After World War II, in essence a world stunned with death and destruction emerged to try to forge its way into the future after one of the planet’s most trying challenges. Inspiring tens of millions was the true-life voyage of Norway’s Thor Heyerdahl, a pioneer made of the same mettle as Shackleton and Hillary. Heyerdahl was a student in Oslo who spent a year in Polynesia, where he developed the idea that peoples like the ancient Incas could have traveled across the Pacific Ocean and settled the area easier than saling from the west. After a decade trying to prove his hypothesis, Heyerdahl assembled a team of six men, five Norwegians and a Swede, and built a balsa raft consistent with parts and construction the Polynesians would have had available centuries before, which he named Kon-Tiki after an Incan sun god. His challenge? To complete the voyage from South America to Polynesia without assistance from modern technology.
Heyerdahl’s 1948 account of the voyage, Kon-Tiki: Across the Pacific in a Raft, became one of the best-selling books of all time (selling more than 56 million copies), his 1950 documentary of the voyage,Kon-Tiki, earned an Oscar, and an impressive 2012 theatrical adaptation, also named Kon-Tiki, was nominated for an Oscar for best foreign film. Both of these films are now streaming on Amazon Prime.
At one level The Aeronautsis a welcome reminder of how much humans take the science and technological achievements of their forbearers for granted. It is a harrowing adventure, heart-pounding like Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air (the story of a climb to the top of Mount Everest), and will leave you feeling like you, too, have spent a few hours dangling from the top of a temporarily frozen gas balloon on a record-breaking flight in 1862. And the Mount Everest comparison is no joke, as the balloonists soon realized what happens to the body on a climb that high was happening to them, including the addled brain from hypoxia. Of course this flight was 91 years before Edmund Hillary made his record-breaking ascent at 29,029 feet, about 6,000 feet lower than the real-life flight documented in The Aeronauts, so everything they learned on their balloon flight was new.
The real-life scientist James Glaisher is played by Eddie Redmayne(Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them) and the balloon pilot–a fictional composite named Amelia Rennes–is played by Felicity Jones (Rogue One: A Star Wars Story)–reuniting both Oscar-nominated stars of the historical, scientist biopic The Theory of Everything (which earned Redmayne his first Oscar). Glaisher seeks to prove that the study of weather can result in the possible prediction of weather and seeks the expert aeronaut Rennes to partner with him so he can prove his theories to the doubting aristocrats of London. To do that he needed to get higher into the sky than ever before. Rennes’s role was based on actual aeronaut balloonists Henry Coxwell and Margaret Graham, with even more elements based on Sophie Blanchard, who was the first woman to work as a professional balloonist, and, like Jones’s character, became famous as aeronaut following her husband’s death.
The Aeronautsis based on the death-defying feats of aeronauts in Richard Holmes’ 2013 bookFalling Upwards: How We Took to the Air. Since the real flight itself lasted less than two hours aloft, the film is a great character study and closed room story, with an undeniable friendly, non-romantic chemistry between the two leads. But it’s Jones’s circus-esque, Flying Wallendas-like showmanship and stunts that will make you want to come right back and watch it again. Inspiring, soaring, and adventurous, it’s the kind of film you’ll want to show kids to get them excited about being all they can be.
Astronaut Scott Kelly, who spent 340 days aboard the International Space Station in 2015, has been in the news this month as scientists learn more about his health after such an extended stay in space. NASA admitted Scott and his identical twin brother Mark into its elite astronaut program in 1996, and after many years the brothers’ back and forth missions resulted in Scott accepting a Russian mission to test human reaction to extended space travel, in part contemplating a trip to Mars one day. At the end of his 2015 mission not only did his body change, but he encountered what travelers to Mars will encounter: living in weightlessness, relying on the tools, food, and oxygen processing technology, and experiencing work stress for a similar period of time as a voyage to Mars. Although readers of his recently published memoir will learn the selection of the brothers into NASA and the selection of Scott for his record-breaking ISS mission initially did not contemplate use of the twin brothers as comparative test subjects, NASA soon realized the knowledge they could gain from such an endeavor. Although scientists have since backed off on early claims that Mark and Scott now have different DNA, their analysis continues, and Scott said he and his brother will continue to be tested and observed as part of the study for the rest of their lives.
In his book Endurance: A Year in Space, A Lifetime of Discovery, Scott Kelly recounts his life story and the details of his four trips into outer space: via the space shuttles Discovery (STS-103) in 1999 and Endeavour (STS-118) in 2007 and later via Soyuz TMA-19 in Expeditions 25/26 in 2010 and Soyuz TMA-18M in Expeditions 43/44/45/46 in 2015 with a record-breaking mission. The Endurance in the title reflects both the ship captained by Sir Ernest Shackleton in the 1901 expedition to Antarctica (and Shackleton’s book Kelly took on his journey into space for inspiration and reflection) as well as the mettle and resolve required to push his mind and body to the limits to survive his many journeys off-planet. Readers learn through his experiences the detail, perfection, and self-discipline that makes up “the right stuff” for the military fighter pilot turned test pilot, Navy captain, and astronaut commander are the same things that seem to make him so focused that he was perceived as less communicative and responsive to those closest to him. Endurance: A Year in Space, A Lifetime of Discovery is very much another chapter in a continuing history of books by astronauts recounting their circuitous and unlikely paths to NASA, yet Kelly’s account reveals less of a superman and more of a flawed but committed adventurer, and his flaws will no doubt engage any reader and fan of real-life adventure stories. The personal details, openness to discuss his own reservations, concerns, and mistakes, make this unlike any other of the more famous accounts of human travels in space. Kelly is most likeable when he’d seem unlikeable to us back on Earth–when he shows his frustrations, when at the end of a year in space little comments from his peers simply annoy him. He seems preoccupied with the ISS toilets and carbon dioxide levels throughout his year on the ISS, both of which he knows could mean the end of any Mars mission if they can’t become more reliable. And it’s these kinds of details he hopes will drive NASA to improve these components of space travel to hope to make a mission around the moon, around an asteroid, and ultimately a mission to Mars, a reality one day for mankind.
