Tuesday, September 26, 2023
Saturday, September 23, 2023
Adapting short stories: Young Goodman Brown
A lot of canonical short fiction is either not adapted to film, or turned into audio books (novels are preferred for film adaptations).
However, there are exceptions. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Young Goodman Brown was adapted as a movie. The trailer here: https://youtu.be/VuY0qRI-7mM?si=hnc_ZHl0g3vLmbsj
(There’s apparently another professional film version of it, too.)
I can’t judge the entire film but it’s obvious even from the trailer that the both dialogue and tone of the story are changed.
This young filmmaker version of the story *does* make an attempt to stay true to the short story’s tone but abbreviates it radically and has uneven dialogue that’s sometimes true to the text and sometimes has an updated, goofily contemporary, quality that’s impossible to take seriously: https://youtu.be/N3vQu25X2RI?si=yuFW8E5upO1pK0pZ
So film adaptations are hard to pull off without losing much of the original beauty of the story, which lies in its language.
Yet the audio books lack the visual interestingness that a short story like this would inspire a lot of filmmakers.
And so we come full circle: how can one adapt a short story to film and new media, while still retaining the beauty of the original?
https://youtu.be/Nq6AY2AaEe4?si=wFqLGdjEdh5xhKsW
Thursday, September 21, 2023
Your World
Very happy that my hybrid documentary/ moviepoem about market culture vs urban commercialism, entitled “Your World”, was just selected by Goa Short Film Festival via FilmFreeway.com.
Tuesday, September 19, 2023
Friday, September 15, 2023
Wednesday, September 13, 2023
The Business Army: Roosevelt’s Inauguration 1
THE BUSINESS ARMY
Roosevelt’s first inauguration 1
Herbert Hoover had taken a lassez faire approach to overcoming the stock market crash of 1929; the approach failed miserably. Roosevelt was elected on a platform of revitalization and increased government spending— a New Deal that seemed revolutionary at the time.









