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Showing posts with the label Nelson Algren

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Before Matt Damon was The Talented Mr. Ripley, there was Alain Delon #book2movies

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The Man with The Golden Arm: Based on the book by Nelson Algren

Frank Sinatra Nelson Algren The Man with the Golden Arm

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Indignation by Philip Roth: My take on the book [review] #book2movies

I've been sharing images, pairing them with paragraphs from Philip Roth's small book, Indignation , all week long. A small book which carries quite a punch. Our young hero, Marcus Messner, starts off his tale moaning—or should I say 'kvetching' as his 'Jewishness' is part and parcel of the story—about his overprotective father, a Kosher butcher in Newark, New Jersey. Jewishness, sex, death: those are Philip Roth's usual themes, much in evidence here. While Marcus–or Markie as his dad calls him—has enjoyed a wonderful relationship with his father for his entire life and lovingly details working together with him at the store from flicking chickens to how to kosher a chicken to washing out the pails of fat, but now that Marcus is in college his father has become a complete worry-wort and can't bear not knowing where Marcus is and what he's doing. He's terrified Marcus will do something to get himself thrown out of school and put at the fron...

The Hollywood Reporter's Roundtable - The Actors *

Updated 1/14/2019 Congrats! You've just reached one of my most widely visited posts. I get it, lots of us want to hear what actors think about acting straight from their own lips. I've got a hunch if you find this post from 2013 interesting, you'll also find this year's more current video noteworthy too so I'm including it below. Cheers! Last Sunday I shared The Hollywood Reporter's Writers Roundtable , a lively discussion centered around the process and challenge of scripting stories for film, be it an original idea or adapting from another source. It was an interesting bunch of writers responsible for some of this years most talked about films including George Clooney and partner Grant Heslov (Monuments Men), Julie Delpey (Before Midnight), Nicole Holofcener (Enough Said), John Ridley (12 Years a Slave) and Danny Strong (Lee Daniel's The Butler). This week I want to share THR's Actors panel. Watch as Stephen Galloway, THR's longti...

Will Traynor: Dreaming of France in Me Before You

"Where would you go, if you could go anywhere?" Le Marais, Paris My weekend reading, the devastating Me Before You , had me shedding tears aplenty but there was also plenty to smile at in this powerful, enlightening and utterly surprising novel. Louisa, has been hired on to be a caretaker/companion to Will Traynor, the handsome but bitter quadriplegic who has decided to end his life. Yes, it's that blunt and emotionally loaded. Louisa's goal is to make Will's life so full of adventure and surprise that he changes his mind. Will, on the other hand, is intent on making small-town girl Louisa live a larger life than the one afforded by her place of birth and education. My Take on the Novel 'Me Before You' "Promise me you won't spend the rest of your life stuck around this bloody parody of a place mat." Will tells her, the fact that he's the one stuck in the wheelchair not lost on Lou or the reader. "You only get one li...

The Man with The Golden Arm: Based on the book by Nelson Algren

I read The Man with the Golden Arm way back in a college English class. American Literature: Post World War II. Something like that. The novel was written by Nelson Algren, born on this day (March 28, 1909) in 1949, won the National Book Award in 1950 and was made into a film starring Francis Albert Sinatra in 1955. The main character, Frankie the man with the golden arm is an army vet “with a monkey on his bank’’. He's an addict, a dealer in illegal card games, a wannabe drummer tricked into marriage to the wrong woman. Set in Chicago, on its poverty-ridden streets, revealing a dark underbelly of America in a way unlike the way I was used to seeing our country, I was deeply moved. At the time I was still very much enamored of the British writers ala Dickens or at least the American writers who crossed the pond and gave us their view of the continent, ala Henry James. This ugly America was for my sheltered eyes, a whole new bag. ‘ Frankie Machine had seen ...

To Sir With Love starring Sydney Poitier: #SaturdayMatinee

“ A story as fresh as the girls in their minis ... and as cool as their teacher had to be. ” That tag line’s impossibly heavy-handed now, but Sydney Poitier was, and remains, the epitome of cool. Poitier was the first black man I fell in love with. Black boys and men were a rarity when I was growing up in Canada in the sixties. In middle school in Niagara Falls, George Bell was the only black boy on campus, period, an outsider. It was 1967 and I was 13 when I saw Sydney Poitier in the now classic To Sir with Love . Everything about the drama called out to me. The tough London kids, girls with their white lipstick and cool clothes, the boys with their wild bravado. And this calm, classy man with the velvety voice, determined not to lose his temper, determined to break through. Like Judy Geeson as Pamela, I wanted to dance with Sir. Like Lulu as Babs, I wanted to send him my love in a song. Never mind the seething racial tensions, I was consumed...

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