That’s Commander Scott Kelly (bottom right) in the crew photo sporting Jedi robes for Expedition 45.
Kelly credits another book, Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff, as his inspiration for taking on a career as jet pilot and astronaut–he even called Wolfe from space to thank him at the end of his ISS mission. Kelly’s descriptions of several of his experiences, especially his three harrowing spacewalks while aboard the ISS, provide for a riveting read, and readers shouldn’t be surprised if they find themselves breathless as they follow along with him as he floats 254 miles above Earth orbiting at 17,000 miles per hour. Some sections of Endurance: A Year in Space, A Lifetime of Discovery are as nailbiting as Jon Krakauer’s extraordinary account of his ill-fated Mt. Everest climb, Into Thin Air. Some of Kelly’s more minor details are the most startling, like his description of hand rails outside the station that are riddled with bullet-sized holes, caused by space debris. Any new arriving piece of debris could poke a hole in him, too, as he floated in space. In one mission he encounters the same tile problem that caused the destruction of the space shuttle Columbia. A chunk of an old satellite careening in the vicinity of the ISS provides another dangerous condition for the crew that illustrates another theme of life on the ISS–international relations. Kelly speaks nothing but admiration for Russia, its space program and its cosmonauts, but their processes and procedures sometimes vary widely. When the satellite approached, the Russians kept on working just as he and his team hunkered down. The Russians figured any collision likely would kill them all instantly, so why worry about it? Readers will learn a lot about those less exciting parts of being a 21st century astronaut, especially about the required extended stays required these days in Russia, the departure point for American astronauts in the post-Space Shuttle world. In between flights, Kelly served as NASA’s Director of Operations in the legendary town of Star City, Russia, and we learn much about his many encounters with other astronauts and ground crew.
I am an avid follower of the many chronicles of the May 1996 disaster on Mount Everest. But it all comes down to the brilliant storytelling of Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Airthat really sucked me in. So compelling, his account made me feel like I was having breathing issues reading his novel into the wee hours of the morning. Russian climber guide Anatoli Boukreev didn’t like Krakauer’s account, so he responded with his own, The Climb: Tragic Ambitions on Everest.Left for Dead: My Journey Home from Everest documents Beck Weathers’ story. Each of these are worthy reads. Other accounts include Climbing High: A Woman’s Account of Surviving the Everest Tragedy, by climber Lene Gammelgaard, After The Wind: 1996 Everest Tragedy–One Survivor’s Story, by Lou Kasischke, High Exposure: An Enduring Passion for Everest and Unforgiving Places, by David Breashears, and the Everest IMAX movie (filmmakers encountered the disaster climbers on their own climb and Brashears was instrumental in saving Beck Weathers). Krakauer’s story got a less than adequate treatment in the film Into Thin Air, starring Christopher McDonald. Which brings us to director Baltasar Kormákur’s 2015 theatrical release Everest, now available on streaming services and home video.
Fortunately Everest the movie is not a disaster. It gets the story right. The cast is nearly perfect. Yet it doesn’t match the thrills of the true-life adventure it adapts, and so a detailed critique is warranted. The screenwriters have pieced together all the key scenes and moments from the various firsthand accounts, sometimes picking and choosing so as not to adapt any single vantage point from another. Yet it skips over some key climax points that could have made the film so much better.
In a story where there are more males than females, why not highlight the two female climbers we do meet (played by Amy Shindler and Naoko Mori), instead of focusing on spouses (played by Keira Knightley and Robin Wright) whose only participation was a series of phone calls? In the two roles where women get plenty of screentime, Emily Watson and Elizabeth Debicki are left with recurring close-ups where they are supposed to show concern, yet they come off as emotionless. The actors were given little to work with. A directorial or screenwriter problem?
Part of the problem also is the missed opportunity for well-edited musical cues. Composer Dario Marianelli (V for Vendetta, I Capture the Castle) provides a score that is neither thrilling nor matches the emotion of the struggle and despairs depicted in the film. It’s a sweeping score but never prepares us for what is ahead and never lands where it should. But the music is secondary to the writing.
The more I see of Universal’s latest disaster movie, the more I think this one could be next year’s biggest Oscar nominee. Next month’s IMAX release Everest looks even better in this new trailer released a few hours ago, better even than the first great preview. If you’ve read Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air or any of the other accounts of the 1996 Everest disaster, no longer the biggest disaster in the history of the mountain, then you can’t help but cringe as each character that doesn’t make it off the mountain utter their lines.
If you know nothing about it, be prepared for a gut-twisting story that will leave you breathless–if director Baltasar Kormákur and writers William Nicholson and Simon Beaufoy can reflect the reality here that in this case, is greater than fiction.
One think to note about this preview is how cocky Jake Gyllenhaal appears. He plays Scott Fischer, and Fischer, as well as the other guides who hiked that mountain multiple times were as cocky as anyone you can imagine–if the accounts of their lives match what we’ve read. The bottom line? The 1996 Everest was so harrowing and full of incredible stories that it’s going to be very difficult to screw up.
