Based on the book by...

It might be true; in most cases the books are better than the movies or TV-shows that follow them, but in many cases that does not necessarily mean that the movies/TV-shows are bad. On the contrary, so many great movies out there are based on books and novels, and here are a couple of my favorites:

Gone Baby Gone

One of my favorite movies, Ben Affleck surprised quite a few with his directorial debut for a feature film. This crime drama centers around two young detectives, Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro, who are hired to investigate the disappearance of a young girl from a tough Boston neighborhood. Definitely not a feel good film, it does raise some interesting questions on morale, and the story is portioned out at a perfect pace. Casey Affleck does a very fine job portraying Patrick Kenzie, though Michelle Monaghan is maybe even more impressive as his somewhat quiet partner Angie. The movie is also starring Morgan Freeman, Ed Harris, my personal favorite Titus Welliver, sporting a rather ludicrous mustache and Amy Ryan, who is absolutely brilliant in her portrayal of the little girl's mother. 

The opening montage is wonderful. Accompanied by the monologue spoken by Casey Affleck, it sets the tone for a wonderful movie based on the book by Dennis Lehane: 

Sleepers

Another personal favorite of mine, this movie is based on the novel by Lorenzo Carcaterra. It depicts the story of four childhood friends in Hells Kitchen, New York, who ends up at a home for boys for 6-18 months after a prank on a hot dog vendor ends up killing a person. Unlucky. Both for the innocent victim of their prank and for themselves… At the home for boys they are systematically brutalized and abused, ultimately changing them and their friendship forever. The movie tells us both the story of the young boys as well as the story of their need for revenge and redemption as they get older.

Eldard, Crudup, Pitt, Patric and Driver in 'Sleepers'. 

The cast is perfect. Brad Pitt, Jason Patric, Ron Eldard and Billy Crudup plays the "old" version of the boys, and the film also have Robert De Niro, Dustin Hoffman, Minnie Driver and Kevin Bacon in important roles. Warning: You might end up hating Kevin Bacon after watching this movie. I did for years after watching it for the first time. 

Trailer: 

Band of Brothers

I'm not a huge fan of war movies. Just never really liked them much. There are exceptions of course, and this miniseries is one of them. There is obviously a lot of violence in it, but the beauty of the series is  the characters, the brotherhood, the amazing performances, the stories told and… well, the job Spielberg and Tom Hanks did. Because, have no doubt about it; the series looks amazing on screen. 

The series is based on the Stephen Ambrose book of the same titles. The cast includes actors such as Damian Lewis (Homeland), Scott Grimes, Donnie Wahlberg, Michael Cudlitz, Dexter Fletcher, Ross McCall, Michael Fassbender, David Schwimmer (!), Tom Hardy (!!!) and Neal McDonough. 

Tom Hardy before he hit the big time

Funfact: The Tonight Show host Jimmy Fallon has one scene in one of the episodes. 

Also, the show has one of the best intros ever. The score alone is enough to give you goosebumps. 

No Country for Old Men

The Coen Brothers have made a lot of brilliant movies, and this 2007 movie is definitely one of them. Based on a novel by the same name by Cormac McCarthy, the story revolves around a hunter who stumbles upon 2 million dollars in what looks like a drug deal gone bad. Naturally, when 2 million dollars are gone, there will be people looking for it. 

Javier Bardem laughs at his own haircut

Josh Brolin is stellar in his lead role as Llewelyn Moss, as is Javier Bardem as Anton Chigurh, a class A psychopath with a class Z haircut. Tommy Lee Jones plays Ed Tom Bell, an old cop not used to the violence following in the path of Moss and Chigurh. The actor with the stone face is as laconic as ever, a perfect fit for the part. Woody Harrelson also plays a part in this brilliant adaptation of what I can only imagine must be a very good read. 

Trailer:

Mystic River

Another movie adapted from a Dennis Lehane novel, and again, as with 'Gone Baby Gone', the story takes place in Boston. Clint Eastwood directs the movie, Brian Helgeland adapted the novel into a script, and Sean Penn, Kevin Bacon, Tim Robbins, Laurence Fishbourne and the wonderful Marcia Gay Harden brings the story to life on the big screen. Sean Penn plays an ex-con, Jimmy, whose daughter, Katie, is killed, and he launches his own investigation using his contacts in the streets. Again, as with 'Gone Baby Gone', we're not in for a feel good movie, but a good one? Oh, definitely! Sean Penn and Tim Robbins are amazing, and Clint Eastwood is a wonderful director. Looking forward to reading the book as well. 

