On The Road, On The Screen

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A large part of On The Road’s powerful and ongoing appeal undoubtedly stems from the lyricism of its language -- as opposed to its linearity, or even narrative coherence. Translating this to the screen could quite simply be impossible. Indeed, one suspects it is the reason that, up till now, so many screenwriters have failed in turning Kerouac’s text into visual form.
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Source Material: Breaking Down the Oscar for Adapted Screenplay

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If the publishing industry really does collapse, as some predict it will, it won’t be the big houses or the independent bookstores that will be most affected, it will be Hollywood. This year’s crop of Oscar contenders begs the question “Can there be a cinema without books?”
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The Literary Pedigree of Downton Abbey

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The current PBS Masterpiece series mashes the "class" buttons hard, in both the literary and the economic senses. But its relationship with the English novel is more complicated than it might appear.
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Monster Mashups: The Recurring Horror of Mary Poppins

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It always began as an ordinary dream. But at some point Mary Poppins would fly overhead on her umbrella, look toward the “camera” of the dream to deliver a cackle, then fly off, turning whatever pleasant fantasy I’d been having into terrifying chaos. Everything in the dreamworld became darker; trees died, I got lost and left behind in a grim landscape, and I fell victim to all sorts of other horrible things I’ve managed, thankfully, not to remember so clearly.
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The Joys and Compromises of Bennett Miller’s Moneyball

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Take whatever it is that’s important to you – knitting, perhaps, or mountain biking – and then imagine waiting for a feature film about it. Would you be excited or nervous? Or would you simply be dreading how Hollywood would manage to fuck up your passion?
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A Documentary for Our Times: The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975

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As the divisions of class and race continue to harden and widen in this country, I say we could use more leaders like Stokely Carmichael and Angela Davis, with their beautiful, hard-earned fury.
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Star Wars, Apatow, and the Death of Classic Comedy

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Judd Apatow and friends, with their hyper-familiar brand of hairy-assed humor, have issued a crushing blow to the suspension of disbelief — and made the gap between old comedy and new unbridgeable.
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Films You Haven’t Seen Yet…The Sequel!

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You might think that Real Steel 2 is an exception. You might think that, even by the standards of Hollywood conservatism gone mad, work on Real Steel 2 is a damning, individual act of hubris. But it’s far from the only example.
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Ecstatic Truth: Werner Herzog’s The Cave of Forgotten Dreams

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You don’t have to question Herzog’s honesty in watching his films, though you might start to question his sanity.
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Friday Night Fumble: When Mediocre TV Masquerades as High Art

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Friday Night Lights is bad television. And if it is art, then it is art that is purposefully misleading, which is art of the worst kind.
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Eye of the Beholder: Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life

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Critical reaction to Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life has been decidedly garrulous.  A vast majority of reviewers have invoked some kind of "higher" culture to signify the elusive mood or feeling it evokes.
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Ayelet Waldman talks Hobgoblin and More

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"[T]he characters and story are very very far from my life. I think [Red Hook Road] the best thing I've ever written, which, when you think about it, is pretty telling. Perhaps we should all be grateful that I'm now writing a TV pilot about magicians and con men who spy for the British in World War II."
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Oprahtherapy

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Oprah was the perfect hospital show because it mirrored the hospital experience.  Some days it was lighthearted and inspirational, others grave and despairing.
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Will Ferrell Channels Raymond Carver — And It Works!

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The 10th Tribeca Film Festival was a richly musical affair. Nearly lost in this pleasing din were two quiet movies, a feature and a documentary, that grew, respectively, out of a work of literature and the misguided urge to lionize writers.
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Missing Roger Lodge

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All "on-the-scene: dating shows share similar qualities: the couples have never met before and volatile reactions and hot tub canoodling are encouraged.
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Friday Night Lights, The Final Season: Join the Team

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What has surprised – and in a way instructed – me most is how effectively FNL employs what is essentially formulaic drama; that is, how aware we are of being immersed in a constructed moral universe, and yet how little the drama’s predictability compromises either one’s engagement or the show’s objective artfulness and excellence.
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On Race, Class and the Hollywood ‘Whiteout’

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What we need are more serious movies with multiracial characters/casts that aren't SCARE QUOTES MOVIES ABOUT RACE END SCARE QUOTES. We need more movies that simultaneously are and aren't about race: movies that are dramas and comedies, about love, death, the usual human plots—and also happen to be about race.
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