on film movie adaptations

so...i'm blogging while watching "how to deal"...the mandy moore adaptation of sarah dessen's books "that summer" and "someone like you." if you saw my twitter or my plurk, you know that i'm watching this movie on lifetime. which makes me, like, eleven and a half times as lame as i would be if i were watching it via netflix...or the apple tv.

in the interest of full disclosure, i admit that i haven't finished it...although it may be over by the time i post this. but i've got to say that if anyone ever buys the screen rights to the season (and, let's be honest, every author wants that, right?) i'm going to hope and pray that they buy the rights to one book at a time. because, even though sarah seems to like this movie, frankly it just does not do the books justice.

i am an ENORMOUS sarah dessen fan. truly. i've read all of her books and i think she's fantastic. her voice is incredible. her heroines are charming in their confusion, in how they struggle to find themselves, in their strength and courage and general awesomeness. While my favorite of her books is just listen...mainly because I married a 32 year old Owen...I was a big fan of both of the books on which "how to deal" is based.

in the last few weeks i've been struggling a lot to reconcile myself to the way the wide world perceives the two genres in which i write--romance and ya. You see, I have a two-fer in the lack of respect department. romance has been, continues to be and likely always will be the bastard stepchild of fiction--and i completely embrace my place in that world (i've never resisted the mantle of romance).  on the other hand, ya literature is starting to get a modicum of regard as "edgy."  

look, everyone knows that the movie is never as good as the book. here's the thing, though...i'm guessing this movie smooshed two books together because of the all too common perception that a single book for teens can't be deep and thoughtful enough to be really good on its own. and sarah dessen's books are deep. and thoughtful (see my descriptions above). on its own, someone like you tells deals with parent/child dynamics; the importance of real, long-lasting friendship; teen pregnancy; loss of grandparents; and unhealthy romantic relationships. similarly, that summer explores the challenges of divorce and remarriage...as well as the difficulty so many of we youngest daughters have getting out from under our big sisters' shadows.  i promise you, there are much fluffier movies in this world than the ones that would have come from a true adaptation of either of these books.

station break:  uhmmmm...scarlett goes into labor during ashley's wedding?  really?  oy.  my point is proven.  two books should never be smooshed together. i had more to say, but really...REALLY.

further station break: macon and halley get together?  doesn't that go against the whole point of someone like you? why are they dancing in the hallway while scarlett is having the baby?  shouldn't halley be in there? isn't the book about the power of friendship?  again, I say, REALLY. 

oh, hollywood lifetime. how you will be the death of me.

my celluloid saint

there are rare moments when i believe that god is visible in film...it's uncommon--sure there are films that entertain me...ones that engage me...ones that make me chuckle...and I don't often ask much of the movies I watch. I'm thrilled with the mindless joy of a silly teeny-bopper movie or romantic comedy...in the past few days there have been three that, while not the best in the world, have been just what I was looking for, one after the next after the next...i'm embarassed to admit.

but there is one director who constantly keeps me in awe...who seems to consistently entertain, intrigue, and engage me....who makes me envy his skill to the point of greenness...and who provides me with immeasurable quantities of those rare moments when i forget to breathe because the film is so incredible. he occupies that space just inside the front hall of household name-dom...and he deserves a place at the dining room table as far as I'm concerned.

paul thomas anderson, catapulted to the heights of my consciousness when I saw the film that has become my personal jesus--magnolia. Magnolia is a complicated story that leaves the viewer constantly in awe of the art and craft that went into both writing it and making it. It is a constant reminder of the power of our personal demons, and the reality that life, however strange and inconsistant, will go on. It is the film that changed my life. if you haven't seen it, you should. (not to mention the fantastic soundtrack from Aimee Mann). Summed up in one line, Magnolia: 

There are stories of coincidence and chance, of intersections and strange things told, and which is which and who only knows?

But the genius of anderson is in all of his films--from Hard Eight, a fantastic first film that is, on the surface, about gambling, and at its core about the realities of life; to Boogie Nights, which proves that no world is perfect; to Punch Drunk Love, which leaves us all with the valuable lesson that, no matter how we have limited ourselves in the past...the future can always exist with hope.

The joy of watching any Paul Thomas Anderson film, however, is his ability to demand and draw out the most amazing performances from any actor--Magnolia proves this 100 fold with remarkable performances by Philip Seymor Hoffman, William H. Macy, Julianne Moore, Jason Robards (in his final film) and others...but the cake topper here is the completely uncharacteristic performance from Tom Cruise--as insane as Cruise has proved himself to be recently...he has never been more talented and less egocentric in his acting than he was here, under Anderson's tutelage.