Trailer: 

Jackie Brown

Tarantino's first adaption after having written all his earlier films, Jackie Brown is based on the novel Rum Punch by Elmore Leonard. Pam Grier is brilliant, and both Robert Forster and Michael Keaton did some of their best work in a long time. As with most of Tarantino's work, the dialogue is highly entertaining, and the violence both expected and sudden. Robert De Niro does one of his best supporting roles of the 90s, and Samuel L. Jackson is, as usual, a bad ass mutha… 

Odell: Is she dead? Louis Gara: Pretty much...

Justified

In 2001, Elmore Lenoard wrote a short novel, 'Fire in the Hole', about U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens and his pursuit of Boyd Crowder. About 9 years later, the novel became the basis for a wonderful TV show called 'Justified'. In 2015, the show will end after 6 seasons. Read more about it in this old post. 

Looking for Alabama

In 1993, Patricia Arquette portrayed Alabama Whitman in the movie 'True Romance', directed by Tony Scott. The script had been written by Quentin Tarantino, and although changes were made, the movie still has Tarantinto written all over it. In 'True Romance', Arquette - who last was seen in a reoccurring role in season 4 of 'Boardwalk Empire' - played a hooker who gets mixed up romantically with Clarance, one of her customers. Together they steal her pimp's cocaine and takes off. One of the most memorable scenes in the movie is when she gets confronted with the character of Virgil, wonderfully portrayed by the late James Gandolfini. She gets beaten half to death, but... her spirit is never broken, and she never shows any weakness.

Patricia Arquette delivers one of her strongest performances

Quentin Tarantino of course, has a history of writing female characters with an above average tendency to feel the need to kick some ass, 'Kill Bill Vol.1' and 'Kill Bill Vol. 2' obviously being the best examples. Let's not forget Uma Thurman's character in 'Pulp Fiction', and Pam Grier's character in 'Jackie Brown'. Although not kicking ass as literally as the members of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad of the Kill Bill flicks, they were still characters who didn't take shit from anyone. And more importantly, they never showed any weakness towards their surrounding friends/enemies.


My question is this; where is the Alabama of 2013? Kerri Washington's character of Olivia Pope on the show 'Scandal' is supposed to be one of those strong female characters, but to me she is quite the opposite. Obviously one cannot expect a character going through the tests of life never showing any weaknesses, but Pope seems to be constantly at war with her emotions. And her emotions wins about 80% of the time. Tatiana Maslany's character of Sarah Manning in the highly entertaining 'Orphan Black' could be considered a 'Modern day Alabama', and definitely more so than Kerri Washington's Pope. So far, though, I am still waiting for another Alabama…

Could Tatiany Maslany prove to be another "Alabama"? 

Oscar Thoughts: Screenplay and Director

With the Academy Awards only about two weeks away, here are some of my thoughts on a few of the nominees. In this post I´ll focus on three of awards, namely the following:

Best Director

Steven Spielberg - Lincoln
David O. Russell - Silver Linings Playbook
Ang Lee - Life of Pi
Benh Zeitlin - Beasts of the Southern Wild
Michael Haneke - Amour



Best Adapted Screenplay

Argo - Chris Terrio
Beasts of the Southern Wild - Lucy Altibar & Benh Zeitlin
Life of Pi - David Magee
Lincoln - Tony Kushner
Silver Linings Playbook - David O. Russell


Best Original Screenplay


Amour - Michael Haneke
Django Unchained - Quentin Tarantino
Moonrise Kingdom - Wes Anderson & Roman Coppola
Zero Dark Thirty - Mark Boal
Flight - John Gatins

Best Director

This years nominees for Best Director are for the most part very well-known names in the movie-industry. Steven Spielberg, one feels, has been around since the real Abraham Lincoln was the President of the U.S., and both Michael Haneke and Ang Lee have been household names for a long time. David O. Russell has also been producing and directing since the 90´s, but before his critically acclaimed The Fighter (Oscar-nominated in 2011) he´s probably best known for Three Kings (1999).
Benh Zeitlin however, has never directed a feature film before, and his Beasts of the Southern Wild is an outsider for this years 85th annual Academy Awards.


What do I think? Speaking of the directors, I´ll say that for me Ang Lee, Spielberg and Zeitlin are the favorites. I had high hopes for Amour, but I was left disappointed overall by the movie. It had its moments, but this was not Haneke´s best work (however, Emmanuelle Riva made the movie one to watch anyway). The story has potential, but to me too much emphasis was put on making half the scenes twice as long as they needed to be for the point to be made.