With an all-star cast including Gyllenhaal, Josh Brolin, Keira Knightley, Jason Clarke, Sam Worthington, and Robin Wright, and an IMAX production that looks so pristine and real, we’re in for something big.
Twelve climbers died on Mt. Everest in 1996, but the harrowing story of the events that occurred on May 10-11, 1996, have created the most exciting story of human endurance and survival yet documented. More than 300 hundred documented climbers have died on the mountain, many whose bodies line the road to this day and still are used as checkpoints or mile markers for future climbers. We don’t know all the details of their stories like we do of the May 1996 disaster. And that’s thanks primarily to the fact that a master storyteller was on the mountain to be part of what happened.
That storyteller is Jon Krakauer, a journalist who would later document the events in the bestselling account Into Thin Air, one of the most exciting, jaw-dropping books ever written. Without Krakauer so many people around the world would not know so much about these peoples’ lives we’d otherwise have no reason to know about: Beck Weathers, Rob Hall, Scott Fischer, Anatoli Boukreev, Doug Hansen, Andrew Harris, Yasuko Namba. The crossroads where they would all meet is finally coming to the big screen this year in director Baltasar Kormákur‘s Everest. It will be difficult to screw up this story. Millions of dollars went into the production.
Just look at the major league cast alone. Jake Gyllenhaal(Donnie Darko, Zodiac, Source Code, Homicide) plays Fischer, Josh Brolin (Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Jonah Hex, Men in Black III, Milk, No Country for old Men, The Goonies) is Beck Weathers, Michael Kelly(House of Cards, Fringe, Law & Order, Unbreakable) is Krakauer, John Hawkes (Deadwood, Lost, The X-Files, Buffy the Vampire Slayer), is Hansen, Jason Clarke (Terminator: Genisys, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes) is Hall, Martin Henderson (The Ring, House, M.D.) is Harris, Icelander Ingvar Eggert Sigurðsson is Boukreev, and Naoko Mori (Humans, Torchwood, Doctor Who) is Namba.
Check out this first, full-length trailer for Everest:
It’s All Star Major League Baseball week, and if you’re roaming around host city Kansas City this week, don’t bother trying to figure out those big symbols painted on the street at intersections throughout the city. You’re probably better off not looking at the pavement as you drive, anyway. They’re just ads for the event. Planning and reporting for this week’s festivities made me ask myself: How many host cities are asked to tear down dozens of houses to improve the appeal of major events? That’s right, part of the deal to get the big MLB extravaganza into town was agreeing to tear down a bunch of abandoned east side homes near baseball fields holding related games. Those supporting the action say it caused the city to get off its rear and act on something they needed to do anyway. But local elected officials have been voicing their dismay on behalf of neighborhood residents–why do we need a sporting event to clean up our city?
This same week, halfway across the country, 150,000 or so fanboys and fangirls will descend upon San Diego for the annual International Comic-Con. It makes you wonder–how many houses are getting torn down in San Diego? Both All Star Week and Comic-Con bring in money for their towns, and from a city management standpoint, that’s all that matters. For a city like Kansas City, you don’t get many bites at the apple, not many chances to bring in national events, although the city has built up major convention centers like the Sprint Center and Kauffman Performing Arts Center–facilities that rival their counterparts across the country no matter what size the city, and these venues are attracting the commensurate talent. Kauffman Stadium, where the All Star game will be played Tuesday, is without dispute one of the best venues to see baseball anywhere–its giant scoreboard video screen is one of the top of its kind in the country.
Sponsors have dumped hundred of thousands of dollars into promotions for All Star week. Nike, Chevrolet, Bank of America, even the Budweiser Clydesdales are all at the stadium, despite temperatures nearing 100 degrees (plan on buying a lot of bottled water if you’re going in person). At the Sprint Center even more promotional activities are underway at the “Fan Fest,” including members of the original women’s baseball league featured in the movie A League of their Own. Again, baseball is about money, money and money. And so is Comic-Con. If you’re a fan of either, you just ignore all the glitz and go after what you want–watching the baseball game (which seems like it may be an afterthought with all the promotions) and meeting your favorite comic book artists and writers and your favorite TV and movie stars, once you make it through the crowds at Comic-Con.
So I figured, what better way to start out All Star Baseball and Comic-Con week than revisiting the successful Brad Pitt movie Moneyball? Last October, borg.comwriter Jason McClain was a bit dismayed with the film. He had read the source material, based on actual events and real people, and I think his best praise was that the film was just OK. After finally seeing it, if you’re like me–less of a diehard baseball fan and more of a baseball movie fan, you may very well love Moneyball. In fact, I’d argue inclusion of Moneyball is a must on a future borg.com Top 10 baseball movie list.
Jason identified the best part of the film, namely Pitt as protagonist Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane, and young Yale economics grad Pete Brand (name changed from the original person in the story) played by Jonah Hill (Superbad) in a much deserved Academy Award-nominated role for best supporting actor. In an attempt to encourage Beane to push everything aside and do the right thing for himself, Pete shows Beane footage of a classic baseball moment–Jeremy Brown rarely takes the chance to round first and break for second base. This one time he does he screws up and tries to make it back to first, getting tagged by the first baseman in the process. What Brown didn’t realize was that his hit made it over the wall. He’d hit a home run and didn’t know it. Pete’s point? Beane was a success and just didn’t know enough to stop and soak it up.
