Book to Screen: The Lovely Bones

Alright, it's about time to get down with my first Book to Screen post, something I think will be a recurring, though not necessarily regular, segment.

Here is a part of my Goodreads review (which was short to begin with), which basically says my thoughts on the book.

I felt the book was like a sentimental drama thriller, without the usual melodrama that accompanies stories of this type. It's like an "easy listening" suspense story, if you know what I mean. That doesn't mean it's cheap or sappy, not at all. I enjoyed it a lot and it affected me emotionally but it was a comfortable ride, for the most part, despite the horrors that occurred within the story.

I enjoyed the book. I give it a 3.3ish out of 5.

Now the screenplay by Fran Walsh, Phillipa Boyens and Peter Jackson (who seems to only do adaptations). Trying without spoilers.

A Quick Lesson from Mira Nair

I love Mira Nair. I admit, I don't know her work well at all. I've only seen Monsoon Wedding (which she directed and produced) and Vanity Fair (which she directed and I saw when it came out and I didn't like it). But my love comes all from Monsoon Wedding. It is one of my favorite movies (and there really aren't really many things I will right out call "favorites," I'm too loving to name names and too indecisive to commit) and I adore it whole heartedly. (Note to self: Put Mira Nair movies to top of Netflix list. Hurry and go see Amelia.)

Here is a quick lesson from Mira Nair, via Third World Girl over at Three Hole Punched, who attended the IFP's Independent Film Conference in New York where Mira Nair spoke (Bobby said, that Sally said, the Jimmy said... Yes, my through the grapevine/telephone game paraphrase lesson from Mira Nair). I looked for a direct quote on the internet for a couple minutes and came up with nothing helpful. So here is the he said/she said version of it. Thanks Third World Girl.

Don't "anthropoligize" or explain too much culturally. If you watch Monsoon Wedding you'll see how much you're thrust into the action. There's no expositional dialogue about why we dress this way or wear this henna, or sing this song. There's no outsider leading you through the action and the work is all the richer and more authentic for it.

Pledges

These are U.K. aerosols by the way.

Anyway, I'm swallowing books like they're very very large candies so I figure I ought to read screenplays as well. I pledge to read at least 1 screenplay a week. Not as if that should be a hard promise to live up to, they only take a couple of hours to read. It's just tedious reading them off the computer and I feel badly if I print them out. I think I'll have to see if I can read them in a 2page per 1 format and then use both sides.

I was looking for a copy of The Lovely Bones screenplay, as I'll be done with the book soon and the movie's coming out but I couldn't find it.

Book Review: A Long Way Down

A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby


My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I don't want to add every book review I do on Goodreads up here, but seeing as I did the other Nick Hornby review up here, I felt I should put this one here too. Also, it's an update, when otherwise I have nothing to share.

I loved this book. I'll be rereading it some time in the future.

This book is written in the first person view of 4 individuals. Each time the narration changes, the writing is imbued with the personality of the one telling the story, which is of course how it should be, but it's wonderfully done.

Book Review: How to Be Good

How to Be Good by Nick Hornby


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is the first Nick Hornby novel I've read and I've put him on a list of authors to look for in the used bookstore.

This book was swift and fun to read. I get excited whenever I see an interesting female lead in a novel, particularly one written by a man, and this story's female lead is wonderful. She's witty and clever, as well as selfish enough (in the suddenly apparently selfless world she's found herself in)to be entertaining while retaining relatability. I found her charming and layered.

All the characters in the book are surprisingly dynamic, including the two young children of the main character, Katie Carr, and her husband, David. In many reads, children have little personality and are only there for a foil to work against or tools to make drama. However these children, Tom and Molly, are funny, reactive, and well rounded. They do well in putting the adult's strange world into perspective.

There are some great observations, some great lines. I liked this one particularly:

Love, it turns out, is as undemocratic as money, so it accumulates around people who have plenty of it already.

The Return of Me

Sorry non-existent readers in the ether! I had disappeared for some time, as I had predicted. It all came on far sooner than I had hoped.

Update on my writing:

I have written a short screenplay that needs more work. It is currently at 15 pages and contains an ending I am somewhat unsatisfied with but at this moment do not know how to change for the better.

I am currently enrolled in a screenwriting class and a fiction writing class. I have written many a short piece for the fiction writing class. Until recently, I had been convinced I was over fiction writing; That it wasn't for me, I wasn't built to wax on about sight and smell and sound and scape in literature.

Things change.

I'm happy in the class and I'm happy in writing. It takes... discipline. Discipline is not one of my greater talents; I have discipline better than some, worse than many, but if I can somehow make myself into a person that writes rather than can write, well, I think it's something I worth striving for. I may construct myself into a person who wakes up at 4:30 am every morning to write for two hours or... who knows what. It's something I'm looking into, considering.

It is one week before NaNoWriMo officially kicks off, and I have designs on winning it (that is to say, complete the challenge). I want to write a 50k word piece of fiction. To have that under my belt. To know I can do it.

I'm not sure what on. Yet. "But," as Betty Draper says "I do have thoughts."

Character Voice and Speech Patterns

I just read Woody Allen's Annie Hall screenplay and it was kind of weird. It was like the text was transcribed after someone had spoken the words. What I mean is, there were so many stuttered words in the dialogue, "ums," sentences starting over half way through, overlapping dialogue. Here's a piece of random dialogue: