Favorites of 2018 (and 2017)

L to R, top to bottom: Annihilation, Antony & Cleopatra,
Pelleas & Melisandre, Burning

Putting together "best of" lists in these times can feel frivolous, and last year I never got beyond a perfunctory list of my favorites. 2018 was a blur of more awfulness and protests, plus getting out the vote and progress in the Mueller investigation. It was also a damn fine year for cinema, and I got the list together. Here are my favorites in various categories (and 2017's picks at the end).

Movies

L to R, top to bottom: Blindspotting, Hereditary,
Burning, The Favourite, Annihilation,
The Death of Stalin

Annihilation: This movie reminded me of Under the Skin in several ways, including the audience's love-it-or-hate-it reaction. I loved it, but there was a lot of weird laughter at dramatic moments in my screening. Great special effects, and I preferred this contemplative, ambiguous film to director Alex Garland's debut, Ex Machina.

Blindspotting: With Black Panther, Sorry to Bother You, and Blindspotting, 2018 was a big cinematic year for Oakland. Directed by Carlos López Estrada and written by and starring Daveed Diggs and Rafael Casal, tonal roller coaster Blindspotting looks at a contemporary, gentrifying Oakland and police violence.

The Death of Stalin: I watched this movie twice this year. Once in theaters, and then again after Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed to the Supreme Court. Totalitarianism is a cancer, but the way its aggrandizement and increasingly ludicrous untruths inevitably paint its loyalists into corners is ripe for satire. How else to capture the whiplash of absurdities and atrocities?

Hereditary: As in other A24 horror movie The Witch, a teenager must deal with not only a malevolent supernatural entity, but with guilt, grief, and the weight of the family's blame in the aftermath of a tragedy. Toni Collette and Ann Dowd are powerhouses.

The Favourite: I went into this expecting to be wowed by Olivia Colman, and was even more wowed than anticipated. Yorgos Lanthimos takes a historic event (Britain's withdrawal from the War of the Spanish Succession) and gives us a tightly wound story of politics, power plays, chronic illness, abusive relationships, and Mad Max: Fury Road's Nux in elaborate 18th Century finery.

Burning: Based on a short story by Haruki Murakami, this slow burn by Chang-dong Lee is a master class in cinematography and tension. It's also very much of the zeitgeist. In Burning, Seoul's underemployed millennials live in cramped, dark studios or their parents' houses and compete in the marginal gig economy while their 1-percenter peers lounge in the tony Gangnam neighborhood Psy made world-famous a few years back. The three lead actors (Ah-in Yoo, Steven Yeun, and Jong-seo Jun) are excellent.

Books (I read in 2018, not necessarily published in 2018)

Moriarty by Anthony Horowitz: This twisty post-Reichenbach Falls Sherlock Holmes novel deals with whether or not math professor/crime lord James Moriarty survived that incident. Includes my new favorite Moriarty origin story. (Fans of this sort of thing might also want to check out Professor Moriarty: The Hound of the D'Urbervilles by Kim Newman.)

Wonder Valley by Ivy Pochoda: Drifters, runaways, and cultists populate this contemporary Southern California noir.

The Charm Buyers by Lillian Howan: One of the highlights of 2018 was reading at Lit Crawl, an annual evening of literary readings across San Francisco's Mission District. After my group's reading, a few of us ended up at a reading where Lillian Howan read a short story so powerful that I had to look her up and order her novel. In The Charm Buyers, Marc Antoine Chen, a member of the Chinese Hakka community in Tahiti, has a loving extended family and is the heir to a fortune in black pearl cultivation. But Marc seems determined not to make life easy for himself, shunning his father's business in favor of his own illegal operations and falling for first his cousin and then an older French woman. When his cousin falls ill, Marc must decide whether or not to potentially sacrifice everything for her.

The Yonahlosse Riding Camp for Girls by Anton DiSclafani: Just squeaking in under the wire (I devoured this book over the holidays) is this Depression-set page-turner about a Florida teenager sent away to a remote girls' boarding school after a mysterious, scandalizing incident. Horses + a narrator who's a prickly but engaging addition to the "coming of age" genre.

