Thursday, April 19, 2012

Starved for Inclusion: Hunger Games

"I can’t say for certain this adaptation of Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games was or wasn’t spot on, I can say how it felt when watching it play out on the big screen. And to me, it could have and should have been better, given there was always going to be a possibility of audience members that never read the book.

"Given the overall unbalanced story and lack of introduction to the apocalyptic world that consumed “The Hunger Games,” I can’t imagine any hard core fan of Collins ‘loving’ this adaptation. Sure, it will get more positive reviews that negative, but that doesn’t mean it’s good."

'The Hunger Games' feeds, but ultimately starves
by Marcus Eger

Thursday, April 5, 2012

Books Into Movies: Satantango


Mesmerizing with its descriptive prose, miserably mired in melancholy, and profoundly apocalyptic, the first novel of László Krasznahorkai - now available in English for the first time, thanks to a dedicated translation by George Szirtes - inspired Hungarian filmmaker Bela Tarr's seven-hour, black-and-white epic by the same title.

Structured like a tango, the chapters of the novel are numbered one to six, and then six to one. A complex story line that defies summarising follows a group of people living in an unnamed and seriously decaying village in what strongly resembles late Soviet-era Hungary as they alternately wait for and pursue some ominous, inexplicable reckoning.

Is  theirs a dance with the devil, Satantango, or a dance to keep the devil at bay?

Books Into Movies: Satantango
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