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The Film Inquiry team discusses their favorite film adaptations, whether they’reb ased on books, comics, plays or short stories! Share your favorite adaptations in the comments.
Though film is an inherently collaborative medium, requiring careful cooperation of dozens of individuals, there are two roles that get singled out as being most responsible for the final product. Representing the technical marvels behind the camera and the beauty in front of it, directors and actors are Hollywood’s lifeblood, providing a face for the art that took the efforts of countless unseen. Sometimes, a director/actor tandem proves so gripping or successful, that a personal and professional bond is forged, and the two continue to work together; sometimes it’s a brief burst, while other times it’s a career-long relationship, but often the familiarity working teams have with one another results in a film of elevated artistic achievement.
In the beginning, there was light. It moved, it danced, it enthralled, but in the end, it was just light. Even in the silent era, exhibitors recognized the value of sound, coming up with a wide array of live and pre-recorded solutions to the problem of representing reality with only one of our five senses (and drained of color at that).
Taste is a fluid thing, though we seldom view it as such in the moment. For many, our cultural tastes define us and they are as solid and inscrutable as a pope made out of granite. Yet this is something that is often felt even bereft of the experience required to discover, explore and refine what kinds of cinema to which one really responds.
A few weeks back the Film Inquiry team vented their rage at the films we felt have undeservedly found a home in the good graces of both critics and audiences. This week, as we gear up for the good nature and cheer of the holidays, we thought we would go the other way and make cases for those films which though finding little love upon their theatrical releases, have managed to make themselves comfy in the warmth of our hearts. It doesn’t matter that critics, audiences and the film culture at large more or less forgot about these films the week after they were released, we know that everyone else is just making a terrible misassessment of work that is of undeniable quality.