Recent posts tagged adaptation
2020
I Liked The Movie Better. No, Really.
Sometimes adapting something, as one form of remaking it, can do it a favor.
2018
Player Zero
On why books need to be written to be books, not film pitches-to-be.
2016
Big Page, Little Screen Dept.
Write something unfilmable.
2014
Running Time Dept.
Why a long movie that attempts to emulate a novel is a tough proposition, but not an unworkable one.
2013
The Great Gatsby (2013)
A punch bowl full of glitter and treacle.
Incompatible Adapter Dept.
Bill Watterson: "No upside for me" in adapting Calvin & Hobbes to animation. I agreed.
Let's Film The Unfilmable Again Dept.
Some SF books I'd love to see filmed, even if I know the odds are slender.
2012
John Carter
Not a disaster or a game-changer, but well worth a look.
Off the Page Dept.
On filming the "unfilmable", or when writing becomes a multi-media enterprise.
For The Girls (And The Boys, Too) Dept.
Let's see some live-action anime projects in the West that are shojo stories.
Big Eyes Small Market Dept.
Five issues facing live-action adaptations of anime, dissected.
Best Original Screenplay Dept.
Is SF better when written directly for the screen, instead of adapted from another source?
No Longer Human / Ningen Shikkaku (2010)
A glitzy and hollow adaptation of a book that was anything but those two things.
Pride Before A Fall Dept.
While grousing elsewhere about the Akira live-action adaptation -- which now mercifully seems to be off the table -- I used the term "insider's hubris". This was a phrase I coined a while back to describe the kind of disconnect...
2010
Papriktion Dept.
After having seen Inception, I'm now qualified to at least comment on the idea that Paprika (my review) was a better treatment of the same idea, or at least a more fanciful one. This is a little like saying an...
Failth of July Dept.
Again, I haven't been posting much lately because of the Really Awesome Possibility thing that I can't yet talk about. Soon, I promise. The big fandom-related news of the weekend was of course the ghastliness of The Last M. Night...
Moving Pictures Dept.
On a whim: five manga, from my previous reviews and my own personal-faves shelf, that I think would make good candidates for animated productions.Kurohime. The first few volumes of this were rough going for me, and I confess I didn't...
Shelling Out Dept.
From the current AICN Anime report... Hollywood Ghost in the Shell screenwriter Laeta Kalogridis has stated during a Shutter Island q & a that she plans to "turn in a draft in a few weeks." She expressed cautious optimism about...
Hundred Stories (Kousetsu Hyaku Monogatari: Kowai)
Here is another instance of the same material being adapted multiple times—both in live-action and in animation, and with the animated version turning out far better in every respect. The original story is Hundred Stories by Natsuhiko Kyogoku, he who...
Eastward Ho! Dept.
Among the goodies from this week's AICN Anime report: FUNimation has the live-action Kamui film for the U.S. This was adapted from a long-running manga -- also adapted into a very 1980s animated production (Kamui no ken / Dagger of...
2009
Zoo (Otsuichi) (Akihisa Yanari)
Maybe it sounds like a cheap shot to say I picked up the manga adaptation of Otsuichi’s Zoo for a dollar, but it’s the truth. I was already curious about how the short-story collection had been adapted into manga, but...
Murakamization Dept.
I don't know how I missed this one: a movie version of Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood. Rinko Kikuchi Starring in Film Adaptation of Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood | /FilmKenichi Matsuyama, best known as L in the live action Death Note...
2006
Cromartie High: The Movie
The hilarious and outlandish Cromartie High has now gone through three mutations of form: it was originally a manga, then later an animated TV show, and now it has been (one might say it was inevitable) adapted into a live-action...
2005
Initial D
Initial D is a perfect example of how cultural cross-pollination is driving creativity in movies around the world: it’s a Hong Kong adaptation of a Japanese manga, popular in both countries and in the United States as well. It’s hard...
Immortal (ad vitam)
Immortal is the sort of movie that people describe as “Heavy Metal magazine come to life”, and in this case it’s fact. Immortal is, in fact, a filmed version of three graphic novels that appeared at one point in the...
