Just Giblets

My reading theme for vacation last week was catching up with books being adapted into films. Neil Gaiman’s dark fantasy for youth is called Coraline, and it tells the tale of a girl who stumbles upon a terrifying nightmare world right next to her own in the last couple of weeks of summer vacation. Think back to your childhood; think back on your summer vacation. For many, the last couple of weeks in August herald a transition time. The summer is starting to get a little boring, and while your mind was once occupied with exploring, playing, dreaming, now thoughts turn excitedly toward school. Such is the case with Coraline. Her parents don’t have time to keep her entertained, and while the eccentric tenants who live in the other parts of her building provide curious diversions, they aren’t quite enough. One day Coraline discovers that the door in the study which usually opens to a blank brick wall now opens to a long, dark tunnel. What else is there to do in the dog days of summer but explore the tunnel?

What Coraline finds is a strange world where her other-mother and other-father live. The eccentric tenants are represented as well, as is the aloof, black cat that lives out in the yard. The people are interesting, but a little off-kilter, and instead of eyes, black buttons stare unblinkingly form their faces. For the better part of a day, Coraline enjoys exploring this new, strange world, but when it comes time to leave, Gaiman’s fable takes a decidedly dark turn. In the days leading up to school, Coraline must fight for her soul, the souls of the children who have come before her and the lives and souls of her parents.

Gaiman spins a tale reminiscent of the fairy tales of youth. There is something safe and comforting about them even as the plucky heroine faces chilling and very-real danger. Here’s hoping Coraline makes for a good film-adaptation, and since it is animated, the visuals will surely have a huge impact on its success. The film is currently in post-production and is scheduled for release next year. It will feature the voice of Dakota Fanning as Coraline, Teri Hatcher as her mother (and her other-mother), and the brilliant Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders as two of the neighbors. This is a quick read, and I highly recommend it.

Michael told me about this the other day, but it never really sank in until I read on Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals that Javier Bardem has been cast as Guido Contini in the film version of Nine. (For non-theatre people, Nine is a musical based on a film by some unknown director named Fellini. But it’s a half-number better.)

In his blog post, Chris rightly points out that it’s hardly an issue if Javier can’t sing beautifully — dude’s hot. Who cares? (Wait, did you say there were some women in the movie too?)

But my real question is this: Why do Spanish-speaking actors keep getting cast in this Italian role? Raul Julia, Antonio Banderas, Javier Bardem. WTF? Not saying they can’t do it, of course. I just have this feeling that it seems “close enough” for America. (Zhang Ziyi in Memoirs of a Geisha, anyone?) Eh, could be worse. Could be Mickey Rooney as a Chinese landlord.

José Saragamo’s Blindness was the winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize for Literature. As the inhabitants of an unnamed city go blind one by one, the very fabric of society begins to decay until it is transformed into an animalistic morass of survival. That is the premise of Saramago’s intensely powerful and challenging novel. The core of the story revolves around seven people, among the first to go blind, along with a doctor’s wife who for some reason never loses her sight, but keeps this fact hidden from all save her husband.

Saramago explores how the removal of sight causes the destruction of the social structure. Even before the entire community goes blind, the government, fearing (rightly) an epidemic, quarantine all the blind under inhumane conditions. Yet as the worst of human society emerges, so too does compassion and cooperation, as we follow the seven main characters and watch as they form their own family to insure their survival.

Blindness is not a beach-reading novel that you can flip through in a day. It require concentration and reflection. Saramago pulls the reader into some pretty horrific situations as some of the downtrodden take advantage of others. With the character of the doctor’s wife, the sole sighted person in a city filled with the blind, Saramago creates a character both helpless and with great responsibility to those around her. It’s an insightful allegory to our world today.

I decided to read Blindness after finding out that it has been adapted for the screen by writer/director/actor extraordinnaire, and my pal, Don McKellar. It’s sure to be a harrowing experience.

The A.V. Club has a great interview with Joss Whedon, creator of the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and the television series turned movie, Firefly/Serenity. I’ve been trying to get Joss to come to the Massachusetts Library Association’a annual conference for the last couple of years, but other than a couple very curt e-mail message from his assistant’s assistant, haven’t had any luck yet. Don’t you think Joss would rock at a library conference? He has created the hippest librarian ever in Buffy’s Watcher, Giles. (Okay some might argue - myself included - that Oracle/Barbara Gordon/formerly Batgirl is the hippest librarian ever.)

Recently Joss has been doing some comic book work, including a new “season” of Buffy in comic form, and for Marvel, Astonishing X-Men. Over the past year or so, Joss has also been working on the movie version of Wonder Woman, something that had me brimming with potential excitement (with Joss on board, the movie’s gotta get made!). Of course, anyone who knows anything about movie development knows it can be hell, and even if you’re Joss Whedon, there are times when you’ve just got to throw in the towel. Apparently the Wonder Woman people just didn’t buy Joss’ concept for the film and after a lengthy period of frustration, Joss decided to give it up and leave the project.

