Best Adapted Screenplay: 2011

“Smiley shrugged it all aside, distrustful as ever of the standard shapes of human motive, and settled instead for a picture of one of those wooden Russian dolls that open up, revealing one person inside the other, and another inside him. Of all men living, only Karla had seen the last little doll inside Bill Haydon. When was Bill recruited, and how? Was his right-wing stand at Oxford a pose, or was it paradoxically the state of sin from which Karla had summoned him to grace?” (p 316)

My Top 10

1. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
2. The Descendants
3. Hugo
4. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II
5. The Ides of March
6. My Week with Marilyn
7. Jane Eyre
8. Moneyball
9. Incendies
10. The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn

note:  A solid Top 5 and Top 10.

 

Great Read: If Beale Street Could Talk

If Beale Street Could Talk

• Author:  James Baldwin
• Published:  1974
• Publisher:  The Dial Press
• Pages:  197
• First Line:  “I look at myself in the mirror.”
• Last Lines:  “Fanny is working on the wood, on the stone, whistling, smiling.  And, from far away, but coming nearer, the baby cries and cries and cries and cries and cries and cries and cries and cries, cries like it means to wake the dead.”
• Film Version:  2018  (****)
• First Read:  sometime in the early 2010s

 

Great Read: Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs

• Author:  Walter Isaacson
• Published:  2011
• Publisher:  Simon & Schuster
• Pages:  630
• First Line:  “When Paul Jobs was mustered out of the Coast Guard after World War II, he made a wager with his crewmates.”
• Last Lines:  “He fell silent for a very long time.  ‘But on the other hand, perhaps [death] is like an on-off switch.’ he said.  ‘Click!  And you’re gone.’  Then he paused again and smiled slightly.  ‘Maybe that’s why I never liked to put on-off switches on Apple devices.’”
• Film Version:  2015  (****)
• First Read:  late 2020

 

Best Adapted Screenplay: 2010

“You are probably going to be a very successful computer person. But you’re going to go through life thinking that girls don’t like you because you’re a nerd. And I want you to know, from the bottom of my heart, that that won’t be true. It’ll be because you’re an asshole.” Not in Mezrich’s book. That’s pure Sorkin.  And true.  100% true.

My Top 10

1. The Social Network
2. True Grit
3. The Ghost Writer
4. Winter’s Bone
5. Toy Story 3
6. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part I
7. The Town
8. Shutter Island
9. Rabbit Hole
10. Never Let Me Go

note:  A much stronger Top 5 and Top 10 than the previous years.

 

Best Adapted Screenplay: 2009

The most memorable moment in the film – described in the book but not with dialogue.

My Top 10

1. An Education
2. Up in the Air
3. A Single Man
4. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
5. The Informant
6. Precious
7. District 9
8. Coraline
9. Fantastic Mr. Fox
10. The Damned United

note:  Not the strongest Top 5 and a fairly weak second 5.  But it had a lot of solid scripts (good enough to make the list) so there’s a more sizable continuation down at the bottom.

 

Best Adapted Screenplay: 2008

Actually, it is only written in the screenplay. The book is very different.

My Top 10

1. Slumdog Millionaire
2. The Dark Knight
3. Revolutionary Road
4. Doubt
5. OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies
6. Let the Right One In
7. The Reader
8. Iron Man
9. A Secret
10. Appaloosa

note:  Not the strongest Top 5 and a fairly weak second 5.

 

Best Adapted Screenplay: 2007

“And in the dream I knew that he was goin on ahead and that he was fixin to make a fire somewhere out there in all that dark and all that cold and I knew that whenever I got there he would be there. And then I woke up.” (final lines)

My Top 10

1. No Country for Old Men
2. Atonement
3. There Will Be Blood
4. Away from Her
5. Gone Baby Gone
6. Charlie Wilson’s War
7. A Mighty Heart
8. Persepolis
9. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
10. 3:10 to Yuma

note:  An excellent Top 5 but not nearly as strong Top 10.  It’s worth noting that thanks mostly to Harry Potter and the MCU this is the last year until 2020 where none of my Top 10 are franchise films.

 

Best Adapted Screenplay: 2006

Nothing Wahlberg says in the film is anything like the dialogue in the original film but damn it’s brilliant.

My Top 10

1. The Departed
2. Children of Men
3. Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story
4. The Prestige
5. Perfume
6. Casino Royale
7. Army of Shadows
8. The Painted Veil
9. Thank You for Smoking
10. Notes on a Scandal

note:  An excellent Top 5 and Top 10.

 

Best Adapted Screenplay: 2005

When it came—thirty cents—he pinned it up in his trailer, brass-headed tack in each corner. Below it he drove a nail and on the nail he hung a wire hanger and the two old shirts suspended from it. He stepped back and looked at the ensemble through a few stinging tears. “Jack, I swear—” he said, though Jack had never asked him to swear anything and was himself not the swearing kind.

My Top 10

1. Brokeback Mountain
2. Munich
3. Pride & Prejudice
4. The Constant Gardener
5. The History of Violence
6. Batman Begins
7. Downfall
8. Capote
9. Proof
10. King Kong

note:  An excellent Top 5 and Top 10.

 

Best Adapted Screenplay: 2004

Miles Raymond: Come on, man. You know. Hemingway, Sexton, Plath, Woolf. You can’t kill yourself before you’re even published! Jack: What about the guy who wrote Confederacy of Dunces? He committed suicide before he was published. Look how famous he is!

My Top 10

1. Sideways
2. A Very Long Engagement
3. Closer
4. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
5. Finding Neverland
6. Million Dollar Baby
7. Shrek 2
8. The Motorcycle Diaries
9. Baadasssss!
10. Spider-Man 2

note:  A solid Top 5 but a much weaker second 5.  The rest of the list is down below with none of them among the award nominees that are fully reviewed.