I shelve my Alan Moore books next to Thomas Pynchon, Umberto Eco, and Jorge Luis Borges, and I am sure all three postmodern masters would get a healthy kick out of this wildly imaginative third book to Moore’s Gentlemen series, which draws on a vast storehouse of influences and blends them into an ecstatic new [...]
Posts Tagged ‘adaptations’
The Rocketeer
Bill Campbell as all-American hero rocking an art-deco jet-pack, Jennifer Connelly in 30s evening gowns, Timothy Dalton as scenery-chewing Errol-Flynn stand-in onboard burning Nazi zeppelins — The Rocketeer is good old-fashioned serial-style action-adventure full of pulpy twists tempered by a wholesome gee-whiz attitude. Based on the comic book by Dave Stevens, the character also inspired [...]
Atonement
A booby-trapped tale of wartime love and guilt, adapted from the great Ian McEwan, who has been mining the darker recesses of desire since First Love, Last Rites (1975). Joe Wright directs an excellent cast — Keira Knightley, James McAvoy, Romola Garai, Vanessa Redgrave, and newcomer Saoirse Ronan — in what begins like a standard [...]
Beowulf
Robert Zemeckis’ high-tech “performance capture” adaptation of the Old English poem turns actors–Ray Winstone, Anthony Hopkins, Robin Wright Penn, John Malkovich, Angelina Jolie–into rubbery action figures. Only Crispin Glover, covered in a disgusting, festering texture, manages to infuse some sort of twisted soul into his Grendel. I saw this in 3-D, which is sorta groovy [...]
