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narcasseThe film adaptation of Zoe Heller’s novel Notes on a Scandal was something I’d been looking forward to, having already read the novel quite some time ago. That Judi Dench had a staring role already promised that it wouldn’t be some half-hearted job and indeed the film succeeded in maintaining the horror of the novel, though of course exspeeded for the camera. What I found most interesting was that seeing Dench in the role of Barbara really brought home the disturbed nature of the character, something that was slightly easier to gloss over in novel format. Cate Blanchett as Sheba Hart was equally admirable though her actions lost some of their impact and implication due to differences between the novel and film versions. The end of the film for instance, was fitting but without quite the same sense of hopelessness as the ending of the novel or the last few chapters, which weren’t included in the adaptation. The importance of certain other characters and absence of one equally focused the story more sharply on the two central characters without much preamble, as well as playing up the lesbianism aspect of the relationship which wasn’t nearly so heavily weighted in the novel. Though the arm stroking scene does stand out in my memory, though rather more from the novel than the film.
All in all it was definitely worth watching and funnily enough without the proviso that reading the novel would have been the better experience since this is one of the few cases where I’ll accept that a film adaptation simply tells a slightly different version of a story rather than cutting it down to cinematically manageable pieces.
Re-Animator is loosely based on Lovecraft’s Herbert West - Reanimator short story and stars Jeffrey Combs in the title role as a rather strangely adorable Herbert West. Combs seemingly has been in an awful lot of b-movie things that I’ve already watched which probably says more about my choice in horror/sci-fi schlock than anything else. Though until I’d looked it up on IMDB, I’d been willing to convince myself that Robot Jox had just been a figment of my imagination. Of course the story is shuffled around and the unnamed narrator from the story is given a name, face and girlfriend. Dr Halsey also gets a new lease of life in a slightly more and less vindictive manner than in the story. West loses Eric Moreland Clapham-Lee as his headless nemesis and instead gains a Dr Carl Hill whose teaching he objects to rather comically by breaking pencils during a dissection demonstration.
Basically, Re-Animator is comedy-horror at it’s finest. It has gore, syringes full of luminous solutions, not quite zombie battles and an adorable mad scientist. And West is adorable in an entirely quirky, helpless and yet demented fashion. Though now that I think about it, I do wonder whether the film saw fit to give West’s assistant a girlfriend simply to prove that he didn’t just spend his days following West around.
A Perfect Fake on the other hand is a documentary about the seemingly modern development of the Pygmalion myth. The examples of fake, be they plastic or computer generated, ‘perfect’ women are really quite interesting as is the commentary by ‘dollers’ (men who keep live-sized female dolls). One particularly striking case being the chap who photographs his dolls and talks about the changes in their expressions according to environment. It’s really a very interesting documentary though hardly an in-depth one. Nevertheless, I’m glad that I did buy the DVD because it’s something really rather fascinating that I may yet come back to, though I have to admit that the first response it induced was the entirely bizarre urge to go out and buy a ball-jointed doll, dress it up in a uniform and give it blind eyes.
All in all it was definitely worth watching and funnily enough without the proviso that reading the novel would have been the better experience since this is one of the few cases where I’ll accept that a film adaptation simply tells a slightly different version of a story rather than cutting it down to cinematically manageable pieces.
Re-Animator is loosely based on Lovecraft’s Herbert West - Reanimator short story and stars Jeffrey Combs in the title role as a rather strangely adorable Herbert West. Combs seemingly has been in an awful lot of b-movie things that I’ve already watched which probably says more about my choice in horror/sci-fi schlock than anything else. Though until I’d looked it up on IMDB, I’d been willing to convince myself that Robot Jox had just been a figment of my imagination. Of course the story is shuffled around and the unnamed narrator from the story is given a name, face and girlfriend. Dr Halsey also gets a new lease of life in a slightly more and less vindictive manner than in the story. West loses Eric Moreland Clapham-Lee as his headless nemesis and instead gains a Dr Carl Hill whose teaching he objects to rather comically by breaking pencils during a dissection demonstration.
Basically, Re-Animator is comedy-horror at it’s finest. It has gore, syringes full of luminous solutions, not quite zombie battles and an adorable mad scientist. And West is adorable in an entirely quirky, helpless and yet demented fashion. Though now that I think about it, I do wonder whether the film saw fit to give West’s assistant a girlfriend simply to prove that he didn’t just spend his days following West around.
A Perfect Fake on the other hand is a documentary about the seemingly modern development of the Pygmalion myth. The examples of fake, be they plastic or computer generated, ‘perfect’ women are really quite interesting as is the commentary by ‘dollers’ (men who keep live-sized female dolls). One particularly striking case being the chap who photographs his dolls and talks about the changes in their expressions according to environment. It’s really a very interesting documentary though hardly an in-depth one. Nevertheless, I’m glad that I did buy the DVD because it’s something really rather fascinating that I may yet come back to, though I have to admit that the first response it induced was the entirely bizarre urge to go out and buy a ball-jointed doll, dress it up in a uniform and give it blind eyes.
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Date: 2007-04-05 07:40 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-08 01:02 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-08 02:34 pm (UTC)