TV

The Good Place and Kid Gorgeous at Radio City

While the movies I loved this year often starkly confronted our current times, I looked for laughs and comfort in other media. This year I finally started watching (and quickly got caught up on) The Good Place, which, despite being about death and Hell, is a warm blanket and cup of tea of a show. Honestly, few things have helped me with my anxiety as much as William Jackson Harper's Chidi.

John Mulaney's special Kid Gorgeous at Radio City is his best so far and a welcome respite as we try to deal with the horse loose in this hospital. Plus, there's a solid intro of Art Deco porn if you're into that.

Theater

The dancers of Fury

Pelleas & Melisandre: I attended all three of West Edge Opera's summer productions, and this Debussy opera directed by Keturah Stickann was my favorite with its lush, sensuous sets and costumes. For 2019, I'm most looking forward to Elkhanah Pulitzer's take on The Threepenny Opera!

Fury: A ballet based on Mad Max: Fury Road? It works!

Antony & Cleopatra: A National Theatre Live production with Ralph Fiennes and Sophie Okonedo as Shakespeare's hot mess couple? Yes, please! I bought this ticket impulsively on a Bad News day (I don't even remember which one), but it was well worth the drive to the Lark Theater in Larkspur.

Other

Randy Rainbow: Another year of the Trump Administration, another year of Randy Rainbow keeping us sane! Throughout the lows and lower lows of 2018, Randy was there with timely song parodies. My personal favorite this year was his Gilbert and Sullivan take on "a very stable genius," but other topics included Rudy Giuliani joining Trump's legal team and the ever-intensifying Mueller investigation. Can't wait to see him live with my mom in 2019!



And 2017:

Theater:
SF Ballet Frankenstein
SF Ballet Salome
Cyrano de Bergerac - Livermore Shakespeare
La Traviata - SF Opera
Girls of the Golden West - SF Opera

Books:
Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James
The Decameron by Boccaccio

Movies:
The Florida Project
Paterson
Call Me By Your Name

My Favs of 2014

I also really like the polka dot duvet cover I got on sale.

This is by no means a definitive "best of 2014" list. I have not read, watched, or looked at enough things to make such a list. Just a few of my favorite things I read, watched, and looked at in 2014.

Books

Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami - My absolute top favorite piece of media in any medium this year. After the unwieldy 1Q84, some worried Murakami had lost his touch. But this year we got a translation of his latest novel, which is also one of his best. A shy young man's life is upended when his close-knit group of friends mysteriously abandon him. Many lonely years later, he finds the courage to confront them about what happened. The novel also handles a tough topic (that coincidentally became an explosive topic in 2014) with compassion and intelligence.

The Guest Cat by Takashi Hiraide - Man doesn't consider himself a "cat person." Then he meets a cat. I also read Tom Cox's Under the Paw, a book about a man who considers himself a cat person and obtains lots of cats. (Ironically, the above Murakami was uncharacteristically catless.)

A Thousand Mornings by Mary Oliver - This collection is likely the swan song of this great poet. A Thousand Mornings is no American Primitive, and I admit I thought her poems about her late dog Percy were overwrought (until my own elderly cat passed away). But it did include one of my new favorite lines ever, in "Out of the Stump Rot, Something": "If you like a prettiness,/ don't come here./ Look at pictures instead,/ or wait for the daffodils."

Other favorites that are not from 2014 but that I read for the first time in 2014:

The Savage Detectives and Amulet by Roberto Bolaño - I went on a Roberto Bolaño binge this year. Like Balzac, Bolaño works with a large cast of characters who span the globe but are mostly rooted in Mexico City. Of these, my favorite is Auxilio Lacouture, a middle-aged drifter and literary devotee from Uruguay who calls herself the "mother of Mexican poetry." In one chapter of Savage Detectives, she tells her story of staying in a bathroom during the army's 1968 takeover of the University of Mexico. In the novella Amulet, we get a fuller picture of her hardscrabble, poetry-filled life.

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn - I don't usually read thrillers, but when I saw the incredible trailer, I knew I needed to read the book ASAP or I would look up spoilers. Even if you know some of the twists, it's still a tense "in one sitting" read. (Warning: there will be some spoilers in my ramblings on the movie version below.)

Short Stories

"Someone in the Room Will" by Falcon Miller in The Rag - Even when I'm fortunate enough to get a contributor's copy of a literary magazine, I'm still convinced my piece was the worst piece. My favorite piece, however, in my contributor's copy of The Rag #6, was Falcon Miller's clear-eyed but empathetic portrait of a woman who is just not going to make it in society.

