Video Event of the Week: Might Sony's DVD of The Secret in Their Eyes, Juan Jose Campanella's Oscar-winning and slightly over the top political thriller set in 70s Argentina be what we're talking about? Could Warner Home Video's Blu-ray update of the mother of all 50s sci-fi flicks, Forbidden Planet, conceivably get the nod? Or -- and how weird would this be -- could Dream Works' American Beauty, the Sam Mendes suburbia satire making its Blu-ray debut, by any chance actually be The One?
All worthy, to be sure -- except for American Beauty, a film that I dislike on a continuum somewhere between "complete loathing" and "I want to find Sam Mendes and smack him upside the head with a dead mackerel" -- but for my money, it has to be WHV's deluxe box set 35th Anniversary Edition of Milos Forman's great adaptation of the Ken Kesey novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. With an iconic performance by some very cool guy named Jack something or other.
I need to stipulate here, up front, that I'm giving the Cuckoo's Nest set the nod not because of the film, per se, although it is, to be sure, a pop masterpiece; when people talk about the 70s as a sort of Golden Age, when deeply personal statements could somehow be made in the context of commercial American studio films, Cuckoo's Nest is one of the first pictures that comes to mind. Seeing it again this week, I was actually struck by how undated it seems, both in terms of technique and the counter-cultural baggage it might have been expected to drag with it into the present. It's actually rather a timeless story, as it turns out, and of course the ensemble playing -- not just by Nicholson, but also by a lot of then unfamiliar faces including Christopher Lloyd, Danny DeVito and Brad Dourif -- is beyond remarkable.
Here's the trailer (a cleaner looking version of which is included in the new set) for a taste, in case you've forgotten just how good the film is.
Cuckoo's Nest's intrinsic merits notwithstanding, I'm giving the anniversary box set the nod because of one simple word: Tschotchkes. For your money (approximately 50 bucks for the Blu-ray and 40 for the DVD) you get a repackaged version of the 2008 remaster, with its occasionally ravishing (although not high-def) transfer and first-time Surround Sound mix (which remains underwhelming). Bonuses (on a second disc) recycled from the aforementioned 2008 set include a pretty good making-of doc, the aforementioned trailer, some deleted scenes and an audio commentary by Forman and producer Michael Douglas; there's also a new interview with Douglas which is of interest for obvious reasons having little to do with the film itself. Oh yes, and those tschotchkes, by which I mean the stuff that turns this into a coffee table event: An elegant little book on the history of the film by critic Charles Kiselyak, an official looking manila envelope (with color shots of the cast inside) simulating a mental hospital's patient files, and -- best of all -- a deck of cards with more photos of the cast appended. As in these guys aren't playing with a full deck. Heh.
In any case, the whole thing is a handsome (and obviously suitable for holiday gift-giving) package with a really great film inside. You can -- and if you have a little disposable income, probably should -- order it over at Amazon right here.
Okay, that said, and because things as per usual will doubtless be a little quiet around here for a few days, here's a fun and obviously relevant little project to help us wile away the hours until Monday:
Best or Worst Feature Film Adaptation of a Serious and Well-Regarded Contemporary Novel!!!
And my totally top of my head Top Five is:
5. The Road (John Hillicoat, 2009)
I wasn't as enthused as some about the Cormac Mccarthy novel, which was way too relentlessly despairing even for a gloomy gus like me, but it was, inarguably, quite gorgeously written. The film version, on the other hand, while well-intentioned and visually impressive, came off like a zombie movie without the zombies.
4. Love in the Time of Cholera (Mike Newell, 2007)
Like Jon Cusack in High Fidelity, I read the Garcia-Marquez novel, but unlike him I am not completely sure I understood it. The film seemed to capture it to the limit of my own comprehension, however, and I thought Javier Bardem was aces
3. Rabbit, Run (Jack Smight, 1970)
The Updike novel, of course, rendered as a vehicle for the young James Caan. It's supposed to be pretty good (Carrie Snodgrass's performance especially) but nobody I know, including me, has ever seen it. It just got released as a Warner Archive limited edition DVD, however, so it might be worth ordering over at Amazon. I'll get back to you on this one.
