novels, comets, movies
I chose "Contact", the 1997 Robert Zemeckis film based on Carl Sagan's novel of the same, for a recent family movie night. It was new to the kids. I read the book a few years ago, soon after quarantine began. I had been wanting to show the kids this movie ever since we saw "The … Continue reading Contact movie night
My son Jacob recently chose "The Prince of Egypt" when it was his turn in our revolving "family movie night". He intends to run through all the Dreamworks animated pictures -- a project that should take us about four years, at our current pace -- and "Prince of Egypt", released in 1998, was Dreamworks' second. … Continue reading Prince of Egypt Movie Night
My son has been reading a lot of Greek mythology so I pulled up this 1981 flick for our family movie night. The kids' favorite character was Bubo, the mechanical owl. My son was disappointed with the depiction of Poseidon, and he said this movie made him hate Zeus. He was also ready with small … Continue reading Clash of the Titans Movie Night
During my convalescence this past winter I watched a lot of movies. I've gotten busy making YouTube playlists of my favorite music and movies. I started one playlist privately just to collect some of my favorite concluding scenes from movies, and I threw in a few scenes from old movies that marked the Intermission break. … Continue reading Favorite movie endings
I've checked out two excellent adaptations of George Eliot's "Silas Marner," one of them a modernization. Ben Kingsley stars in the other one, a straight adaptation of the story made by the BBC in 1985. Normally it takes me a while to get used to an actor's interpretation of a character from a novel, but … Continue reading Steve Martin, Silas Marner
"The Fellowship of the Ring" came out in theaters twenty years ago, almost to the day. Below is an essay that I wrote in the days after I saw it -- an essay that, besides being a bit of a time portal, covers a ton of subjects about books, movies, history, religion, dead white males, … Continue reading The Fellowship of the Ring
Some bloggers and BookTubers have been presenting Christmas material from novels, for example, this selection from "Little House In the Big Woods." That one is part of a full series of Christmas-related readings, and I don't have enough reading under me to list that many readings. But I'll give one. It's a scene, or rather … Continue reading Christmas, 1811
Below I've made a listing of all the changes made to Victor Hugo’s novel in these movie adaptations. 1923 Quasimodo - Lon Chaney Esmeralda - Patsy Ruth Miller Frollo - Brandon Hurst https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zh20p-GvCl0 1939 Quasimodo - Charles Laughton Esmeralda - Maureen O'Hara Frollo - Sir Cedric Hardwicke https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_p8khzyK-E 1956 Anthony Quinn as Quasimodo Esmeralda - … Continue reading All Hunchback of Notre Dame movies
Lately this movie seems to be featured in a lot of YouTube videos describing it as surprisingly dark, or as Disney’s darkest animated movie. And it may well be those things. But I’m watching it after seeing a series of Hunchback adaptations that have been dark, grim and glum; and next to those, Disney’s version … Continue reading Disney’s Hunchback of Notre Dame
I recently saw an adaptation of "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" set in the modern day. It's a French-language film, a black comedy/satire known as Quasimodo d’El Paris. It's set in 1999 or thereabouts in an unnamed place, in a city called El Paris. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gy8KIUCGSAA&list=PLGuUJt6IB8_ET1gFct-hHQO62Dkqx90Lm&index=23 It is strange and over-the-top, but funny and charming. It … Continue reading Quasimodo d’El Paris