The End

Adaptation
Well, there you have it: the last class of the summer semester. And what a great class it was! We went around the room and each student talked about his or her final paper for a few minutes. Either they'd given the matter a lot of thought or they were amazingly adept at improvising. It was so interesting to hear what they had to say about the films and books they'd chosen as their topics, about what they'd learned in the course of writing their papers, and about what they'd learned concerning the adaptation process specifically. More than one student said that he or she had begun the semester assuming that the literary source is always better than the film adapted from it and now realized that sometimes the movie is better. I'm going to miss these students.

Discussion Topics

Adaptation

1) Would you recommend the fairy tale version of The Little Mermaid (the one in your text) for children?
2) What's going on with the ending of the fairy tale?
3) Was watching the film different for you, in the context of the literary version?
4) Did you notice anything in the movie this time that you hadn't noticed before? Did you feel any differently about the movie?
5) What is the movie about -- its main theme?
6) What is the fairy tale about?

The Gold Rush

The Gold Rush is a great example of just how important film restoration is. I'd seen this Charlie Chaplin silent masterpiece a few times, but I don't think I ever really saw it until this week, when I watched a newly restored print at Enzian theater. Of course the film looks better than it has since it opened in 1925, but there was something else going on, something a little mysterious. The themes were somehow clearer, the characters more vivid, the performances richer (especially Chaplin's amazing one) and the connections among the various scenes stronger.  I've always loved parts of this film, including the famous scene in which a starving Charlie eats a shoe (twirling the laces like spaghetti) and the also-famous scene in which he sticks forks into two dinner rolls and makes them dance. Now I finally get why it's considered one of his finest.

Discussion Topics

Adaptation

On July 30, our last class meeting, each student will have about five minutes to tell the class about his or her final paper, covering these points:
1) The film & text combination selected for the paper
2) The paper's theme
3) Why this material and this theme were chosen
4) Something, small or profound, learned in the course of researching and writing the paper
5) BONUS (optional): A random, general observation about films that are adapted from texts.

Lanewatch

Anthony Lane, The New Yorker's British movie critic, has struck yet again with his review of The Dark Knight Rises. As you may recall, Lane is temperamentally incapable of writing anything of length without referring to at least one of the 10 items on his Anglo-centric checklist: Shakespeare, Dickens, Tolkien, 007, royalty, Harry Potter, Lewis Carroll, J.M. Barrie, Sherlock Holmes and something European (non-British, often French). His average seems to be about three of these references per article, and he's right on target in his latest effort. He references 007, royalty (the musical piece "Pavane for a Dead Princess") and something European (Ravel, the composer of that piece). Just for fun, he throws in a mention of Hitchcock and calls Bruce Wayne's living quarters a "castle." Clearly, the boy can't help it.

Volare

"Volare" is a lovely, romantic Italian song that was wildly popular in this country in the 1950s and early '60s. Dean Martin had a hit with it and practically every old-school pop singer, Italian-American or not, sang some version of it. In fact, it was so overused that for a while it became something of a joke. Woody Allen's latest movie, To Rome With Love, which is set in Italy, opens and closes with "Volare." I suspect Allen chose it both because it's a beautiful song and because it once had been a joke. I saw To Rome With Love in a smallish, pretty full theater, and as the song began at the start of the movie, most of the people in the audience spontaneously sang along. I know that sounds unlikely, but they really did. How hilarious, right? (It reminded me of how funny and refreshing it was to hear Dean Martin's version of "That's Amore," long after the song's heyday, at the start of Moonstruck in 1987.) BTW, To Rome With Love, which tells four or five mostly unrelated Rome-set stories, is a lot of fun in a facetious sort of way. The subject of the film is our collective fantasies.

Condition Critical

Early in her long, positive and rather pompous review of The Dark Knight Rises, Manohla Dargis of The New York Times makes a point of saying that Imax "is the way to see the film." Then she goes on to say nothing whatsoever about what Imax adds to the experience and, in fact, very little about any of the film's visual qualities. She does mention, in a vague sort of way, that director Christopher Nolan "continues to refine his cinematic technique" and that the action in the new film is "more visually coherent" than in the earlier films of the series, but that's about it. Oh, yes: she does use the word "visceral." Twice.

Discussion Topics

Adaptation

This coming Monday will be a bit different from our other class meetings. For most of the class time, we'll be focusing on The Long Goodbye, film and book. We'll finish up reading those passages you've found from the novel. Then I'll lecture on the film. We'll also discuss the novel a bit more. Toward the end of class, we'll watch The Little Mermaid. (Your papers on The Little Mermaid and your final papers will be due the next week.) Bring your copies of The Long Goodbye to class and think about these questions:
1) What does the title mean?
2) How would you describe the author's style?
3) What do we know about Philip Marlowe? How do we know this?

