After watching Midnight In Paris again over the weekend, I started thinking about bookish films, or movies that talk about the writing life, the creative struggle, the process of writing literature, or ones that examine the lives of famous writers, etc.
These aren't film adaptations of literature, but films that address the subject of writing literature. Maybe I should have filed this under a new weekly column, "writerly"? But hey, it's my blog.
Anyway, when it comes to bookish films, Stranger than Fiction is my absolute favorite, but there are many others out there. Adaptation, Atonement, Becoming Jane, Finding Neverland, to name a few. Do you have a favorite?
1. (of a person or way of life) Devoted to reading and studying rather than worldly interests.
2. (of language or writing) Literary in style or allusion.
3. (of art and all manner of lovely things) devoted to the written word as a form of art and as a way of seeing the world.
4. (of SheWritesandRights.blogspot.com) anything of the aforementioned characteristics as they are found on the interwebs and reposted by Bethany, because bookish and writerly things always give reason for amusement.
10 comments:
I absolutely love Stranger Than Fiction! I believe that film will forever be the height of Will Ferrell's career. I actually liked Sylvia with Gywneth Paltrow, although I didnt think it did any justice to the actual poet.
It's a very quirky film.
wow I had never even heard about this film! I'm definitely putting on my to-watch list!
Also, I TOTALLY AGREE about this being the height of Will Ferrell's career. I look at his other stuff in dismay. Although he is funny in Anchorman and Wedding Crashers, etc, I find his other work disingenuous after a performance like STF.
I love Stranger Than Fiction! It's such a quiet but funny funny film. :)
Stranger Than Fiction is a marvel of film! I avoided it for a while because I've never been a Will Ferrell fan. But what a movie. Add Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson in anything, and you'll have a winner. Emma Thompson is the most perfect author I've ever seen in my life.
Although not about a novelist, I absolutely ADORE Dan in Real Life. I watch it when I'm happy, I watch it when I'm sad. Steve Carell plays an adorable columnist and father. I would marry that man :)
I adore Stranger than Fiction. Such a good movie! I must watch it again.
Did you really enjoy Midnight in Paris? I feel like Woody Allen's female characters have all the depth of cardboard cut-outs and are just scapegoats for his "poor pitiful, down-trodden, artistically inclined" male characters. Also, as someone that has traveled a lot, I find he presents places (Barcelona, Paris) in a fairy idealized, one-dimensional way. Stranger Than Fiction was a moving film, and Adaptation was stranger than fiction, indeed, very surrealist.
I agree with that assessment of Allen's films! But there's something about the way that Allen portrays his characters and his cities one-dimensionally that only further serves his exploration of the creative psyche. Allen's films always deal directly with insecurity in art, and how it affects the lives of his characters. So, for him to make all of his male characters very much like him, and to make all of his female characters depthless and frustrated with his male characters, and to idealize his cities, only serve his overall point of insecurity and fallibility as an artist. What do you think?
I still have yet to see Adaptation, but people keep telling me I should watch it!
Hmmm. I don't know. I'm inclined to think Mr. Allen is a pig, both when analyzing his art, and (perhaps unfairly) his personal life. That said, I did really enjoy the Paris he portrayed, although his Barcelona was completely off-the-mark (I live there most of the year, and nope). I would definitely recommend adaptation, and another artsy/surrealistic film I really enjoyed was "The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind". Also, I checked out your new items in your etsy shop, I'm really loving the new designs.
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