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.

 

Best Adapted Screenplay: 2003

“Then Merry heard of all the sounds in that hour the strangest. It seemed that Dernhelm laughed, and the clear voice was like a ring of steel. ‘But no living man am I! You look upon a woman. Eowyn I am, Eomund’s daughter.” (p 823)

My Top 10

1. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
2. Mystic River
3. City of God
4. American Splendor
5. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
6. Nowhere in Africa
7. Whale Rider
8. Big Fish
9. Bubba Ho-Tep
10. Matchstick Men

note:  A strong Top 5 but the second 5 is fairly weak.  But it does still have several (weaker) films on my complete list down at the bottom, minus the #13 (Cold Mountain) and #16 (The Secret Lives of Dentists) which are reviewed because of awards.

 

A Century of Film: Sony Pictures Classics

A Century of Film

Sony Pictures Classics

The Studio

How good a job are you doing if the first film your studio releases is nominated for nine Oscars and wins three including Adapted Screenplay and Actress?  A pretty damn good one, one that started strong and has stayed strong over the years, although not to that same extent.

Sony Pictures Classics isn’t like Miramax.  It doesn’t have a sordid story to tell, it’s doesn’t have big personalities and an indie spirit that was then sold to one of the biggest companies on the planet.  Their story hasn’t been told in books (most of my information comes from an article written in 2006 for The Hollywood Reporter by Anne Thompson).  It’s just a story of great films.

 

A Century of Film: Miramax / The Weinstein Company

A Century of Film

Miramax  /  The Weinstein Company

The Studio

Some forty years ago, long before one brother sank beneath the weight of his other brother’s sexual crimes, there were Bob and Harvey Weinstein.  Though they were from New York City, they had been successful with a rock promotion business in Buffalo during the seventies.  But their passion for films won them over and began a small, independent distribution business that they named after their parents Miriam and Max.

 

Best Adapted Screenplay: 2002

“As Laura sets the plates and forks on the table – as they ring softly on the starched white cloth – it seems she has succeeded suddenly, at the last minute, the way a painter might brush a final line of color onto a painting and save it from incoherence; the way a writer might set down the line that brings to light the submerged patterns and symmetry in the drama. It has to do, somehow, with setting plates and forks on a white cloth. It is as unmistakable as it is unexpected.” (p 207)

My Top 10

1. The Hours
2. Adaptation
3. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
4. Minority Report
5. The Pianist
6. The Quiet American
7. About a Boy
8. Road to Perdition
9. Solaris
10. About Schmidt

note:  A fantastic Top 5 and Top 10 as should be expected from one of the best years in film history.  There is also a very long list after that.  My #11 (Catch Me if You Can), #12 (Confessions of a Dangerous Mind) and #15 (Chicago) are reviewed because of award considerations.  But my full list was 30 films long and the other 17 are listed down at the bottom.
note:  Until libraries fully reopen in San Diego, this is the list Adapted Screenplay post I can do.

 

Great Read: The Night Circus

The Night Circus

• Author:  Erin Morgenstern
• Published:  2011
• Publisher:  Doubleday
• Pages:  387
• First Line:  “The circus arrives without warning.”
• Last Lines:  “You are no longer quite certain which side of the fence is the dream.”
• Film Version:  none yet
• First Read:  Spring 2011

 

Great Read: The Song of Achilles

The Song of Achilles

• Author:  Madeline Miller
• Published:  2012
• Publisher:  HarperCollins
• Pages:  378
• First Line:  “My father was a king and the son of kings.”
• Last Lines:  “In the darkness, two shadows, reaching through the hopeless, heavy dusk.  Their hands meet, and light spills in a flood like a hundred golden urns pouring out of the sun.”
• Acclaim:  Orange Prize for Fiction
• Film Version:  none
• First Read:  Spring 2018 / Spring 2020