"River So Close" by Melinda Moustakis in Granta - Another story told about people at the fringes, "River so Close" in Granta #128 tells the story of a younger, sharper woman who is a seasonal worker at an Alaskan cannery where danger takes many forms.

Art

For the Sake of Being(s), Katy Horan and Katherine Rutter at Gallery LeQuiVive in Oakland - I'm a longtime fan of Horan, but this joint show focusing on nature and dark femininity was my first introduction to Rutter's work.

Modern Nature: Georgia O'Keeffe and Lake George, O'Keeffe retrospective at the de Young in San Francisco - The giant flowers were there, but this exhibit showed off the artist's range of subjects, from abstract, modern cityscapes to landscapes far removed from her well known desert scenes.

Movies 

It was a great year for Marvel actors doing arty genre pieces.

Snowpiercer - A cruelly topical, claustrophobic, existential nightmare in which director Joon-ho Bong somehow seamlessly includes slapstick humor and kick-ass action. After the human-caused apocalypse, Earth's only survivors live on a socially stratified train doomed to circle the globe continuously (Marvel Person Count: 1, Captain America. Tilda Swinton: Yes. John Hurt: Yes.)

Under the Skin - This "alien has moral crisis on Earth" movie directed by Jonathan Glazer is...not for everyone. I had to reflect on it for a while before I even knew if it was for me. It's a contemplative film with beautiful visuals and little dialogue. Several people in the viewing I attended walked out, most memorably some guy who apparently decided he just could not watch Scarlett Johansson slowly, slowly, slowly, ever so slowly eat cake. That was where this unknown man drew the line. (Marvel Person Count: 1, Black Widow. Tilda Swinton: No. John Hurt: No.)

Only Lovers Left Alive - The main characters are vampires in this Jim Jarmusch film, but this is less of a "vampire movie" than it is a funny, moving family drama that takes place in deserted Detroit, USA and vibrant Tangier, Morocco. A sunny, earthy woman and her younger musician husband deal with his depression and her reckless little sister. (Marvel Person Count: 1, Loki. Tilda Swinton: Yes. John Hurt: Yes.)

Gone Girl - I read the book so I wouldn't look up spoilers for the movie, and then I had to wait for what felt like forever for the movie! I enjoyed this David Fincher adaptation - I'm sure it helped that Flynn did the screenplay. Some see Amy Elliot Dunne as the ultimate "men's rights activist" strawwoman, but I think she's her own great villain, and Rosamund Pike was excellent in this role (favorite moments: competitive miniature golf, post-murder hair-flip, and that grin at Ben Affleck from the examination room). Although true to the source material, the movie managed to add to a lot of dark humor. Missi Pyle as fake Nancy Grace was a great bonus. (Marvel Person Count: -0.5, with 0.5 for Daredevil and -1 for Batman. Tilda Swinton: No. John Hurt: No.)

Captain America: The Winter Soldier & Guardians of the Galaxy - with a topical political thriller and zany-cute space comedy, Marvel proved it can keep their millions of superhero movies fresh. (Marvel Person Count: check with payroll. Tilda Swinton: No. John Hurt: No.)

TV

Gotham - This prequel series is cheesy and trying to cram in too many famous characters, but I love it. Robin Lord Taylor is an absolute breakout as Oswald Cobblepot (better known as the Penguin) steadily working his way up the ranks of the Gotham underworld. Jada Pinkett Smith, as new character Fish Mooney, is over-the-top and entertaining as a villain who mixes deadliness with the camp of the 1960s series.

South Park - Who knew 18 was a lucky season? The show, which began as a crudely animated short in 1992, found new life in 2014 by drawing inspiration from Silicon Valley, gluten, and pop-star/middle-aged geologist Lorde.

Comics

And...the Rainbow Brite theme song's in my head.

Loki: Agent of Asgard - The Asgardians had quite a 2014, which should provide the foundation for a great 2015. Except for Thor, who lost the power to wield Mjolnir and was replaced by a new Thor (popular new name for old Thor as suggested by Katie Schenkel: Snortblat). Loki: AOA started in February, and then led to a mini-series, Thor & Loki: the Tenth Realm, where the brothers met their long-lost older sister, Angela, who then got her own book, Angela: Asgard's Assassin. And a new Thor has begun telling the story of the still-unknown woman who has taken Snortblat Thor Odinson's place as Thunder God.

