Books on Film at TIFF 2013
The Toronto International Film Festival is just around the corner, which means it's time for my second annual round-up of books on film at TIFF. Last year I wrote about ten books that had been adapted for the screen and selected to show at the fest. This year there are so many that I'll be blogging about them in two parts.
First up: fiction books on film at TIFF 2013!
Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning play August: Osage
County by Tracy Letts.
Featuring a mega-watt
ensemble case, including Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts, this TIFF gala
presentation film is already generating Oscar buzz.
The film is adapted from the play of the same name that ran on Broadway
for almost two years (648 performances!) and has since been produced
around the world, winning multiple awards, including a Tony for Best
Play and a Pulitzer for Drama. If you've never tried reading a play
before, this one – of several by Letts
– is a pretty great place to start: a darkly comic portrait of a
dysfunctional family whose patriarch disappears, prompting the family's
reunion and forcing closely-held secrets out into the open. You can read
all of Meryl's lines – as the dying, drug-addled matriarch – for
yourself, then prepare your very own Oscar acceptance speech!
Based on the internationally bestselling novel The Dinner by Herman Koch (also: audiobook | eaudiobook | ebook | large print | talking book).
Directed by Menno Meyjes, who wrote the screenplay adaptation of The Color Purple,
this film takes a scathing look at contemporary European society and
what it finds is pretty vile. Two couples meet in a swanky Amsterdam
restaurant to discuss what to do about an unspeakable event involving
their sons. As the dinner progresses it becomes apparen't that their
civilized pretenses are little more than a mask for the savagery
beneath. Based loosely on a true crime event in which three middle-class
Spanish teenagers beat a homeless woman to death, this novel went
straight to the top of the Dutch bestseller lists when it was first
published, and has since become something of an international
phenomenon.
Based on the novella The Double by Fyodor
Dostoyevsky (also: eaudiobook | ebook | talking book).
Jesse Eisenberg stars in this update of
Dostoyevsky's novella about a man who finds himself usurped by his
doppelgänger ("double-goer" or "double walker" in German). The Double, first published in 1846, the second of Dostoyevsky's published works,
is now considered a classic of doppelgänger literature; those stories
in which the protagonist finds himself tormented in some way by his
alter ego, identical twin, or paranormal double, who may be a stand-in
for his dark side, or a sign of growing paranoia and madness. Other
examples of the doppelgänger in both book and movie versions include The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde (book | movie) and Fight Club (book | movie ).
Based on a short story from the collection Hateship,
Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage by Alice Munro (also: audiobook | ebook | large print | talking book).
The talented cast of Kristen Wiig, Guy Pearce, Nick Nolte and Hailee Steinfeld dramatize the smartly funny and gently moving title story from Munro's 2001 book of short stories. This isn't the first time the beloved Canadian writer's work has made it to the big screen: Sarah Polley's Away from Her is based on the story "The Bear Came Over the Mountain" from this same collection. I have always loved Munro's stories for their deceptive simplicity, their everydayness, combined with the emotional heft and literary depth of any great novel. The critics adore her too: she won'the Man Booker International Prize for her body of work and is often referred to as one of our country's greatest writers. If you haven't had a chance to read anything by Alice Munro yet, now's a perfect opportunity.
Based on the raw and gritty novel Joe by Larry Brown (also: eaudiobook).
Nicolas Cage stars as Joe Ransom, a tough-as-nails ex-con who becomes the unlikely role model to an illiterate teenager living with a family of squatters in this modern Southern gothic tale. Joe was the fourth book published in as many years by Larry Brown, a hard-drinking, chain-smoking Mississippi firefighter and writer who, as he describes it in his autobiography On Fire, got his education while staying awake reading and writing at the fire station while the other firefighters slept. Joe is a beautifully written, minimalist novel of the contemporary blue-collar south, which Publisher's Weekly praised in its review, stating that "with this powerful, immensely affecting novel Brown comes into his own as a writer of stature."
Based on the coming-of-age novel Labor Day by Joyce Maynard (also: large print).
Director Jason Reitman's latest film stars Kate Winslet as a depressed, divorced mother and Josh Brolin as an escaped convict, whose chance meeting just before Labor Day changes both their lives and the life of her thirteen-year-old son. Publisher's Weekly said of this novel that Maynard's prose is "beautiful, and her characters winningly complicated,
with no neat tie-ups in the end. A sometimes painful tale, but
captivating and surprisingly moving." The author of several works of fiction and non-fiction, Maynard gained notoriety when she disclosed the relationship she'd had with J. D. Salinger when he was 53 and she 18 in her memoir At Home in the World.
Based on the crime thriller The Switch by Elmore Leonard (also: eaudiobook | ebook | large print).
Starring Jennifer Aniston, Tim Robbins, John Hawkes, and Mos Def, this crime caper about two career criminals whose kidnapping plan goes awry is sure to be wildly entertaining, based as it is on a book by the late, great Elmore Leonard, the "Dickens of Detroit." The best-selling novelist and screenwriter was a master of snappy dialogue and wickedly entertaining noir style and it's all here in The Switch. When Leonard passed away earlier this summer he left behind dozens of terrific books, many of which have been adapted for the film and television – a personal fave of mine is Out of Sight (book | movie).
Based on the novel Sex and Sunsets by Tim
Sandlin.
This romantic comedy by veteran director Jeremiah Chechik stars Ryan
Kwanten as a professional dishwasher and inveterate dreamer who falls
head over heels for a bride on the day of her wedding – to someone else.
Novelist and screenwriter Sandlin is known for his offbeat, sometimes
satirical, always irreverent take on American culture, and his many books have earned him comparisons to Jack Kerouac and Tom Robbins; he has even been referred to as the "George Carlin of fiction."
Check back next week for part two of my round-up of books on film at TIFF: non-fiction, including a harrowing memoir; one or two historical biographies; a chilling true crime story; a conspiracy debunked; and an insider exposé. Coming soon to a library blog near you!
Until then, please enjoy this short intermission…
One thought on “Books on Film at TIFF 2013”
I also recommend “The Lost Child Of Philomena Lee” by Martin Sixsmith. It is the book the movie “Philomena” starring Judy Dench is based on. Best TIFF movie I saw. An Irish woman is forced to give up her child in convent, and searches for him after 50 years. So moving!!