Surprisingly, upon reading this interview with Joss, I think I might be happy that he’s leaving the Wonder Woman film. Here’s an excerpt from the interview where he discusses his concept:

“Well, I’ll tell you one thing that sort of exemplifies my feelings. The idea was always that she’s awesome, she’s fabulous, she’s strong, she’s beautiful, she’s well-intentioned, she thinks she’s a great big hero, and it’s Steve Trevor’s job to go, “You don’t understand human weakness, therefore you are not a hero, and you never will be until you’re as helpless as we are. Fight through that, and then I’ll be impressed. Until then, I’m just going to give you shit in a romantic-comedy kind of way.”

Now, I try to reserve judgment on a film or any sort of entertainment until I actually see the finished product, and perhaps if Joss had ever made the Wonder Woman film I would have loved it (a good chance of that, actually, since I do enjoy lots of his work). That said, and as an avid reader of the Wonder Woman comic, that concept sounds like a really bad idea to me. Still, I guess we’ll never know, and I suppose it would have been nice for Joss to prove me wrong and make something really cool for the WW movie.

Anyway, fans of Joss should definitely check out the interview.

Do you know who the lovely lady pictured at left is? (Okay, I’m betting that the title of this blogpost gave it away.) Who here has thought of Helen Slater recently? Well, as the proud owner of the SUPERGIRL DVD, I surely recognized Helen Slater’s name when it appeared in this Newsarama blogpost. Helen Slater and several of her films are surely some of my guiltiest pleasures, in fact, I challenge you to find anyone who has seen and for the most part enjoyed, all of Helen Slater’s first five feature films: SUPERGIRL, THE LEGEND OF BILLIE JEAN, RUTHLESS PEOPLE, THE SECRET OF MY SUCCE$S, and STICKY FINGERS. After that (okay, some might say sometime in the middle of that) Helen’s film career took a downward turn, but I just found out that she has been doing some respectable television work of late, including episodes of “Seinfeld,” “Will & Grace,” “Boston Public,” “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,” “Grey’s Anatomy,” and “Crossing Jordan.” Now Newsday.com reports that Helen may play Supergirl’s aunt in upcoming episodes of “Smallville!” How cool is that?

What’s even cooler is that I have discovered that Helen has her own website, and that she has released not one, but two CDs as a singer/songwriter/pianist. Also, in keeping with her heroic origins, Slater and Jake Black, a comic-book writer from “Smallville” magazine, have submitted a Supergirl pitch for DC Comics. Now that’s something I’d love to see.

Chris beat me to it, but as it’s halfway through the year, I thought I’d report in on my favorite films of 2007 so far. It’s been a strong year for film so far. When I did my first cut for my top 10 so far, I came up with 15 films. Of course, I am including films that I saw at Film Festivals as well as general release. Usually the fall brings an influx of strong independent film so theoretically there will be lots of exciting film to come. That and the Toronto International Film Festival in September will certainly change the landscape of my top films. You can find reviews for many of these films at the Chlotrudis Society for Independent Film site. And without further ado…

1. Away from her
2. Linda! Linda! Linda!
3. Monkey Warfare
4. Waitress
5. Once
6. Protagonist
7. Climates
8. The Secret Life of Words
9. The Wayward Cloud
10. The Lives of Others
11. America the Beautiful
12. Paprika
13. The Bubble
14. Brand Upon the Brain
15. Colma: the Musical

It’s a great international showing so far, with ten different countries represented by the 15 films. After last year’s disappointing showing, Canadian films are represented three times, most notably in the 1st and 3rd spots. Four of the Top 1o films featured women directors, including the #1 film, and the top rated documentary.

C’mon. You had the same thought the first time you saw the trailer for 300.

What a crazy lady she was.

Please.

Okay, some days you don’t know whether to cheer or scream when you’re proven right. At this year’s Chlotrudis nominating committee meeting last Saturday, I mentioned to several people the odd fact that one cannot search “Shortbus” on IMDB and get the intended result: the beautiful soul-enriching film by John Cameron Mitchell. Now, thoughts of censorship flashed through my mind, especially because I’d searched all the other 273 Chlotrudis-eligible titles without difficulty. And because you can get to the Shortbus page through a search for John Cameron Mitchell. But silly me. I gave IMDB the benefit of the doubt and put it down to a flaked out index.

Well don’t I feel stupid? Read this. Especially the part about the films you can find in IMDB.

Question 1: What’s the big fucking deal? It’s not as if they are screening the films. The “objectionable content” isn’t displayed and never has to be.

Question 2: 9 Songs? Hello…. no more porn that The Brown Bunny, which is unretrievable by title. And A Hole in My Heart is retrievable? Holy shit.

Question 3: How does Helen Mirren feel about the fact that people can get to Caligula through her entry on IMDB… but not by the title?

Question 4: Do you know who owns IMDB? Amazon.com. I know it’s convenient. But please think again before you buy anything from them. And I apologize in advance to my friends with wish lists. You may get duplicates.

Question 5: How are you supposed to know that you aren’t getting hits because you haven’t registered and enabled “adult titles” to come up in searches?

What the hell is wrong with people?

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Oh, and get this! The blog post I referenced is wrong. You don’t need an IMDB Pro account to enable “adult content” searches. But you better not be using Internet Explorer! I don’t know why yet, but in Mozilla Firefox, I can enable such searches in my free, registered account. But even with this setting enabled, I can’t find Shortbus in Internet Explorer! And I can’t even find the setting in that browser. WTF?!