5: Chocolat – Acceptable Villains

Chocolat by Joanne Harris. (Black Swan,2007)

Chocolat directed by Lasse Halstrom (Miramax, 2000)

The story, in brief, recounts the arrival of a chocolateliere in a provincial French town. The sensuous indulgence of the chocolate is contra… Read full post »

4. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings – The Internationalisation of story and the updating of the Hero

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, (Unwin Paperbacks, 1979. [1954-55])

The Lord of the Rings, (Dir.) Peter Jackson. (Newline, 2001,2002,2003)

One difference between P… Read full post »

3: Miss Pettigrew Lives for A Day - A Matter of Hindsight.

Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day by Winifred Watson. Persephone Classics, 2008.(1^st edition Methuen, 1938).

Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day, Bharat Nalluri (dir.), Focus Features, 2007.

This is essentially a simple story. A… Read full post »

 2: First Blood – Changing the Agenda

First Blood, by David Morrell, Pan, 1973 (1^st ed.Barrie & Jenkins 1972)

First Blood, Ted Kotcheff (dir) Studio Canal 1982.

We make presumptions about the intentions behind the stories that are told to us. We base these as much upon o… Read full post »

 The Shooting Party - a faithful adaptation.

The Shooting Party by Isabel Colegate. (Penguin Classics, 2007 [1980])

The Shooting Party, Alan Bridges (dir.) Geoff Reeves films, 1985, restored 2006 DVD.

A comparison of novels and their adaptations into other media can help clarify o… Read full post »

What a Study of Novel into Film Adaptations can tell us about Story

Introduction

There is a long established and still growing genre of books about the process of making films out of novels. Adaptation is beginning to be accepted as a legitimate area of academic study. Yet it remains,… Read full post »

  A.E.Coppard published around two dozen collections of stories, most of them in the two decades between the World Wars.

The ones I have encountered, about half of the total, all have the subtitle 'Tales' beneath the main title. The Alfred Knopf collection (NY,1951) is called 'The Collected Tal… Read full post »

Here's my first blog for open salon. I think it might read strange for you. English english is a foreign language, for you, if American english for me is anything to go by. I've never been to the USA, but I've had it as a house guest since I was five - and that's… Read full post »