Variety has an early review of There Will Be Blood — the forthcoming film matchup of Paul Thomas Anderson and Upton Sinclair. “Magnificently strange” is certainly a good sign. And the film appears to maintain the playful experimentation established in Anderson’s last film, Punch Drunk Love, kick-starting with “an electronic sound that soars to an almost unbearable pitch,” which throws the film’s first fifteen minutes into a narrative without dialogue. There’s also a score by Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood. I wasn’t really on the fence in terms of my curiosity, but now I’m extremely intrigued about what Anderson has concocted here.
Category / Literary Adaptations
Jeff Bridges as Graydon Carter?
Variety: “U.K. law firm Davenport Lyons brokered the deal with majority funder Aramid Entertainment backed by hedge fund coin. Project, reputedly carrying a $20 million budget, is also being developed with the U.K. Film Council, Film4, InTandem Films and the Irish Film Board….Cast for ‘How to Lose Friends and Alienate People’ includes Simon Pegg, Kirsten Dunst and Jeff Bridges as Vanity Fair’s flamboyant editor Graydon Carter.”
Is a Little Seen John Barth Film Adaptation a Lost Masterpiece?
Bold words from Lee Hill:
I know this is a minority view, but I think End of The Road is some kind of masterpiece, a tattered signpost pointing to a road not taken by American cinema. The New Hollywood of the late sixties and early seventies, like most new waves, promised more than it could deliver. As great as the work of Coppola, Scorsese and Spielberg was in the seventies, their politics was often safely couched in genre or pyrotechnical display. If Road had been even a modest success, Avakian might have joined Robert Altman or John Cassavettes in creating a more rigorous brand of new American cinema.
Interestingly, the film was written by Terry Southern. Sadly, it appears unavailable on VHS and DVD.
One Thing’s For Sure: It Won’t Be Filmed in a Basement in Terre Haute
Richard Ford’s Frank Bascombe trilogy will be turned into a miniseries, encapsulating all three novels. (via Slushpile)
Philip Roth Goes Hollywood
Variety reports that Philip Roth’s The Dying Animal is headed for the big screen, with Nicholas Meyer scripting and Penelope Cruz, Ben Kingsley and Patricia Clarkson starring. Meyer previously wrote The Human Stain. No word yet on whether Meyer will be addressing David Kepesh’s previous existence as a human-sized mammary gland, but Lakeshore, the company behind this production, is also trying to get a film version of American Pastoral off the ground with director Phillip Noyce attached. So while Noyce may not be much of a breast man, we can only hope that Meyer is.