If he could do it for Cruise, is it any wonder that Marky Mark turned Mark Wahlberg under the same mastery? That Adam Sandler proved his own acting skill with Anderson behind the camera in Punch Drunk Love? It shouldn't be...but it is always amazing to see the performances that PTA pulls from the actors he works with. But don't take my word for it...check out this article from Esquire...and believe what you read.In all of his films, however, he has demonstrated a natural filmmaking flair, a bent for risk taking, and a predilection for taking actors where they might otherwise never get to go. But what further distinguishes him is a skill much rarer among modern young filmmakers—his ability as a dramatist.

PTA has made a name for himself as an ensemble director--a young Robert Altman (and, actually, the director Altman selected to complete his last film on the event of his death prior to the end of production). But, this year, he stretched his skill, his limits and showed himself the greatest director of his generation--blowing Quentin Tarantino and others who were vying for the title clear back to film school with There Will Be Blood. Based on the Upton Sinclair novel Oil! and starring Daniel Day Lewis--a man who I think is one of the best actors in film, ever--There Will Be Blood is the Citizen Kane of the 21st Century...a movie that is so darkly allegorical and telling and just...true...that I can't imagine our children and our children's children looking back at it as proof that film, as art, was alive and well during our time.

I leave you with the quote from Magnolia that I think speaks volumes about what art means...and how life imitates it so very well.  

And we generally say, "Well, if that was in a movie, I wouldn't believe it." Someone's so-and-so met someone else's so-and-so and so on. And it is in the humble opinion of this narrator that strange things happen all the time. And so it goes, and so it goes. And the book says, "We may be through with the past, but the past ain't through with us."

on heat. and not the good kind.

it's about 1200 degrees in new york city today. ok...perhaps that's a bit of an exaggeration.  but it's over 90 degrees, feels like it's 105 degrees, and is sticky and oppressive and they're predicting thunderstorms and hail, which wouldn't be so bad, because anything is better than the alternative, when the blacktop virtually hums with heat.

baxter and i ventured out of the house this morning, as we do every weekend morning, to scare up some breakfast for both of us.  baxter, like most city dogs who don't have constant access to the outdoors, LOVES going outside.  he's part boxer, so he does this thing called kidney-beaning where he loses control of his entire body and wriggles around in a circle until you open the door and let him bolt down the stairs.  

on days like this, though, baxter gets outside and looks up at me with nothing short of abject confusion, as if to say, "mom...why did you take me to this awful hot place? what happened to the real outside?"  poor baby.  i'm wearing a tank top and my skin is melting off...he has a fur coat.  

so...we did our business...mine slightly less base than his...and made our way back into the air conditioned apartment.  i always feel slightly guilty on days like this, when the sun is shining brightly and i'm locked in my apartment plotting my avoidance of the outside, trying to figure out how many days I can go if i don't do laundry.

and i can't help but wonder how humanity survived before the creature comforts of the 20th Century.  

i'm working on the sequel to The Season now, which spans the summer months of 1815 in London, which I can only imagine smelled about a thousand times worse than brooklyn does today.  in new york, at the same time, people escaped the city for the country, where there was more space and some room for wind to take the edge off the heat...but in London, they actually came to the city for summer.  they put on their heavy silken ballgowns, took tea in closed of receiving rooms, danced the night away in ballrooms laden with people.  Eric once asked me why people are always threatening to swoon in the regency novels i read...one imagines it wasn't a threat so much as a reality for women locked in the twin hells of un-air conditioned rooms and unforgiving corsets. 

so, yeah.  it's hot today.  but at least i have an escape.  and i can be thoroughly unladylike in my shorts and tank top and lay spread-eagled on the floor of my airconditioned apartment.  if alex, vivi or ella tried that, their mothers would have fits of the vapors.  which is a story for another time.  :)

happy summer!

don't i know you?

Well, she looked me over and I guess she thought I was all right,

All right in a sort of a limited way for an off-night,

She said don't I know you from the cinematographer's party,

I said who am I to blow against the wind.

someday i hope to be known from a cinematographer's party. thanks to paul simon and the album i would add to a time capsule for crafting that dream.  

a picture worth 1000 years

the world is changed.  the country is different.  history has been made.  and my god. does it feel good. i'm proud of us, america. after years of oppression and hatred and disenfranchisement and inequality...we've done it.  we've opened the floodgates and started down a long, strange road towards the future.  

and to those who say we can't do it...i say...yes we can.