Hitting Screens, Week of
September 19, 2016
While Sully still soars at the box office, other book-related movies were considered flops, including the heavily promoted Bridget Jones Baby.
Five adaptations open this week, three films and two TV shows, beginning with a movie that has been an enormous success in Australia, but has taken a perplexingly long time to make it to the U.S. The Dressmaker stars Kate Winslet as a fashionable Australian woman who returns to her rural home, shaking things up and getting revenge. It was the second highest grossing Australian film of 2015, losing out to Mad Max: Fury Road.
Amazon bought the US film rights reports Variety, and will release the film in a limited number of theaters on the 23rd, before making it available via streaming.
In the U.K. and Australia, much was been made of Liam Hemsworth’s nudity in the film. As it arrives in the U.S. attention is turning to the age difference between Winslet and Hemsworth (and the fact that Winslet dares to play a woman five years younger than she is).
The book was published in the U.S. for the first time last year, when it was expected that the film would get its U.S. release, The Dressmaker, Rosalie Ham (PRH/Penguin; Penguin Audio; Thorndike Large Print; OverDrive Sample).
Disney’s big movie, Queen of Katwe opens in limited release Sept. 23rd, expanding to more theaters the next week. Starring Lupita Wyong’o, who won an Oscar for 12 Years a Slave, David Oyelowo (Selma), and newcomer Madina Nalwanga, it is directed by Mira Nair (Monsoon Wedding).
Vanity Fair calls it a “Bright and Inspiring Success,” while Roger Ebert.com says it is “thoroughly crowdpleasing.” Collider writes that the Disney production “stands alongside some of the studio’s best efforts, and it’s the best family film involving chess since the charming 1993 film Searching for Bobby Fischer.”
A tie-in is out: The Queen of Katwe: One Girl’s Triumphant Path to Becoming a Chess Champion, Tim Crothers (S&S/Scribner; Mass Market, (S&S/Pocket Books; S&S Audio; OverDrive Sample).
Goat also opens on the 23rd. Directed by Andrew Neel, starring Ben Schnetzer, Nick Jonas, and Gus Halper, it is a college fraternity film that traces a series of brutal induction rituals and the strain they place on two brothers. The Hollywood Reporter calls it “A harsh but gripping study in uncontrolled male aggression.”
The Guardian writes that it is “a pointed, astute and unflinching look at unbridled machismo and its consequences … everything is designed to provoke disgust – and there’s a lot to be disgusted with.”
Variety says “this testosterone-drenched indie-movie adaptation feels like something that might have come out under the MTV Films banner a decade ago (back when the book was published), as director Andrew Neel can’t quite decide whether to indict or endorse the hard-partying behavior on display — painfully aware that half the audience has pledged or will pledge the Greek system.”
A tie-in has been released, Goat (Movie Tie-in Edition): A Memoir, Brad Land (PRH/RH; OverDrive Sample).
The Exorcist TV series begins playing on Fox on the 23rd, over 40 years after the film adaptation of William Peter Blatty’s novel.
Cosmic Booknews says it is “a propulsive psychological thriller” and Cavalcade says it “delivers on both scares and drama. Though not always compelling, it manages to be consistently engaging.”
The series stars Alfonso Herrera, Ben Daniels, and Geena Davis. A tie-in has not been released but 2011 marked the release of the 40th Anniversary Edition (HC).
On the 25th Poldark, Season 2, begins airing on PBS Masterpiece, starring Aidan Turner, Eleanor Tomlinson, and Heida Reed. Of season one, The New York Times wrote:
“Sweeping, stirring, rousing, lush. These are the sorts of adjectives suggested by Poldark … It’s the kind of show in which every plot twist appears to require a shot of someone pounding on horseback along the Cornish coast, close to the cliffs and outlined against the sun … Another adjective that comes to mind is shameless, in the sense of nonstop audience-pandering melodrama. But there’s good shameless and bad shameless, and Poldark is reasonably good stuff, milking the emotions and pleasing the eye without unduly insulting the intelligence.”
The series is based on the Poldark novels by Winston Graham. There are a number of tie-ins and associated titles.