Fun & Games

Adaptation

Katharine Hepburn and friend in Bringing Up Baby

We had our big pizza party this week. One student suggested that we play a game in which the class picks a character from one of the books or movies we've studied this semester and then a student who has been kept in a sound-proof booth (i.e., outside the classroom) tries to guess who that is by asking yes-or-no questions. So the first student up got the leopard, Baby, in Bringing Up Baby. Somehow -- and I still don't know how -- he guessed it in just three tries! At the class' insistence, I played, too. I got the weird waiter in Ghost World. That took me 11 guesses. But, hey, that's a tough one, right? I mean, a waiter! Why not the bus driver or an extra in the art-gallery scene? You know, I really ought to be a better sport about these things...

Moonrise Kingdom

Wes Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom is easily one of the best films I've seen this year: funny, poignant, inventive. I still prefer Anderson's The Royal Tenenbaums, Rushmore and Fantastic Mr. Fox, but the new one's right up there. I love the devotion that Edward Norton's character has for the Khaki Scouts (i.e., the Boy Scouts), and, in fact, as an old Eagle Scout myself, I found pretty much everything about the Khaki Scouts to be funny.  I also love the way a certain character (I won't say which one) gradually emerges as the movie's true hero. I think Kingdom was influenced by Anderson's work on the animated Mr. Fox in that the characters in the new film are a lot like animated characters or puppets. The actors' performances are deliberately simple. Bill Murray, for example, is perfectly fine in his role, but his character doesn't have the complexity or personal style of a typical Bill Murray character. The role would have been exactly the same had, say, Jeff Bridges or Jeff Daniels played it. Which, again, is deliberate and just what this material requires. My guess is that Anderson may eventually return to animation.

Children of Paradise

Earlier today, I saw Children of Paradise at a one-time-only showing at Enzian Theater. It's been my favorite film for many years and it still is. What a great statement on the nature of love and loss, friendship and repulsion, evil and acceptance! It's thoroughly romantic without being sappy in the least. And the performances are amazing, especially -- well, especially all of them. I'd seen it several times before, but this is the first time in many years. Some theaters around the country are showing it just now because there's a new, amazing restoration available. I doubt it'll be back in any theater around here any time soon, but a DVD release is scheduled for the fall.

Revised Schedule

Adaptation

Here is the revised schedule for the final three Adaptation classes:

7/16/12: PIZZA PARTY (Bring your own non-alcoholic drink.) Seventh paper due (required). Students' passages from The Long Goodbye novel. Final paper conferences.

7/23/12: Eighth paper assigned. Lecture on The Long Goodbye film. Discussion of The Long Goodbye novel. Intro to The Little Mermaid, film and fairy tale. View The Little Mermaid (1989, 82m). Final paper conferences.

7/30/12: Final paper due. Eighth paper due. (If you want your final paper and/or your eighth paper returned, you must bring a SASE to class.) Discuss The Little Mermaid, film and fairy tale. General discussion. Goodbyes.

Discussion Topics

Discussion topics for 7.9.12:
1) Where does the graphic novel Ghost World make its points in a mainly visual way?
2) What is shocking and/or inappropriate about this material?
3) What's going on with the bus in the graphic novel? In the movie?
4) How would you describe Enid?
5) How does the addition of Seymour affect the material?

Continuing readings:
1) Finish reading Ghost World. Be prepared to share two ways that the graphic novel makes its points visually on 7.9.12.
2) Continue reading The Long Goodbye. Find three passages that describe the world of the novel and be prepared to share them with the class on 7.16.12.
3) Read The Little Mermaid by 7.23.12.

Poster Placement

Adaptation
Just saw The Amazing Spider-Man and I was struck by the prominent poster of Hitchcock's Rear Window in Peter Parker's bedroom. I don't see much of a connection between the two films, except that Peter is a photographer and so is the hero (played by James Stewart) of Rear Window. There's no comparison in quality, BTW. The Amazing Spider-Man is OK but hardly, well, amazing, while Hitchcock's film, of course, is great.

Lanewatch

As I've mentioned before, Anthony Lane, the British film critic for The New Yorker, apparently has a master list of 10 topics, at least one of which he must reference in just about everything he writes. That list, you will recall, includes: Shakespeare, Dickens, Tolkien, 007, royalty, Harry Potter, Lewis Carroll, J.M. Barrie, Sherlock Holmes and something European (but not British). Lane's review of The Amazing Spider-Man references three of these: Shakespeare (in the first paragraph!), royalty (the fictional Queen Narissa, played by Susan Sarandon in Enchanted) and something European (Faust). He also references fellow-Brit Roald Dahl, as he did in his recent review of Moonrise Kingdom. A couple more nods to Dahl and I might have to add him to the master list.