Loki: AOA has been my favorite, though. Continuing the extreme identity crisis and self-hatred that Kieron Gillen launched for him at the end of Journey Into Mystery, AOA finds Loki living in New York, singing in the shower, playing video games, grilling salmon, and making yet another take-no-shit platonic female friend. But of course, drama finds him. With clever writing by Al Ewing and art by Lee Garbett, highlights have included a guest appearance by Doctor Doom and goddaughter Valeria, the most determined band of juggling-themed supervillains ever, and an obnoxiously heroic Loki who can turn into Thor AND a unicorn.

Murakami Party or Winning the Nobel Prize Is So Mainstream

You said it, Green Apple Books.

So, despite having great odds, Haruki Murakami did not win the Nobel Prize in Literature today. Nor did it go to Alice Munro. Instead, that prize went to Mo Yan, who, to be fair, sounds pretty interesting. But whatever, right? Awards are always subjective and of dubious long-term merit anyways (here are all Nobel Prize in Literature winners). Now Murakami fans don't have to worry about complaints that our favorite author is over-hyped, and we can say "finally" and be eye-rollingly smug and disaffected like adults when and if he does take the prize in the future. So let's have a little Murakami party! Time to make some spaghetti, pump up the Janacek, face some unsavory history surrounding the Asia-Pacific Wars, pet a cat, and be surprised by our periods. And maybe play some bingo.

My introduction to Murakami came in college, when I was taking a class on the short story. In this class, the Murakami story we read was "A Shinagawa Monkey," photocopied by the professor from the New Yorker (readable here or in the collection Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman). What so gripped me about Murakami? His knack for writing women like they're - you know - people, his cool nonchalance with stepping into the bizarre, and the utter modernity of the story with its car dealership and costume-jewelry-wearing therapist. Part of me felt how some contemporary viewers of Impressionist and Impressionist-era paintings of absinthe drinkers and train stations must have felt: that this was the world, or at least some part of it, as it really was at that moment. Quite a feat for a story featuring an anthropomorphic name-stealing monkey.

I immediately wanted to read more. I started with The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and was captivated by the epic of a missing cat and a missing wife, a psychic prostitute and a terrifying politician, and the repressed horrors of Japan's wars in China. From there on, I tore through Murakami's oeuvre. I'm not sure I can name a favorite, but The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Norwegian Wood, and Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World are all included. I also have a soft spot for After Dark, and I know Kafka on the Shore and Sputnik Sweetheart are all-time favorites of many.




Murakami has had this effect on quite a mass of readers. In early October 2008, I visited a friend who was living in New York. It happened to be the weekend of the New Yorker Festival, and Murakami was there. We went to see if there were tickets left for his talk, but they were long sold out. However, he was doing a signing that day. And it just so happened that I had brought After Dark with me on the plane. We got to the venue early and were still nowhere near the front of the line. But we were in before the line was cut off. Desperate, teary Murakami fans begged those who had gotten in to bring their books in to be signed. When my friend and I made it to the front and I presented my book for signing, Haruki Murakami asked me how I was. Naturally this turned me into the creepy valleygirl I always turn into when meeting writers and artists I admire (sorry, Kim Addonizio), though hopefully my high-pitched "Good thank you how are you I love your work" sounded fairly sane.

He asked me how I was, guys.

Some years later, when 1Q84 was first released in the US, Green Apple Books here in my hometown of San Francisco had a midnight release. I wasn't sure what the turnout would be (it was a weeknight, after all, and not Harry Potter), but the store was packed. Sure, one could argue it was a hipster nightmare (think skinny jeans and plaid instead of wizard costumes), but it was exciting to see so many people excited for a book. That excitement is as much a part of the culture of literature as the artist toiling in obscurity. 

On Muni in the early hours of the morning with my brand-new book.

That's what I love about Murakami. The excitement is genuine, not just about celebrity. There is excitement in being pulled into his richly imagined worlds. An excitement that is tempered with reflection on the quirkiness and sameness that make us human, with pausing to look up a musical or literary reference. Maybe Murakami will win another year; maybe he won't. But whether he does or not, we've got quite the library to read and re-read.