Moneyball is obviously about money in baseball–not just how baseball has changed from its origins into this established, maybe bloated system that resists any effort to change with the times. It applies to movie stars in NYC and Hollywood, too, but you have to ask: Does anyone deserve $7 million for whatever they do? I once made it to a day game to see the Yankees play in the Bronx. Strawberry struck out at bat. Twice. Pretty underwhelming game. But what was memorable was all the local kids at the game. Each one had a well-marked season’s scorecard with plenty of margin notes. These were the diehard fans. And when you think about increasing prices everywhere, including tickets for baseball games or movies, you wonder at what point fans will just stop going. Or for a change, when prices actually drop. But that would require thinking differently. That would require real change.
More than money, Moneyball is simply a great sports story. Brad Pitt offers one of his less difficult but most subtle and smartly played roles. For the first time since Twelve Monkeys I saw Pitt in the big leagues as an equal to the likes of Robert Redford in The Natural. (One humorous bit is every scene he is stuffing his face with some kind of food or having a dip). The fact that he is willing to stop and change when no one else wants to is inspiring. As strange and unlikely as it seems, Pitt mirrors Gregory Peck’s role in the Hollywood classic Twelve O’Clock High. In that film, the Allies keep fighting but keep losing at the same time. It’s a war of attrition, and hard decisions must be made that affect lives of airmen but actually the fate of the world is at stake. Peck’s role is clean-up man. He’s the fixer. In Moneyball, the stakes are different, but for Pitt, this could be the end of his world if he is not successful. Can he change the very nature of baseball so his ball club can survive? Years ago a CEO who was about to get the axe asked me for advice. “Where did I go wrong?” he asked. Set in his own ways, he resisted change. I recommended he watch Twelve O’Clock High for some inspiration. But it was advice asked and given too late. Resisting change is natural, and it is powerfully hard to do. That’s why those people who are successful at moving forward in the face of huge resistance make great stories.
As for criticisms, I will leave those to Jason–he noted (probably justifiably so) that the filmmakers (and underlying source work) may have been harsh in its portrayals of real-life coach Art Howe and scout Grady Fuson. In brief, these guys are used to the old rules and resist change. As the story of Moneyball is about change, and as those resisting it, they become the villains. Whenever you portray real-life people in movies or non-fiction works, someone isn’t going to like the portrayal (particularly the public figures themselves). Yet you always have to ask whether there is at least a grain of truth in these portrayals. In what is one of the best pieces of storytelling of all time, Jon Krakauer’s account of a failed attempt of several climbers to reach the summit of Mount Everest was met with much opposition, by nearly every other guy who climbed the mountain with Krakauer. But that does not detract from the fact that the story told by Krakauer is gut-churning, nail-biting, and exciting. Ultimately accounts of real life can seemingly take on their own lives. The events of May 1996 on Everest are separate and apart from Krakauer’s bestselling memoire Into Thin Air. So, I think, may be the film Moneyball versus its source material, the Michael Lewis book Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, or even the real events that summer where the Oakland A’s broke baseball’s winning streak records. We don’t really know what Beane and the man Pete was based on were like then, but we know the characterization of these guys in the film was superb. And we can love the film whether it got everything real life right or not.
Whether you’re in it for the fandom or the money, this is bound to be a great week from Kansas City to San Diego. Bring on the fans!
When pondering what I want to see in the movie theater that hasn’t arrived yet I think a lot about several Philip K. Dick short stories, or TV series that I’d love to see continued on the big screen, like a big screen Magnum, P.I.,orSimon & Simon or Chuck—although if it is as underwhelming as the last X-Files movie then maybe not. I’d love to see some early twentieth century biopics of Bix Beiderbecke or Karl King (who, among other things, composed the circus themes for Ringling Brothers and played in Sousa’s band). And it would be fun to take a bunch of Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass songs from South Of The Border and The Lonely Bull and make them the soundtrack to a modern spaghetti Western, sort of like Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers with She’s The One. A good Green Arrow or Bionic Man movie, or a good sequel to Return of the Jedi would all be fun. And some things have been done already, but not quite right. Space Ghost had his own cartton then interview show, but how about an adaptation of the serious origin series by Joe Kelly? A big budget movie based on Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Aircould be awesome (the TV version suffered a bit despite a good cast). The Russian story of Lieutenant Kijewas filmed more than half a century ago with music by Prokofiev, but it needs a good updating. We’ve seen four Tom Clancy novels about Jack Ryan, but the creepiest of the series, Debt of Honor, has yet to be made.
A lot of films have been made, and in coming up with this list one of my ideas–a film featuring Super Grover and the cast of Sesame Street–seemed long overdue. I figured Sesame Street got bypassed for the Muppets, as shown in a funny scene from The Muppet Movie where Fozzie the Bear offers Big Bird a ride to the west coast to break into movies, and Big Bird says no thanks, he’s trying to break into public television back in New York. Well, apparently they made that movie back in 1985 and I missed it, Sesame Street Presents: Follow That Bird. You can’t know everything.
For me this list was tough until I moved away from books as source material. I think the movies I see in my head are better than how some of my ideas would likely turn out produced by the studios. But let’s get on with it–with a nod to Art Schmidt for his idea with DC Comics and Jason McClain for mentioning Connie Willis.
