* This post first appeared on writingbar.com.au *
It’s the age-old question.
Well, a hundred years old at least.
Which is better – the book or the movie? (You may take the lid off the can of worms now!)
Much like the chicken vs. egg conundrum, this is a question that likely won’t be answered any time soon since not even some of the authors of the adapted books are willing to offer an opinion.
And if they are, they’re usually divided between the take-the-cheque-and-run crowd, the willing collaborator camp, or the hands-off-call-me-when-it’s-in-the-cinema group.
Regardless of what the ultimate answer is, and they’re likely isn’t one, Hollywood keeps optioning books to make into (hopefully) fine, imaginative movies, and we’ve found three of the best that are on their way to a cinema near you!
(Don’t ask us how we know that, we just do.)
THE TURNING by Tim Winton
Life is a curious thing.
We emerge into it full of hope and rampant expectation, little realising that it rarely plays out as we expect.
With the mastery and insight we have come to expect from one of Australia’s most gifted storytellers, Tim Winton explores this theme in his book The Turning (2006), which examines 17 distinct but interconnected groups of people grappling with the disappointment of lives that have failed to match youthful expectations.
Exploring sometimes terminally-flawed relationships between brothers, young lovers, and husbands and wives, some of which end conclusively, others ambiguously, the separate narrative threads coalesce around protagonist Vic Lang, present in some form in all the stories.
Always a challenge to bring to the screen, the movie’s producers have opted to largely mimic the book’s structure, electing to have 17 directors, including newcomers Mia Wasikowska (Alice in Wonderland, The Kids Are All Right) and David Wenham (Top of the Lake, Gettin’ Square) as well as established talents such as Warwick Thornton and Justin Kurzel, film a chapter each.
It’s an approach used to brilliant effect in the films Paris Je T’aime (2006) and New York I Love You (2009) and should work well for Winton’s haunting and evocative book as producer Robert Connolly (Balibo) explains:
“Embarking upon this cinematic adventure posed a unique challenge for us in relation to adapting a book like The Turning for the screen. We came upon this idea of extending a personal invitation to seventeen great creative minds to interpret one chapter each and asking them if any of the stories particularly spoke to them, affected or resonated with them.”
Starring a who’s who of Australian actings great such as Cate Blanchett, Hugo Weaving, Rose Byrne, Richard Roxburgh and Miranda Otto, along with many others, The Turning gives every indication it will be a faithful adaptation of Winton’s book albeit one with the unique perspectives and interpretations provided by 17 quite different directors as Connolly makes clear:
“What I found amazing was that each person found something very different in ‘The Turning’. Like all great works of literature it offers up so many permutations and interpretations.”
The Turning will premiere at the Melbourne Film Festival (25 July – 11 August 2013) before entering into general release Australia-wide.
THE WOLF OF WALL STREET by Jordan Belfort
Jordan Belfort was a 1990s stockbroking wunderkind, making almost a million dollars a minute by the time he was 26, lord of all he surveyed from his lofty aerie atop the heady, greedy heights of Wall Street.
Convinced he could do no wrong, and with a coterie of coked-up get-rich-by-any-means acolytes following in his wake, he lived a life of money-fuelled debauchery, sinking a 170-foot motor yacht after one extraordinary party and crashing a Gulfstream jet after another grand adventure, all the while trying to balance a crazy, non-traditional home life with his model wife and their two kids.
A hilarious yet searing dissection of the rampant Bacchanalian excess that characterised life in the infamous investment firm Stratton Oakmont, and Wall Street generally at the time, The Wolf of Wall Street grippingly recounts a life lived without thought for the future.
Till it all came crashing down of course, and Belfort had to confront his wolf-ish, excessive past.
A morality tale writ large, The Wolf of Wall Street has been crying out to be made into a movie, and it makes perfect sense that talented and much-acclaimed director Martin Scorsese, teaming up once again with his favourite actor/muse, Leonardo DiCaprio, is the one to bring it to the big screen.
Making the most of DiCaprio’s almost unparalleled ability to play charismatic, confident characters one step away from catastrophe, this is one movie that looks set to tap perfectly into the feel and themes of the book on which it is based.
The Wolf of Wall Street opens in Australia on 12 December 2013.
THE MORTAL INSTRUMENTS: CITY OF BONES by Cassandra Clare
The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones is the first book in Cassandra Clare’s wildly popular New York Times bestselling trilogy of a young girl, Clarissa ” Clary” Fray who discovers, without much warning, that she is a Shadowhunter, tasked with defending humanity from demons in all their myriad forms.
In rapid succession, Clarissa discovers that she is the heir to a long tradition of Shadowhunting, that demons walk, and kill, among us, and that she is witness to a world that exists within ours, a world where a violent war between good and evil is never ending, and one which is always seeking to subsume our own to its own purposes.
With the guidance of Jace Wayland, a handsome young Shadowhunter, she is introduced to a world she never knew existed and a destiny hidden from her by her ex-Shadowhunter mother, keen to protect her daughter from a life lived in the shadows with death an ever present companion.
Following the runaway success of the movie adaptations of the Harry Potter series (J K Rowling), the first book in the Hunger Games trilogy (Suzanne Collins) and the four book Twilight series (Stephanie Meyers), it made sense that Hollywood would want more, more, MORE.
And so they have come a-calling on authors like Cassandra Clare who, thanks to the stellar success of her books, can deliver a built-in audience, always a valuable commodity in the notoriously fickle world of movie making.
But it’s not all a one way street with an article in the Daily Mail reporting that “blockbuster films such as The Hunger Games and The Twilight Saga are helping to fuel a resurgence in teenagers’ reading.”
The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones is due for release on 22 August 2013.