ALIEN age 11 - an adaptation created by an underage artist based on the Alan Dean Foster novelization and a few stills, without having seen the actual film.
posted by Artw
on Jan 30, 2012 -
19 comments
No one living can say whether the original, ten-hour version of Erich von Stroheim's most famous movie was the epic masterpiece it was touted to be. The 140-minute version is all that remains, and while it's only a quarter of the film it was meant to be, it's still one of the greatest accomplishments (SPOILER) of the silent film era. [more inside]
posted by Trurl
on Dec 18, 2011 -
13 comments
[Absolute Beginners] has a glossy immediacy, and you can feel the flash and determination that went into it. What you don't feel is the tormented romanticism that made English adolescents in the 70s swear by the novel the way American kids had earlier sworn by The Catcher in the Rye. -
Pauline Kael [more inside]
posted by Trurl
on Dec 12, 2011 -
15 comments
Glengarry Glen Ross endures mainly as a spectacular display of verbal warfare and alpha-male gamesmanship. There’s a musical quality to it, with a great composer and a great chorus hitting the complicated runs of broken dialogue and solos that weave into profane poetry and nuggets of philosophical wisdom. Perhaps the greatest sign of the movie’s success, owed equally to Mamet’s script and this cast, is that it does a great sales job in itself, convincing us that there’s nobility to men who lie for a living — a bill of goods we’re all too happy to buy. [more inside]
posted by Trurl
on Sep 29, 2011 -
67 comments
Billionaires have more grandchildren through their sons than through their daughters, because the status advantage is more reproductively valuable to the sons. Therefore, it would be adaptive for the mothers of their children to bear more sons than daughters. But surely that can't be; mothers can't control the sex of their children.
Oh but so it is: billionaires have 60% male children.
[more inside]
posted by grobstein
on Jan 17, 2009 -
69 comments
No "Preacher" for you. Many of you
did not think a "Preacher" miniseries would end well. Would fans prefer to be disappointed by the aborted attempt at an adaptation than disappointed at its not meeting viewers' expectations?
posted by Four-Eyed Girl
on Aug 27, 2008 -
83 comments
Jonathan Lethem's Promiscuous Materials Project invites playwrights and screenwriters to adapt his work for stage or screen. In
an essay for Harper's, he explains that, "few of us question the contemporary construction of copyright. It is taken as a law, both in the sense of a universally recognizable moral absolute, like the law against murder, and as naturally inherent in our world, like the law of gravity. In fact, it is neither. Rather, copyright is an ongoing social negotiation, tenuously forged, endlessly revised, and imperfect in its every incarnation."
NPR reports he is also
giving away the option to turn his novel
You Don’t Love Me Yet into a film, with some caveats. For those of us who aren't filmmakers or playwrights, many of the available
stories are posted for our reading pleasure.
posted by joannemerriam
on Mar 18, 2007 -
9 comments
The BBC
reports that twenty years on "the exclusion zone around the Chernobyl nuclear power station is teeming with life." Lynx, eagle owl, wild boars, horses, wolves—even signs of bears which haven't been seen here in centuries.
British scientist and environmentalist James Lovelock (recently
discussed here)
speculates whether "small volumes of nuclear waste from power production should be stored in tropical forests and other habitats in need of a reliable guardian against their destruction by greedy developers."
Lovelock
describes Chernobyl as "a nasty accident that took 45 lives." This article in the New Scientist
claims that that the death toll may ultimately reach 60,000.
posted by 327.ca
on Apr 21, 2006 -
49 comments
The first issue of the comic book adaptation of Neil Gaiman's
Neverwhere was released yesterday. Mr. Gaiman is credited as a "consultant." So far, the story is fairly intact, but it's the visual element that deviates from the novel--characters look nothing like they were described, and don't even resemble the
old BBC miniseries. And for someone accustomed to the phenomenal artwork seen in most of Gaiman's previous graphic novels (which included several adaptations of his short stories),
Neverwhere seems downright bland. If a feature film follows in the same vein as this adaptation, will Gaiman pull an Alan Moore and
refuse all royalties? (Go easy on me; it's my first post.)
posted by Saellys
on Jun 23, 2005 -
32 comments
Indian Superman is a movie of questionable legality released in India in the mid eighties. Perhaps it should have had a wider release since it has a great deal of humorous appeal for Western audiences. Check out this
review from Stomp Tokyo. I'm looking forward to a crossover when Indian Superman meets
Indian Spider-Man. via
Sepia Mutiny
posted by rks404
on Aug 17, 2004 -
10 comments
An article in the Independent newspaper reports that pests have started thriving on poisons genetically implanted in crops.
It seems that before, the organic pesticide used, was effective because it was only sprayed occasionally (once or twice a year) and the pests didn't have time to develop resistance.
With the pesticide being accessible throughout the whole crop-cycle, the pests have adapted, and now thrive on the poison, which they now regard as a food source, growing even larger than normal, and rendering a weapon in the arsenal against pests, entirely ineffective.
posted by Blue Stone
on Apr 18, 2003 -
15 comments