From the comic books: DC Comics’ Dark Knight Returns and Hard-Traveling Heroes
At lunch in high school my friends and I fantasy-cast Batman: The Dark Knight Returns over and over. Ultimately we arrived at (the now late) Paul Newman as the ideal retired Batman, in the graphic novel another wealthy race car driver type. In real life Newman was very much the Bruce Wayne interpreted in Frank Miller’s four-issue series-turned required-reading—as suave guy, well-liked, a wealthy philanthropist. In a different universe Clint Eastwood would be great fun as a superhero coming out of retirement to have that last hoorah with the Batman cowl. Probably too late now. Of all the Batman stories, The Dark Knight Returns is #1–it is so well-established as more than a cult favorite, even beyond Watchmen, you just have to ask DC Comics and the Hollywood machine: Why can’t someone just put it on the big screen?
I’ve said over and over here at borg.com that the best Green Lantern story ever is his team up with Green Arrow and Black Canary in Neal Adams’ and Dennis O’Neil’s classic Green Lantern Issues #76-87 and 89, the so-called “Hard Traveling Heroes.” Imagine Black Canary pulling up on her motorcycle. Imagine Green Arrow defending the kid robbing the slumlord. Imagine Green Arrow catching Speedy. Imagine Hal, Ollie and Dinah driving across America in their pick-up truck. And harpies. And encountering a religious cult. And more harpies.
I’ll echo Art Schmidt: DC Comics needs to catch up with Marvel Comics movies, with Iron Man (the first one), Captain America: The First Avenger, and with Fantastic Four’s brilliant realization of Human Torch and The Thing, maybe my favorite heroes to screen so far. OK, they nailed it with Christopher Reeve’s Superman and Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson in Batman. Hopefully with The Avengers, Marvel Comics sets a new bar that DC Comics will have to work toward with a multi-hero story, maybe even with the Justice League or Superfriends. Art’s recommended Cry for Justice, which we have discussed here before, is a great choice for this.
From the sci-fi novel: Remake, by Connie Willis
If you haven’t read Hugo and Nebula award-winning author Connie Willis’s books then you are in for a great ride through one of several fun and varied works. For me, the concepts and Hollywood prophesies in her novel Remake are too cool to pass up and I have no doubt represent a foreshadowing of the future of film only slightly touched on in the Ralph Fiennes film Strange Days. Remake is science fiction at its best, and was nominated for a Hugo Award in 1996.
In our near future, Hollywood no longer needs to make new productions. A film technician rearranges classic films via computer manipulation, so that the viewer can select who he wants to watch the next time he watches Raiders of the Lost Ark. How about John Wayne? How about Humphrey Bogart? Why not edit out all the cigarettes so we no longer encourage smoking for future viewers? What other movies would be fun to manipulate? This is the world of our future where Viacom and Paramount are now Viamount, where actors are reduced to stand-ins. OK, so it probably won’t really be our future as totally envisioned by Willis.
The technician falls for a strange woman who wants to dance in a musical and he is continually sidetracked as he pursues her through the novel. The love story is well done—but it’s the world of our future that would be fun to see, finally, on the big screen. And you would not need to film an entire movie, simply clips, like the old soda pop ads that blended dead celebrities with living ones, and that allowed Nat King Cole to star in a modern music video with his grown daughter, the singer Natalie Cole. Hollywood has the technology today—so why not see how far CGI can go?
I’d frankly love to see any Willis book adapted to film, and in addition those mentioned by others in this series, Bellwetherand To Say Nothing of the Dog would be great picks.
From the sci-fi novel: Fantastic Voyage 2: Destination Brain, by Isaac Asimov
When the original Fantastic Voyage was in theaters in 1966, Isaac Asimov created the novelization. He was not happy with it because he was adapting someone else’s work (it was based on a Jerome Bixby story). The original film reflected Hollywood basically at its infancy with special effects related to the future of medicine. In its day it was a good effort. With the 1987 novel Fantastic Voyage II: Destination Brain, which was not a sequel but an entirely new story, Asimov created the world inside a microscope that only he could envision. The book is like Dennis Quaid in Innerspace, but with a serious mission and tone. A group of scientists, such as you would find in the typical multi-disciplined problem solving team from a Michael Crichton novel, shrink themselves down to microscopic size to enter into the brain and try to diagnose the condition of a colleague, Dr. Pyotor Shapirov, the creator of the very technology that finally allows man to transport to such a miniscule size.
In 2001 Imax theaters featured a documentary on its giant-sized screens called The Human Body. Audiences were able to see (and sometimes be grossed out by) the inner workings of the body. Filmmakers would hardly need much by way of CGI to show a voyage through the cells. Maybe this would be fun to attempt for some creative producer, and a project showing yet another frontier of science to science fiction fans.
From the art gallery: the cinematic paintings of Edward Hopper
How about a story for stage or screen where each scene begins or ends as an Edward Hopper painting? And the focal character is the girl from his Automat, maybe also the same girl from his Chop Suey painting? New York Movie, First Row Orchestra, Summertime, Cape Cod Evening—they all tell some secret story. Or at least they all could, in the right filmmaker’s hands.
Hopper’s cinematic compositions and use of light and shadow has caused filmmakers to mimic his style before. House by the Railroad supposedly influenced the house in the Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho and the home in the Terrence Malick film Days of Heaven. Director Wim Wenders’ film The End of Violence incorporates a tableau vivant of Nighthawks. Surrealist horror film director Dario Argento recreated the diner and the patrons in Nighthawks as part of a set for his 1976 film Deep Red. Hopper has inspired both Blade Runner andRoad to Perdition.
