The Illusion of Depth

Our current series (as you probably know by now) has been showcasing films that are re-workings of classic works of literature and drama. Some of these films have been very well-known ( Forbidden Planet; O Brother, Where Art Thou? ); some, possibly less so ( In the Bleak Midwinter; All Night Long ).  There is one film, however, which almost inevitably must be included in a series like this. If we are really going to explore films that take classic stories and translate them into completely new contexts and environments, then we can't really let the series conclude without showing Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now - which takes Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and transports it to the Vietnam War. I'm just kidding. I have no plans to show Apocalypse Now . I have no plans to show Apocalypse Ever . Yes, it's based on Heart of Darkness , but... it's truly awful. No, the film I do mean is of course West Side Story .  As is very well documented by now, West Si...

 This Thursday marks our return following the Easter break (it was also Passover and Ramadan; there's a whole lot of Holy going on this month) and I thought an Easter-themed film would be in order. So naturally, I thought of the Holy Grail. Don't worry, I'm not about to show an Indiana Jones film (No Spielberg. "Never,  ever Spielberg" is my middle name) nor am I planning to show The Da Vinci Code , or even Monty Python and the Holy Grail (although the latter, at least, is a genuinely good film and, thinking about it, a very good fit for this current series...). The film I am planning to show shares a director with the Monty Python offering, but that is the only thing the two films have in common, apart from stories that deal with the Holy Grail. Okay, two things. The two things these films have in common are a shared director, and a story that features the Holy Grail. Also a really scary, murderous Knight. Maybe I should start again. Okay, putting Monty Python to...

 In 1994, an issue of "The Green Lantern" was published in which the hero's girlfriend (Alexandra de Witt) is attacked in her apartment by the villain of the week. He tortures her and ultimately kills her (sorry - spoilers) when she refuses to give up her boyfriend's identity.  Later, our hero returns home after a busy day fighting crime and finds her broken, dead body, stuffed into the fridge. Comic fan Gail Simone read this and realised just how often female characters get killed purely as a plot device to advance the narrative of the male character. She coined the term " Fridging " in honour of Alexandra de Witt and her ultimate resting place. Ever since then, this idea of dead women as a plot device has been known as "Women in Refrigerators". Screen writers use Fridging with appalling regularity. Of course fictional characters (male and female) die in drama all the time, but Fridging is different.  A fridged character's primary function is ...

 Some of you may recall the film 10 Things I Hate About You , which I showed a few weeks ago, and which adapts Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew to an American High School.  At the time, I noted that there have been so many High School adaptations of the classics, the concept has practically become a sub-genre in its own right. There have been High School re-workings of Othello, Cyrano de Bergerac, The Crucible, Twelfth Night , and the story of Faust , to name but a few.  I think I said at the time that I could almost put together an entire film series consisting of nothing but High School re-makes of the classics (I believe I said that just before I promised I would never actually do so). There is however one more High School film I would like to show as part of this series. Not Shakespeare this time, but a modern version of Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter .  The Scarlet Letter was published in 1850, but takes place in the 1640s. It tells the story of Hes...