thin red line

Just finished watching the thin red line, just finished reading it too.
More often than not a film version of a novel falls short of doing the story justice and tends to undermine the underlying, fundamental importance of the tale. That is not the case here where the film manages to accomplish much in the way of complementing the novel. Malick and company do the film medium proud in this piece.

Much differs between the novel and the film and in most ways I think the cinematic version plays better; the dialogue in the film is stronger than it is in the novel, the complexity of the subject matter (death) is emotionally and intellectually explored, in my opinion, with more profundity than it is in the novel... Malick makes the green seem greener than it reads in its counterpart. This is meant as no slight against James Jones' novel, it is worth a read, if you enjoy war novels, and it reads quick too. James' novel is sharp and good.

The film does use some hyperbolic voice over, which in my opinion weakens it.

Blade Runner

I stayed up late last night watching Blade Runner in bed and again I was impressed.

Aside from the voice over. I hate voice over ~ and I hated Harrison Ford's voice over. The film would be better without voice over! Voice over almost ruins Terrence Malick's films for me and I love him.

At any rate, already knowing the ending to the film didn't make it less enjoyable to watch, it was a bit fun.

In general I am not that big of a fan of hard-line Sci-Fi films, but Ridely Scott's film feels more Noir to me.

update: Ralph has just informed me that the director's cut can be viewed without voice-over.

Faces

Black and White. Cigarettes. Gena Rowlands. A Cassavetes one night stand. Watch it.