Turner Classic Movies uses animated recreations of Hopper paintings as introductions to classic films and in That ’70s Show the producers recreated the diner from Nighthawks. But how about a full-scale movie showing us something about these characters we don’t know? That’s something I’d love to see on the big screen.
From the ancient history books: the world briefly changed by Akhenaten
I could find a non-fiction work for the adaptation, but it’s the story itself I really want to see here. The pharaoh Akhenaten was the leader of Egypt for about 17 years from circa 1353 B.C. to 1335 B.C. He was married to Nefertiti and had six or seven daughters and at least one son–Tutankhamen. In his reign he revamped the religion of his country like never before, moving from a polytheistic pantheon of gods to the worship of a single god, the Aten, or sun-disk. Following his reign the empire was returned to its prior state and for Akhenaten’s blasphemy his name was chiseled out of a significant part of the written record. Art during his reign became more expressive and naturalistic. Images of the pharaoh show a realistic image that hid no flaws, a long face, not the typical glorification and heroic imagery of Egyptian leaders before and after. Akhenaten is so interesting from a number of levels that it would be a great challenge to reflect his reign in film. Certainly a rebel and not a traditionalist. A stunning wife. How do you show all the Egyptian relationships—including accepted inbreeding as a norm–without coming off as judgmental? As pharaoh he was “one with the god Aten.” How do you portray daily life in an interesting way where the ruler is God and what could you show about his family on film? A great pandemic swept across the Middle East during this period, taking out the Hittite ruler Suppiluliuma, and how did they manage through that? But even more interesting, with all the stories of the history of conflict in Egypt, what did life look like during the years of Egypt’s own version of Camelot? This all would be incredible to depict.
From fantasy opera: Richard Wagner’s The Ring of the Nibelung
I have only seen one version of The Ring that comes close to clarifying this odd and complex story composed of four epic operas for a general audience: P. Craig Russell’s two volume graphic novel of The Ring of the Nibelung. A few years ago I discussed The Ring with Russell and he said it was a great effort to produce it and it became a sort of magnum opus for him. But even an adaptation of Russell’s adaptation would need streamlined for mainstream audiences—yet, it would be a great starting point. Predating that other famous fantasy ring series (the one by J.R.R. Tolkien) by decades, Wagner’s opera is epic in scope and length, taking four nights or 15 hours to perform the full opera. We already have a superb soundtrack from Wagner, but can someone make a feature-length, meaningful adaptation in the English language that conveys the energy and power of the original without all the nonlinear bits and pieces? The reward would be a giant vision of gods, heroes, mythical creatures and magic.
Other operas due for a good movie? The Magic Flute, The Barber of Seville, The Marriage of Figaro.
More than any of the above I would love to see our own Elizabeth C. Bunce’s retelling of Rumplestiltskin,A Curse Dark As Gold(maybe a classic PBS/BBC series or Hayao Miyazaki anime film would be fun) or her fantasy noir Thief Errant series on-screen. A Curse Dark As Gold has already been performed superbly in a full-length audio CD version by a Broadway actress so I’ve had a little taste of what it would be like to witness it fully played out. And speaking of ECB, tomorrow she’ll give us her take on stories that should be adapted for the big screen.
Yesterday we started in on what makes a great character, and who and how we determine our favorites, mentioning dozens of favorites from different genres and different media. The challenge? Come up with your top 5 favorite fictional characters from anything. When I was finished selecting them, I was surprised what they all have in common: a desire to protect others and defend the good against the bad. I went through a ton of characters to whittle it down to five. Most of my favorites I see as having some trait I want for myself, or guys I want to be like. Along the way I carved away Boba Fett, the obscure but coolest of the “men with no name” anti-hero Western archetypes, and opted instead for another Star Wars character. I lost Steve McQueen’s too cool cop Lieutenant Frank Bullitt for another cop that made the list and had to cut the other coolest guy (other than The Fonz), the no-named drifter from They Live. I lost Thomas Magnum, the TV show private investigator, that, along with Batman, is up there at the top of my Sherlock Holmes influenced characters. I cut big life-long heroes like the Six Million Dollar Man, Luke Skywalker, Tron, and even the awesome A.A. Milne creation Eeyore. No room for Will Riker and Captain Dathon from Star Trek. I love Dana Andrews’ noir detective Mark McPherson in Otto Preminger’s Laura. Fred Gailey, who defended Santa Claus (successfully!) in court in Miracle on 34th Street, hung to the list almost to the end. A top 10 list would have been far easier!
After a lot of soul searching–and this is not an easy exercise (try it for yourself!)–here is where I finally ended up.
When we first meet Uncle Ben “Obi-Wan” Kenobi, played by Sir Alec Guinness in the original Star Wars, he was an old man. A miser living out beyond the Dune Sea. Luke thought he was long dead. Then he comes out of nowhere in the desert at just the right time to barely save our story’s hero. Ben doesn’t remember the droids he supposedly owned a few decades ago. Is he a bit absent minded? Has the desert gotten to him? Without Uncle Ben, Luke Skywalker would be dead, and he saves Luke’s life six times: first, from the Tusken Raiders in the desert, second, from an alien in the cantina’s hive of scum and villainy, third, from the Empire by getting Luke out of Mos Eisley, fourth, by releasing the Millenium Falcon in the Death Star, fifth, by guiding Luke from afar to destroy the Death Star in his X-Wing Fighter, and sixth, by keeping him alive after he is mugged by a snow beast on the frozen planet of Hoth. Kenobi was part samurai warrior, part medieval wizard, part mystic, a monk, a veteran of the last battle of the Jedi. And later we’d learn he was the reason Luke and his sister survived at all: he’d saved Luke as an infant by bringing him to the remote planet with twin suns. He doesn’t have much time to mentor Luke, but what he does counts for a lot. Kenobi proves nothing is more powerful than wisdom and experience. Ultimately he sacrifices everything to save the galaxy by using his knowledge of the force to convert into a spirit, the only time this ever happens in the original Star Wars trilogy, so he can assist Luke along the rest of his journey. Later on Ewan McGregor put a very nice spin on the character for the prequels, but the original played by Guinness can never be beaten and Guinness received the only acting nod from the Academy for all the great actors of the series.
