This blog is basically about how good books are nice and bad books are the pits. And then I get grumpy.













Monday, January 26, 2009

Here she goes talking about movies again!

Just saw Inkheart, based on the young adult novel by Cornelia Funke, and quite enjoyed it! I stopped reading the book when I was well into it because it was so dark, but it was obviously written by a booklover and that sort of persuaded me to like it anyway. The trailer looked good so I thought I'd give it a try.

I can't believe Cornelia Funke wrote the book with Brendan Fraser in mind and was then actually able to get him for the movie! It reminds me of Colin Firth and the Bridget Jones books and movies.

The movie is interesting because it obviously takes place today but one wonders why Folchart, Fraser's character, doesn't just place an ad on Craigslist or something for the book he's seeking. Of course, then we wouldn't get to see the beautiful Swiss village book market and so much would be taken away from the story. Adding to the story's odd placement in time and geography, is Helen Mirren's beautiful wardrobe which seems to come out of the 1930s. It's these different cues the audience gets from the film (when to place it? where to place it? why there? whey then?) that bring to it some of the ambiguity which makes it so storybookish.

Jim Broadbent is wonderfully bumbling as the writer. After seeing him play the professor in Narnia who could expect anything else? Dustfinger isn't anything like I imagined him which would have been a sort of a younger, shiftier Danny Devito. Instead, he's tall and blond, sensitive and conflicted. The young actress playing Meggie is engaging, one might even say captivating, and personifies well the question mark her wandering life seems to be.

A warning is due that this movie can be quite dark and is not for the very young. But what booklover could resist such a story?

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