Musicals, when done right, can be a powerful thing, and Warner Brothers 4K release of In the Heights isn’t just a musical done right, it is joy captured on film, and the images and sound practically pop off the screen in crystal clear celebration. Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote the music and lyrics for this beautiful film,…
Tag: adaptation
The Dead Zone (1983) – David Cronenberg
Christopher Walken stars as Johnny Smith, a school teacher who ends up in an accident that gives him second sight, allowing him glimpses into the past, present and future in the Jeffrey Boam scripted adaptation of Stephen King’s classic novel. Directed by famed director David Cronenberg, the film is packed with recognisable names in front…
The Exorcist III (1990) – William Peter Blatty
It’s been a long time since I watched William Peter Blatty’s direct his adaptation of his own novel, Legion. After a reshot ending to include an exorcism that didn’t exist in the original novel or screenplay, we are left with an uneven film that does a poor job to illustrate Blatty’s nature as a storyteller….
Battlestar Galactica 7: War of the Gods (1982) – Nicholas Yermakov, and Glen A. Larson
The next novel in the Galactica series, War of the Gods, seems to have eschewed the Galactica 1980 tie-in, and simply gone back to the Adama Journals intercut with chapters detailing the action of this adaptation of the epic two-parter that gave us a hint at a deeper mythology working in the series. After a…
The Grudge (2004) – Takashi Shimizu
Takashi Shimizu who wrote and directed the original J-horror version of The Grudge, Ju-On, delivers the North American adaptation that isn’t quite as creepy and unnerving as the source material, as it tries to find a blending of Western and Eastern film styles that doesn’t always work. I remember Ju-On freaked me out the first…
Battlestar Galactica 6: The Living Legend (1982) – Nicholas Yermakov, and Glen A. Larson
A quick check in with the Galactica brings me to the sixth book in the novelisations of various episodes, and despite the tagline on the cover about this being the story fans have asked for, there’s nothing to make this one stand out. In fact, of the books so far this is the shortest of…
Battlestar Galactica 2: The Cylon Death Machine (1979) – Robert Thurston and Glen A. Larson
Robert Thurston delivers another adaptation from Glen A. Larson’s classic science fiction series, Battlestar Galactica. This time it’s the huge two part episode called Gun On Ice Planet Zero. Much like the adaptation of the original series launch, Saga of a Star World, Thurston’s novel has a number of differences from the episodes (and wasn’t…
Battlestar Galactica: Saga of a Star World (1978) – Glen Larson and Robert Thurston
“There are those who believe that life here began out there, far across the universe, with tribes of humans who may have been the forefathers of the Egyptians, or the Toltecs, or the Mayans. They may have been the architects of the great pyramids, or the lost civilisations of Lemuria or Atlantis. Some believe that there may yet be brothers of man who…
Cloud Atlas (2012) – Lana & Lilly Wachowski and Tom Tykwer
I remember hearing about Cloud Atlas while it was in production and that Tom Hanks was being associated with it, as well as the directors of The Matrix. Consequently, I made sure to pick up a copy of the novel, by David Mitchell from the local library and worked my way through it, enjoying how…
1984 (1956) – Michael Anderson
DK Canada’s Monsters in the Movies provides a glimpse into a dystopian future that may not be so different from a time we live in now, with the 1956 adaptation of Orwell’s classic novel, 1984. The screenwriters say they ‘freely’ adapted the original story so there are differences from book to screen, but thematically, it…
Topaz (1969) – Alfred Hitchcock
Hitchcock takes on Leon Uris’ novel Topaz in this film adaptation of the same name. It’s not quite on the level of a Tom Clancy techno-thriller, but the subject material, centring around the Cuban Missile Crisis and a Russian spy ring within the French intelligence community is pretty engaging stuff. Unfortunately, for me, it ended…
Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (1980) – Donald F. Glut
After Splinter of the Mind’s Eye, we were treated to two more novels, Han Solo at Star’s End, and Han Solo’s Revenge both written by Brian Daley. Both novels debuted in 1979, and I read them last year on vacation. And my sister I both owned one, I had Star’s End, she had Revenge. But…
