Tag Archive: adaptations

A Month of Kurosawa: Throne of Blood (1957)

To celebrate the upcoming release of my book, Akira Kurosawa: A Viewer’s Guide, due out Dec. 15 from Rowman & Littlefield — preorder here! — I’ll be doing capsule reviews all month covering every single Kurosawa film and posting (very) brief excerpts. These will be short impressions and recommendations, nothing more. For a full, detailed analysis of each, grab the book! Throne of Blood (1957) In the 1940s and 1950s, director Alfred Hitchcock went on one of the greatest creative tears in cinema history. Between 1940’s Rebecca to 1960’s Psycho, he directed anywhere from 10 to a dozen bona fide classics and another half-dozen immensely enjoyable suspense films. Few directors, if any, have ever had a run so good (and it doesn’t even include 1938’s…
Read more

I don’t want Amazon’s Lord of the Rings show

Earlier this week, Amazon announced it had struck a $250 million deal to produce a multi-season Lord of the Rings series. As a lifelong fan of all things Tolkien, this is not minor news. The name is a little misleading, of course, as this won’t be a television adaptation of the famous book (which had already been adapted to film by Peter Jackson in a wildly successful trilogy). Rather, the plan, according to their press release, is to “explore new storylines preceding J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring,” along with a potential spinoff series. That’s the part that gives me pause, especially in light of the fact that Christopher Tolkien, longtime guardian of his father’s literary legacy, has stepped down from the Tolkien Estate….
Read more