DCI Gene Hunt was a cop, a cop played by actor Philip Glenister. A good cop that blurred some of the rules of British law enforcement, but who was a product of his times, which was 1973 in the BBC TV series Life on Mars, and 1982 in the series Ashes to Ashes. He is brash, rude, and mouthy. He is kind. He is crude and speaks in local colloquialisms that make non-natives have to rewind and view the closed captioning to understand what the heck he just said, and sometimes you still can’t tell. He protects his team. More than anything, this guy has angst. Yet he wants to help others. He wants to do the right thing. He believes in justice. He believes that sometimes a cop has to break the rules to get to the right result. To find the criminal. To protect the innocent. He’s willing to stop and help a woman having an emergency birth. He falls for a co-worker who herself is a mess and desperately lost. He tolerates his bizarre group of subordinates, as he prefers them to everyone else, and he’ll join them for a drink at any time of day. And he always drives a cool car. He’s like a British version of Steve McQueen’s Bullitt, but with more layers and a lot more problems. He becomes so involved in everyone else’s affairs that he ultimately forgets who he is. I have seen Philip Glenister in little else, and wonder whether I like Gene, or I like Gene because Glenister played him. Either way, nothing is as it seems in Manchester and Salford police departments. And that leaves Gene to rise above it all and become the best cop in the best cop series ever made.
In the western movie Silverado, at the beginning of the film, Paden is dead. At least he is left for dead, like real-life Beck Weathers in Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air. Paden is played by Kevin Kline. You can’t start much worse off than Paden, prior to being rescued by Scott Glenn’s character, Emmett. All Paden has to his name is his 1800s long underwear. He was trusting, befriended some cowboys who turned on him, stole his horse, his saddle, his hat, his ivory-handled Colt. The whole rig. But he really missed the bay horse the most. They were laughing when they left him. Thought it was real funny. He walked for a little while but there was no use, so he gave it up. Figured it was just bad luck. He lies down to die. And he gets a second chance. But he’s not so much about revenge as looking out for the little dog one of his fellow riders mistreats. He’s trying to find his place in the world, which just so happens to be managing the affairs of a saloon. And you never know what Paden will care about. Even if that means he must stop looking the other way. He is a hero so he must act. If that means risking his footing in a new town to defend a man against a racist saloon operator, so be it. And if that means killing the men who run Silverado and the sheriff himself, his old friend, well then so be it. Kline plays Paden as funny, serious, smart. Sometimes warm, as when he is taking care of new friends, sometimes cold, as when he has to shoot a man. Sometimes puzzling, like when he flirts with a woman the night her husband is shot dead. Sheriff Cobb is using Stella to get to Paden. “I don’t want you to get hurt,” Paden says. Stella responds: “He can’t hurt me… if he’s dead.” Paden is a complex guy who changes his luck in a time when getting by was good enough.
I’ve read everything I could get my hands on related to Oliver Queen, aka Green Arrow, as re-developed in DC Comics’ silver age, from 1971 forward. Queen was a billionaire who lost it all. He became “everyman.” He ended up fighting crime as a vigilante and donned the outfit of Errol Flynn’s Adventures of Robin Hood and took his bow and arrow as well to fight crime. He’s a bit like Batman, a sleuth in the tradition of Sherlock Holmes. He became a force for social change and fell in love with a beautiful woman, Dinah Lance, aka Black Canary, and they ended up together in Seattle running a floral shop. They were members of the Justice League and rubbed elbows with the best superheroes around. Oliver always was outspoken, sometimes offending everyone around him, yet everyone around him always respected what he had to say and they often took his lead. He always fought for the underdog. My favorite incarnation is my first revisit to comic books, Green Arrow written and drawn by Mike Grell, but O’Neil and Adams’ version is a close second. In his first scene of the modern era, he must convince Green Lantern that he needs to stop protecting a slumlord and instead protect the tenants. With his on-again/off-again, fiery relationship with Dinah, he became part of the only crime-fighting superhero couple, together ridding the streets of every kind of baddie.
