Year / 2005

by Edward Champion

Tideland: Visionary Filmmaking or Just Plain Bad?

While Galleycat is quick to point to some of the book-to-film successes at the Toronto Film Festival, the literary adaptation that has us interested is Terry Gilliam’s adaptation of Mitch Cullin’s Tideland. Is this a comeback for Gilliam? Could it be that Gilliam has produced a film that is too sui generis? The early reports so far have been interesting:

  • Cinematical: “[W]hile I found the film extremely easy to follow, there are definitely some uneasy scenes. But the result is what I believe to be a wonderful film as told through the eyes of a little girl with such an overactive imagination she can get through situations of death, mental handicap, drug abuse and poverty without batting an eye. This young charismatic actress is amazing and carries the whole film.”
  • Screen Daily: “Tideland does look very beautiful, with Nicola Pecorini capturing some striking images of cornfields and countryside and the camera constantly prowling and tilting to emphasis the way reality has become skewered. The craftsmanship is small compensation in a film that is too often merely weird and uninvolving.”
  • Reuters: “Terry Gilliam’s ‘Tideland’ provoked some of the strongest negative reactions. Told from the surreal point of view of the daughter of two junkies, played by Jeff Bridges and Jennifer Tilly, it inspired some 30 walkouts halfway through a press and industry screening.”
  • The Boston Globe: “The movie’s a classic case of a gifted filmmaker’s obsessions finally sailing over the edge and taking him along, but as the prairie Candide at the movie’s center, 10-year-old Jodelle Ferland has a talent to make Fanning call her agent in alarm.”
  • Indiewire: “…big-ticket items like Cameron Crowe’s ‘Elizabethtown’ and Terry Gilliam’s ‘Tideland’ sank like lead balloons.”
by Edward Champion

Hiatus (Sorta)

We’ve been working our keisters off here. Two Segundo shows in the works (one we hope to get up tonight with a very special guest), with a third one on the way. So literary news and the like are going to be slow for the time being. Bear with us.

In the meantime, please enjoy:

  • Mark Sarvas talking with John Banville, Part I.
  • Bud Parr’s response to A.O. Scott’s NYT article comparing The Believer and n + 1.
  • Laura Miller’s humorless response to T.C. Boyle’s excellent new short story collection, Tooth and Claw. (Yes, Scott, I know, I told you it was “a mixed bag,” but that was on the basis of reading the first three stories, only one of which was so-so. Since then, the collection has picked up remarkably and I recommend it to all RotR readers looking to restore their faith in the short story, if not for the deliciously caustic finale of “Jubilation” and the near perfect “The Swift Passage of the Animals” alone, the latter being a witty depiction of dating loaded with nuance and quiet metaphors that are apparently quite invisible to Ms. Miller.)
  • Laila Lalami reviews Desertion in The Nation.
by Edward Champion

San Francisco Theatre Podcasts

The San Francisco Fringe Festival started this week. We’ve been so busy that, disgracefully, we haven’t yet seen any of the shows, but plan on attending a few this weekend and next week. (And if you’re in the San Francisco area, this is a great way to load up on cheap indie theatre. Each show is no more then $9.) Fortunately, the SFist has an early report and there should be more from Chronicle theatre critic Robert Hurwitt over the weekend.

But here’s the really cool thing: This year, the Fringe (or, rather, the fantastic Michael Rice) is offering podcasts with many of the performers, which can be accessed on the main Fringe page and found at the Cool As Hell Theatre Podcast. Among the highlights: El Camino Loco, Show Me Where It Hurts and, in particular, this brilliant podcast about failed artistry with Kirk White.

by Edward Champion

Up Next from Ms. Skurnick: Check-Out, No Vacancy and Thank the Gods That This Isn’t the Bates Motel.

You’ve no doubt heard of Laila Lalami’s Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits (and rest assured, we here at Return of the Reluctant haven’t even begun to start our coverage of that puppy; stay tuned; there’s something special in the works). But there’s another fantastic litblogger out with a tome. Lizzie Skurnick, aka The Old Hag, has just published a poetry collection called Check-In, which you can now order from Caketrain.