival is any less captivating, nor the new cast any less sure-... Read more... |
The Night Watch, BBC TwoTuesday, 12 July 2011
Sarah Waters’s highly praised novels have marched from the page to the screen with regimental regularity and no apparent sacrifice in quality. Tipping the Velvet and Fingersmith, with their big Victorian brushstrokes, were built for television no... Read more... |
