In nuce

Paul Thomas Anderson’s “There will be blood” is a screen adaptation of the novel “Oil!” by Upton Sinclair and Coen brothers’ “No country for old men” is a screen adaption of a novel that goes with the same name by Cormac McCarthy. Given that, both these movies have been nominated for the highest price, and that ‘There will be blood’ won Daniel-Day Lewis the best actor in the SAG as well as BAFTA and Coen brothers picked up the best film at both these places seem to make us wonder about screen adaptations and novels themselves. Thus, there would not have been a better time to come across this >

“The usual rule among movie people is that better films are made from mediocre books than from great ones: so Francis Ford Coppola came up with a better version of The Godfather than Mario Puzo. The theory, though, is challenged by this year’s Oscar nominations for best picture. The Coen brothers’ No Country for Old Men, an exceptional film, derives from a novel by Cormac McCarthy that is at least very good. And Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood, a masterpiece, is adapted from Upton Sinclair’s 1927 novel Oil!, which, though not one of the greatest works of American literature or even one of Sinclair’s best books, is exceptionally impressive.”

I loved this review by Mark Lawson in The Gaurdian. Hope you do too.

And here, one can read the New Yorker’s take on Cormac McCarthy and his “No country for old men“.

Cheers,
Laks

“I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables—slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need. We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual war . . . our Great Depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off.”  – Fight Club, 1999