Lincoln is, to me, a more challenging film to direct then Amour, and Spielberg does an excellent job. Where Haneke relies on the challenges of capturing the audience with scenes from within one apartment, Spielberg has the disadvantage/advantage of a much more varied scenery in telling his story. Some of the scenes are beautiful, as one of the scenes showing Lincoln riding a horse through the battlefields in the aftermath of the civil war. Ang Lee did a brilliant job making Life of Pi, and even though I wasn´t completely sold on the movie itself, the directing was masterful. That CGI-tiger was cute as hell! The scenes with rough weather was also made very believable for the most part.


When it comes to Zeitlin´s Beasts of the Southern Wild, it´s impossible not to give the guy credit for directing a film with the cast he did. We´re talking about actors of very little or no experience at all, and they all did an amazing job. A lot has been said about 9-year old Quvenzhané Wallis, (and I´ll get back to that when I´ll discuss other categories in a later post), but I really enjoyed the other cast-members as well. A lot of great scenes, and a very beautiful movie, despite a few aspects that I didn´t really love (giant hogs...). David O. Russell did a great job on Silver Linings Playbook as well, though I feel this is more the kind of movie that can win for Screenplay, not director.

Trailers for the movies:

Amour



Lincoln



Life of Pi



Silver Linings Playbook



Beasts of the Southern Wild

Best Adapted Screenplay

The five nominees for Best adapted screenplay are all strong contenders, with Silver Linings Playbook, Argo, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Life of Pi and Lincoln all seeming like movies that could win. David O. Russell wrote the screenplay for Silver Linings Playbook, a movie I´ve watched three times already, and I think he does a brilliant job with the timing of the humour in the movie. To me this movie and Beasts of the Southern Wild, co-written by the director Bein Zeitlin and Lucy Alibar, stands out as the two "roses" of the bunch. 

Life of Pi is wonderfully adapted to screenplay by David Magee, and let´s face it... making that story "filmable" was never going to be an easy thing to do. But if Ang Lee managed to do it (and he did), the assist for that goal should definitely go to David Magee. Now for the two movies based on real life events, Argo (written by Chris Terrio) and Lincoln (written by Tony Kushner). While the former is a sharp, to-the-point screenplay on the plan to save hostages life in a very hostile Iran in the 70s, the latter takes on the period of Lincoln´s presidency related to the abolishment of slavery. I think Argo might be a favorite here, and I personally wouldn´t cringe if Argo or Silver Linings Playbook won the award. I´d say Argo and Beasts of the Southern Wild might be the two nominees I probably think will win it, though.

Argo

Best Original Screenplay

As I´ve said earlier, Amour (Michael Haneke wrote the screenplay as well)  didn´t really impress me much. I won´t say that maybe it was due to high expectations. It just wasn´t a great movie, I thought. The theme of the movie is interesting, but I didn´t feel the story was that great... and at times, not very believable either. Flight, written by John Gatins,  gave us a Denzel Washington doing what he does best. Act his ass off. And he was great. Again. It also brought us another memorable performance by the ridicilously cool John Goodman. The story is also intriguing, and it has it´s twists and turns (cue Family Guy scene with Stewie talking about Brian´s novel). The opening 30 minutes is actually amazing. I loved it. I truly did. It´s an outsider, but I do think it will fall short of one of the movies I consider the favorite nominees, namely Django Unchained (Quentin Tarantino) and Zero Dark Thirty (Mark Boal). 

Django Unchained is about as Tarantino as you can get. The dialogue, the scenery, the characters. I´ll never forget the scene where the blood of a man gunned down on a horse hits those white flowers. It reminded me of the fighting-scene in the snow in Kill Bill Vol. 1. And it is beautiful. Zero Dark Thirty has received a lot of criticism for it´s torture scenes, but the screenplay is nevertheless still probably one of the better of the nominees. Still, I´d go Django Unchained in this category. 

The last nominee, Moonrise Kingdom written by Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola, is a cute movie, and very classic Wes Anderson. However, I find the movie in its whole a bit... too much Anderson. It all gets a bit... meeh. Had the Oscars gone all Golden Globe and put the movie as a "Comedy or Musical", then maybe, but I wouldn´t hold this screenplay over any of the other nominees.. Don´t get me wrong. I did enjoy the movie, but I still think Wes Anderson tries a little bit to much to create cheesy, funny shit. And too much cheese is never good. Never. 

Moonrise Kingdom

Flight

Django Unchained

Zero Dark Thirty