<a class="postlink" href="http://moviesblog.mtv.com/2011/10/25/dark-tower-hbo-brian-grazer/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+mtvmoviesblog+%28MTV+Movies+Blog%29" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://moviesblog.mtv.com/2011/10/25/da ... es+Blog%29</a> I am so damned excited for this it's stupid. Focus: Future classics. What will be the next classic? Alt-Focus: What adaptation would you watch no matter who was involved, even if it was done by Uwe Boll for Mtv?
And they thought Lord of the Rings was un-adaptable... It's going to suck for you and all the other Dark Tower fans when they get through one mediocre movie and then ten years go by and half the cast dies of old age while you wait for them to get around to making another one. What are the kids from A Series of Unfortunate Events doing now? I think the chick that played the 10 year old girl in The Golden Compass is like 25 now. It's hard to say what will become a "future classic" because everything is so highly scrutinized now. It's not like cult classics have time to sit on the shelf anymore, or that brilliance sometimes lies dormant until it pops out years later. I'm pretty sure when Return of the King won like 40 Oscars, it was pretty clear that LOTR would be a significant achievement for decades to come. Is it insightful to say that Pulp Fiction or The Matrix or Inception will be considered classics? I think not. Things that I think have the potential to be re-evaluated as classics in the future, though: Toys with Robin Williams. I don't understand why this movie was so badly panned at the time it came out. The movie is about a megalomaniacal General who takes over a toy factory and turns it into a factory for UAVs (before they were called that), and then he hires a bunch of kids, raised on video games, to pilot them. Prescient, much? Bonus: fantastically under-rated soundtrack. Sex Drive. Most re-watchable and funny teen sex comedy in forever. Nobody I know saw this movie. James Morrow's Godhead Trilogy. Three very different books, ostensibly tied together by plot, but really tied together by deeply black, transgressional humor. Very hard to explain unless you've read it. It's a lot of characters who range from morally upright to morally decrepit, with many in between. And terrible, terrible things happen to all of them.
I watched the TV adaptation of the "Sword of Truth" series, and it was decent despite not following series canon. I haven't gotten around to watching the "Song of Fire and Ice" adaptation though, despite how well it has been recieved. In one moment of the many hours of behind-the-scene extras that came with the Lord of the Rings, Peter Jackson mentioned that the Tolkien's books had such an effect upon him - he became a director just so that he could get the chance to see the story on the big screen, even if he had to make it happen himself. If I ever become rich and famous, I will do something similar and personally bankroll Peter Jackson, JJ Abrams, Steven Spielburg, Michael Bay, and anyone else necessary to make the "Wheel of Time" series in it's entirety.
Focus: Alt-Focus: Will Christoper Baer's Kiss Me, Judas is about a drinky, manically depressed ex-cop who falls in love with the woman who stole his kidney. Together they try to sell it while suspicious of the other's motives. It is mind blowingly slick and I think it'd translate well to film. Every line is magnetic and beautiful as it is ugly. Rights were optioned years ago, nothing happened. Baer has two more using the Poe character from "Judas" and they are equally amazing. Steinbeck's East of Eden and McCarthy's Blood Meridian are the other two I'd watch no matter what. Love those books. This thread is apropos. Apparently they just fucked up Thompson's Rum Diary, which I wanted to see. And will still see. I was going to mention we need new Hemingway adaptations, but we just had one that disappeared before it had a chance. Garden of Eden. About a bi-polar wife who brings a woman into her brand new marriage. I'm alone in thinking it was great. For Whom the Bell Tolls is the only one of the old ones that was treated well. The others are just so damn dated and soulless. Can't for the most part get into that 40s and 50s acting style.
If someone could do justice to McCarthy's Child of God I would crawl through broken glass to see it. It's frankly frightening how much sympathy you can feel for a dispossessed redneck necrophiliac.
Alt-focus: Will Christopher Baer was already mentioned. Brilliant author. Agree that it could be a great movie if done by the likes of David Fincher. I'd love to see any novel by Neal Stephenson brought to life in film. Great depth to his characters and stories. Snow Crash, Cryptonomicon would both be awesome. The one book that I want to see as a movie more than anything is Jonathan Lethem's Fortress of Solitude.
Ask and you shall receive: Enders Game release date set for March 15, 2013. I think Orson Scott Card is involved in the screenplay, too.
HOLEE-SHIT this just made my night. Now I must call everyone I know at an ungodly hour to proclaim this!! Fucking awesome!
I would love to see an adaptation of absolutely any Wally Lamb novel. Specifically "She's Come Undone", but I would also love to see "I Know This Much is True" or "The Hour I First Believed". The stories are so fucking amazing, I would watch them if they were Lifetime movies.