The only one of the five of my favorite characters listed here that never veered from my #1 spot is Captain Benjamin “Hawkeye” Pierce. As the leading character in the TV series M*A*S*H over the course of eleven seasons, Alan Alda became the best actor on any TV series, and soldier/doctor Pierce became my favorite character. He is defined by triage. Triage in his job as he must discriminate between who has a chance to live and who won’t live. Triage is his circumstance as he must decide to make the best or worst of being stuck in a place no one, even the local Korean refugees, wants to be. His tools consist of scalpels, forceps, alcohol, and humor. He takes the most depressing of dramatic situations and makes everyone laugh, and when the brilliant writing team gives us a serious story, he leaves us silent. He gives us gut-wrenching performances, via a simple salute to Radar O’Reilly as he leaves for home to take care of the farm, to his reaction to the death of Colonel Henry Blake, to his interview responses for Movietone news. He makes us laugh at his unending supply of practical jokes, against Hot Lips, Frank, Winchester, or B.J. He is a hero, he’ll save the life of a North Korean soldier without flinching, and at his worst he freaks-out, asking those questions everyone wants to ask in the middle of a war, but doesn’t. Why can’t we all just get along, as bunkmates, as co-workers, as Americans, as humans? And he is calm when he needs to be. Even when he is being bombed while trying to save lives after hours without rest. With more than a dose of inspiration from Groucho Marx, Alan Alda conducted a one-man band of chaos in the middle of a stellar cast of characters. It’s hard to believe M*A*S*H was a 30-minute show. Never before or since has anyone come close to packing so much emotion, drama, comedy, and energy in such a small period of time, for so many years. Although the writing of his character bottomed out in the last episode, what came before is what matters, and it explains why the series finale was the most-watched show ever.
Editor’s note: Tomorrow… we will take a day away from our favorite characters and Jason McClain will run down his recommendations to the Academy for the Ten Best Picture nominees, who will be announced by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Tuesday, January 24. Come on back Tuesday bright and early for Jason McClain’s top five favorite characters, followed by Art Schmidt on Wednesday and Elizabeth C. Bunce on Thursday.
that really sucked me in. So compelling, his account made me feel like I was having breathing issues reading his novel into the wee hours of the morning. Russian climber guide Anatoli Boukreev didn’t like Krakauer’s account, so he responded with his own, 
. 
documents Beck Weathers’ story. Each of these are worthy reads. Other accounts include 
, by Lou Kasischke, 
, by David Breashears, and the 
movie (filmmakers encountered the disaster climbers on their own climb and Brashears was instrumental in saving Beck Weathers). Krakauer’s story got a less than adequate treatment in the film Into Thin Air, starring Christopher McDonald. Which brings us to director Baltasar Kormákur’s 2015 theatrical release Everest, now available on streaming services and home video.
and 
and make them the soundtrack to a modern spaghetti Western, sort of like Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers with 
. A good 
had his own cartton then interview show, but how about an adaptation of the serious origin series by Joe Kelly? A big budget movie based on Jon Krakauer’s 
could be awesome (the TV version suffered a bit despite a good cast). The Russian story of 
was filmed more than half a century ago with music by Prokofiev, but it needs a good updating. We’ve seen four Tom Clancy novels about Jack Ryan, but the creepiest of the series, 
, has yet to be made.
where Fozzie the Bear offers Big Bird a ride to the west coast to break into movies, and Big Bird says no thanks, he’s trying to break into public television back in New York. Well, apparently they made that movie back in 1985 and I missed it, 
. You can’t know everything.
over and over. Ultimately we arrived at (the now late) Paul Newman as the ideal retired Batman, in the graphic novel another wealthy race car driver type. In real life Newman was very much the Bruce Wayne interpreted in Frank Miller’s four-issue series-turned required-reading—as suave guy, well-liked, a wealthy philanthropist. In a different universe Clint Eastwood would be great fun as a superhero coming out of retirement to have that last hoorah with the Batman cowl. Probably too late now. Of all the Batman stories, 
, you just have to ask DC Comics and the Hollywood machine: Why can’t someone just put it on the big screen?
.” Imagine Black Canary pulling up on her motorcycle. Imagine Green Arrow defending the kid robbing the slumlord. Imagine Green Arrow catching Speedy. Imagine Hal, Ollie and Dinah driving across America in their pick-up truck. And harpies. And encountering a religious cult. And more harpies.
(the first one), 
, and with Fantastic Four’s brilliant realization of Human Torch and The Thing, maybe my favorite heroes to screen so far. OK, they nailed it with Christopher Reeve’s 
and Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson in 
. Hopefully with The Avengers, Marvel Comics sets a new bar that DC Comics will have to work toward with a multi-hero story, maybe even with the Justice League or Superfriends. Art’s recommended 
, which we have 
are too cool to pass up and I have no doubt represent a foreshadowing of the future of film only slightly touched on in the Ralph Fiennes film Strange Days. 
and 
would be great picks.
, which was not a sequel but an entirely new story, Asimov created the world inside a microscope that only he could envision. The book is like Dennis Quaid in Innerspace, but with a serious mission and tone. A group of scientists, such as you would find in the typical multi-disciplined problem solving team from a Michael Crichton novel, shrink themselves down to microscopic size to enter into the brain and try to diagnose the condition of a colleague, Dr. Pyotor Shapirov, the creator of the very technology that finally allows man to transport to such a miniscule size.
. A few years ago I discussed The Ring with Russell and he said it was a great effort to produce it and it became a sort of magnum opus for him. But even an adaptation of Russell’s adaptation would need streamlined for mainstream audiences—yet, it would be a great starting point. Predating that other famous fantasy ring series (the one by J.R.R. Tolkien) by decades, Wagner’s opera is epic in scope and length, taking four nights or 15 hours to perform the full opera. We already have a superb soundtrack from Wagner, but can someone make a feature-length, meaningful adaptation in the English language that conveys the energy and power of the original without all the nonlinear bits and pieces? The reward would be a giant vision of gods, heroes, mythical creatures and magic.
(maybe a classic PBS/BBC series or Hayao Miyazaki anime film would be fun) or her fantasy noir Thief Errant series on-screen. 
has already been performed superbly in a full-length 