2. Catch-22 (Mike Nichols, 1970)
They said the book was unfilmable. They were wrong. Of course, who "they" were -- I suspect TV's Van Patten family -- is a subject for further research.
And the Numero Uno blah blah blah blah is --
1. The Bonfire of the Vanities (Brian DePalma, 1990)
A complete disaster pretty much from the opening frame, or at least the first establishing shot of Bruce Willis as a character that author Tom Wolfe had written, deliberately, as a Brit. Just an amazingly bad film; at some point, you can't help thinking that it was made for no other reason than to deliberately annoy the millions of people who had read Wolfe's novel and loved it.
Alrighty, then -- what would your choices be?
sid sherman on 24 September 2010
Two simple words: Portnoy's Complaint.
Gummo on 24 September 2010
"Naked Lunch" -- a brave attempt to film the unfilmable; more a meditation on Burrough's life & work than a strict adaptation of the novel (if that's even possible... or desirable).
And I'm one of those people who hated the book Bonfire of the Vanities -- thought it badly written, with cardboard characters, unmotivated senseless action and just thoroughly phony from start to finish. So I don't really care if the movie sucked.
And color me ashamed to have never seen Cuckoo, something I have to remedy soon. Though on a rereading of the book years ago, I was surprised to see how deeply mired it was in 1960s pre-feminist sexism (Nurse Ratched as the ultimate Freudian castrating mother) which, obvious as it may be now, completely passed unnoticed on my first teenaged reading....
steve simels on 24 September 2010
Gummo -- I had problems with Bonfire the novel, mostly because I think the characters are all obsessed with race in a way that says more about Wolfe's attitudes than about the way real people actually think. But I thought as a snapshot of American culture at a particular weird time, it was mostly on the money (prescient even) and often laugh out loud funny.
As for Cuckoo's Nest, I haven't read since I was in college, so I'll take your word on the sexism. The movie, however, seems to me to be (simplistically, perhaps) a parable about authoritarianism, which is why Forman (who knew from authoritarians) was probably drawn to it. The fact that the authoritarian figure is a woman is mostly irrelevant, I think, except in the sense that the battle of wills gets a little genre twist -- this is, after all, a story about a loony bin -- by virtue of it being Louise Fletcher rather than say Max Von Sydow.
kurt b. on 24 September 2010
My favorite Kesey book is "Sometimes A Great Notion" but the film version with Paul Newman, Henry Fonda & longtime Simels dream girl Lee Remick doesn't really hit it. It doesn't suck, though, so I guess it would be a Mildly Disappointing Feature Film Adaptation of a Serious and Well-Regarded Contemporary Novel.
I thought Mary Harron's film of "American Psycho" was way better than it had a right to be. I loved the book but didn't see how it could translate to film.
And to echo Gummo, Cronenberg's "Naked Lunch" might have to top the list if only for its inventiveness.
TMink on 24 September 2010
I was amazed at how well they did Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. The film makes me uncomfortable it is done so well. And I really enjoy the movie MASH, but then I tend to enjoy Altman. In a completely different vein, wasn't Woody Allen's "Everything You wanted to Know About Sex" funny?
Trey
Gummo on 24 September 2010
TMink -- Fear and Loathing was my first thought too, but technically it's not a novel, dammit.
Gwen De Marco on 24 September 2010
"To Kill a Mockingbird" is the first one that came to mind.
trademarkdave on 24 September 2010
I guess "The Swimmer" wasn't a novel.
And "MASH" the book was quite a bit different from "MASH" the film
BTW, are you the only living critic who liked the film of "Catch-22"? Not that I disagree!
trademarkdave on 24 September 2010
One final question and I'll take the answer off the air: did you read Wolfe's serialized version of "Bonfire" in "Rolling Stone". IIRC, that was one helluva mess. Maybe dePalma (who, quite frankly, I absolutely detest) was going for that first-draft "vibe"...
