Pages Tagged “Media Adaptation”
Reviews
- Beauty and the Beast (2010 Tour)
★★★☆☆
San Diego, 2012
The simpler staging & costumes work well enough, but the big numbers suffer from the smaller cast. - Beauty and the Beast (3D Theatricals)
★★★★★
Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center, 2016
An elaborate production by a local company with great performances from the leads, and a surprise understudy. - Belle’s Dreams of Adventure I never thought Belle gave up her dreams of adventure. I figured she had one, and gained the opportunity to have more. That’s why I hate the song ‘A Change in Me.’
- Beowulf (in 3D) Impressive monsters and realistic animation. Better than 300, a bit reminiscent of the recent Lord of the Rings films.
- Conan the Destroyer ★★☆☆☆ The first movie holds up. The second tries too hard to fit in a PG rating and ends up as self-parody.
- Earthsea (TV) Every once in a while I’m reminded of SyFy’s notoriously bad TV adaptation of Earthsea, and think, maybe I should watch it just once, like the Star Wars Holiday Special. This is not a review. This is why I still haven’t seen it.
- Final Crisis (Audio and Graphic Novel)
- Flash Forward (TV Pilot) ★★★★★ The first episode of Flash Forward is one of the best-constructed pilot episodes I’ve seen in a long time, especially of an arc-driven series.
- Flash: Stop Motion (Audio)
The concepts are intriguing, the characters are handled well, and the full cast and sound effects make up for the lack of visuals in superhero novels. - From Hell (Movie) ★★★☆☆ A fairly decent Jack the Ripper film (if there is such a thing), but tossed out the main themes of the graphic novel.
- Heaven’s Vault (Novels)
Aliya and the robot sail the Nebula, seeking clues to its history and future. The first two novels tell a story similar to the game, just different enough to feel new. Ancient writing appears throughout, sometimes translated and sometimes left for the reader. Book three picks up both after the game and long before, exploring a changed Nebula and the Loop. - The House and the Spirits (Movie) ★☆☆☆☆ This should have been a great movie. Epic story, all-star cast…but it was intensely boring.
- Jurassic Park (Movie)
★★★★★
Steven Spielberg
The original Jurassic Park film is still great, more than 30 years later. The dinosaurs are still impressive, it’s well-paced and dramatic, and despite contemporary reviews, the characters are engaging. - Justice League: The New Frontier (Movie) ★★★★☆ Cooke’s drawing style and the 1950s retro look to the artwork both translate well to the screen. A bit disjointed at first, but settles into a solid story about hope and trust.
- New Spring (Comic Book) #1
- New Spring (Comics): The Long Publishing Saga It’s taken a long time (and three publishers) to complete this adaptation of the Wheel of Time prequel, even though it only covered eight standard-sized comic books
- Ragtime
Ragtime has even more emotional impact on stage than the songs do alone, and the historical themes resonate strongly with the present day. - Ready Player One (Movie)
★★★★☆
Steven Spielberg
Better than I expected, having soured on the book by the time it came out. Not a straight adaptation so much as a rewrite of the same premise that’s more character-driven and yes, more cinematic. With Spielberg. - The Sandman - Season One ★★★★★ The Sandman has been brought to life. And it’s amazing.
- Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (Movie) ★★★★☆ It’s a fun mash-up of movie, comic book and video game sensibilities, though it does suffer from cramming six books into a single movie.
- Stardust (Movie) ★★★★★ Light-hearted fantasy adventure built around a love story, Stardust takes itself just a touch more seriously than The Princess Bride. Enjoyable on its own, and stays true to the heart of the book.
- A Wizard of Earthsea (Graphic Novel)
Fordham’s watercolor-style art is absolutely gorgeous. The adaptation plays to the medium’s strengths, allowing the visuals to tell the story when possible, keeping Le Guin’s prose when needed. Wide seascapes, rocky coasts, forested landscapes, people (not whitewashed!) and dragons… - Xanadu (Stage Musical)
★☆☆☆☆
Segerstrom Center, 2009
The stage musical of Xanadu is a silly, self-aware parody that revels in its camp. I really liked about 10% of it. The rest, not so much.
Les Misérables
- Review: Les Misérables 25th Anniversary Stage Production Overall the new staging works very well, though the barricade sequences suffer from the loss of the rotating stage. Musically, the show feels rushed.
- Thoughts on Les Misérables: The 2012 Movie Musical - A Fan’s Review As a fan of the stage musical from way back, I'd say it's good, but has its flaws. Time will tell whether it's great. Here's what did and didn't work for me
- I Watched Three Les Mis Parodies Last Night A Youtube binge got me watching Sesame Street's Les Mousserables, Animaniacs' Les Miseranimals, Forbidden Broadway's extended take(that), and On My Phone.
- Revisiting the Movie Musical After Re-Reading the Novel I liked the film of Les Misérables better on second viewing, and also was able to see just how much they brought in from the novel.
- Review: Les Misérables Movie 1978 The story of Jean Valjean vs. Javert is very well done, but the other characters and their stories are pushed out to the point where they're incidental.
- Classics Illustrated: Les Misérables Comic Book (Review) They manage to fit a lot of the story into a 45-page comic focusing on Jean Valjean, but some of the editorial choices are baffling.
- Review: Les Misérables Movie 1998 This version does a decent job of humanizing Valjean and Javert, and giving Fantine and Cosette more presence, but changes lead to an unsatisfying ending.
- Cozy Classics: Les Misérables (Review) This board book takes "abridged" to a whole new level, adapting the 1200-page epic to a twelve-word tale for babies and toddlers. Oddly enough, it works.
- Orson Welles’ Les Misérables Radio Play (Review) A thoughtful adaptation with a strong dramatic narrative that really gets into Valjean's and Javert's heads, but glosses over everyone else.
- Review: Les Misérables Movie 1935 I quite liked Richard Boleslawski's 1935 movie of Les Misérables starring Charles Laughton as Javert and Frederic March as Jean Valjean.
- Review: Les Misérables Movie 1952 Clearly inspired by the 1935 version, this movie has better cinematography, but the characters suffer from being forced into 1950s stereotypes.
- Review: Les Misérables TV Miniseries 2000 Stand-outs: unusual character choices and the Thénardier family as a real menace. But I wanted to like it more than I did.
Blog Posts
- HP8
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 was an impressive ending to the series…but what impresses me most is that it actually finished.
- Good-bye Global Frequency
Last year, a pilot was made for a TV show based on Warren Ellis’ Global Frequency, a series of one-shot stories about a worldwide organization of on-call specialists who take down threats to humanity. JMS would have been involved if it had been picked up. It didn’t make it to the air, though it was […]
- Why Bad Movies Matter
Let’s face it, there are a lot of good books that get turned into bad movies. On one hand, you might wonder: does it really matter? After all, the original is still there. The mere existence of the movie doesn’t alter the fact that the book is good, any more than the remake of Psycho […]