Culture of Truth on 24 September 2010
I never read Joe Klein's "Primary Colors," but I assume it sucked. The movie wasn't bad at all, though, and John Travolta was pretty good.
I know people people feel "Misery" with Kathy Bates (and Caan!) is one of the better Stephen King adaptations, but fortunately I happen to read the book first, and its far more effective, creepier and disturbing.
Atonement was at least as good as the novel, and Keira Knightly was easy on the eyes.
Felt the same about "Bonfire" - thought it was good snapshot, where the movie was an utter disaster. Strange too, because everyone involved, even Willis, is capable of much better.
steve simels on 24 September 2010
Dave -- I did in indeed read the serialized version of Bonfire, by which I mean as much as I could of the first installment, which I found shall we say turgid. I was frankly stunned when I picked up the book later and found he had somehow reworked it into a page turner...
NYMary on 24 September 2010
Joseph Strick's "Ulysses" is by far the worst film-to-novel ever, ever, ever (I defy any sane person to sit through it without chemical enhancement), though his "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" is also pretty bad (and dull!). And John Huston proved that it is possible to bring Joyce to the screen, so quitcherbitchin' on that score.
As a literary scholar, I like "Catch-22" the film. I think it's one of the few films that really kid of "gets" modern narrative, the way it keeps circling around the Snowden moment of helplessness in the face of absurdity. "Memento" just wished it could manipulate time that way.
Incomplete, but brilliant: "The Tin Drum."
I know Nabokov wrote the screenplay, but the 1962 "Lolita" is unwatchable for for me. Damn you Hayes Office! Gimme the 1998 version, which is much creepier, and closer to the book, particularly Melanie Griffith's performance.
And I know you hate this one, Steve, but the film version of "Trainspotting," while not so rawly vicious as the book, does a decent job with portraying the gritty underside of junkie culture, and its uncomfortable proximity to the mainstream.
the phantom creep on 24 September 2010
What -- no props from anybody for Malick's Thin Red Line?
TMink on 24 September 2010
Gummo, good point. I thought that much of Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail was hyperbole. Then I ate dinner with some big shot reporter whose name I have forgotten and mentioned Hunter Thompson. He started laughing and recounted the things Thompson did as an eyewitness to their veracity!
Trey
NYMary on 24 September 2010
Oh, and I'm right there with you with "American Beauty," Steve: when a stoned teenager looking at garbage is your moral center, you've got some problems.
fmcgrath on 24 September 2010
I can hardly remember the film of "The French Lieutenant's Woman" so I guess I couldn't have hated it. Great book, though.
I thought the serialized "Bonfire" had great energy--Wolfe drained out much of it from the big book version. Cannot comment on the film,
A book that probably did not get reviewed on the cover of the NYT Book Review was "Six Days of the Condor." Sydney Pollack assembled a terrific cast and made a very entertaining movie.
Culture of Truth on 24 September 2010
OMG You forgot "The Da Vinci Code" !!
Martin McCaffery on 25 September 2010
As I keep telling my audience (and as they continue to ignore me): Books and movies are different things, you can't compare them.
The Big Sleep, just for making a wonderful film that is totally stymied by the content of the wonderful book.
Ever seen the movie "Steppenwolf" based on the Herman Hesse novel? One of the first features shot on video. I was too much in High School awe of the novel to comment on the successfulness of the movie adaptation, but parts of stay with me after 30+ years. On the other hand "Siddartha", bad idea.
I haven't read "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" or the sequels, but the first movie was fun (and had really lovely prints) and the second was a good suspense film.
Totally agree on "American Beauty", a movie I watched slack-jawed it was so loathsome.
The only good thing I have to say about "Gone With The Wind" movie is that it isn't as long and not as racist as the book.
Cliff Hendroval on 25 September 2010
Merchant/Ivory/Jhabvala did well with "A Room With A View" and "The Remains Of The Day".
And, yeah, "American Beauty" was the ultimate in middle-brow dreck. You mean the ultra-macho authority figure is actually a closet case? Wow, that's some really profound psychological twist!