Tales Told of GOB and Michael: Favorite Fictional Siblings

The Bluth brothers' battles produce considerably less structural damage.

I finally saw The Avengers a few weekends ago and became an obsessed fangirl, so I had to watch Thor. In Thor, Loki, already dealing with Scar/Mufasa jealousy issues with his brother, is even more shaken by the revelation that he's adopted, which basically goes like this: "Your birth father is our lifelong enemy and I actually stole you as a baby in case I needed you for diplomatic reasons in the future. You probably have some questions, but I'm going into comatose state now." Loki handles this news really, really badly (scheming to win his adopted father's love by killing his birth father and also genocide, attempting suicide, getting in way over his head with brutal alien species the Chitari, trying to subjugate all of humanity, etc) but despite everything, you kinda hope brothers-turned-enemies Thor and Loki can work it out. Maybe they can have a sit-down with King Arthur and Sir Kay, although Loki reeeeeally does not seem interested in the Sir Kay "know what I'll just ride on my adopted brother's coattails and provide comic relief" route right now.

Really this is just an excuse for me to ramble about my favorite fake siblings, from the inseparable to the murderous.

Arrested Development - the Bluth children

GOB, Michael, Lindsay, and Buster.

He may be the patriarch of a douchey Orange County family and not the king of Asgard, but George Bluth, Sr. definitely one-ups Odin. Not only does he encourage sibling rivalry between enthusiastic but not terribly bright or adored firstborn George Bluth, Jr. (a.k.a. GOB) and perennially exasperated, sole competent sibling Michael, but he turns their forced childhood fights into a successful line of underground videos. The lone sister is vain, shallow Lindsay, who, just like Margot Tenenbaum of The Royal Tenenbaums, is blonde, adopted (spoiler), and marries a much older crunchy doctor-type to rebel (I guess that's just what you do when you're the blonde only daughter of a dysfunctional wealthy family). Youngest child Buster is the indulged baby of the family, despite being well into his thirties. Even with all their differences and clashes involving telenovela stars and loose seals, they share a bond that can only be forged by the shared childhood terror of your father repeatedly throwing a prosthetic arm at you. 

Pride and Prejudice - Jane and Elizabeth Bennet

Keira Knightley & Rosamund Pike in the 2005 film.

Poor Michael Bluth has no confidant for dealing with his crazy siblings, but at least eldest Bennet sisters Elizabeth and Jane have each other to help weather the storm that is their frantic, marriage-obsessed household. They're the responsible, intelligent counterpart to their two youngest sisters: the boy-crazy, impulsive Lydia and Kitty. (No1curr about middle child Mary.) Although Jane is the eldest, her kindness and shyness make her vulnerable, and Elizabeth is just as protective of her as Mr. Darcy is of his guileless BFF Mr. Bingley. Darcy's and Elizabeth's desires to protect their own halves of the adorable baby bunny coupling that is Bingley and Jane end up putting them even more at odds than they were before. Fortunately, after some pride/prejudice/oops-forgot-to-tell-you-that-one-guy's-a-pederast stumbles, Darcy and Elizabeth come to an understanding, the BFFs become brothers-in-law, and the eldest Misses Bennet get to leave crazytown.

The Virgin Suicides - the Lisbon sisters

The sisters in the Sophia Coppola film.

The doomed, dreamy Lisbon sisters linger in the minds of their unnamed admirers long after their deaths (spoiler alert?), just as they linger in the minds of readers of Jeffrey Eugenides's debut novel long after the book is finished. Therese, Mary, Bonnie, Lux, and Cecilia are all different in temperament and interests, but form one sisterly mass. While the girls' bond comes in part from the shared social isolation imposed by their awkward, conservative parents, even when out of the house the sisters show little desire to separate themselves. Among the upheaval of the 70s and the repression of their home life, the sisters have created their own little world.

After Dark - Mari and Eri Asai

Younger sister Mari is the serious student. Older sister Eri is the beautiful model. But now Eri, depressed and addicted to pills, has fallen into a stupor and rarely leaves her bed. To escape the stifling atmosphere at home, Mari spends her nights drinking coffee and reading at a Tokyo Denny's. On one of these nights, she encounters an acquaintance from her and her sister's past, and is soon pulled into an all-night adventure involving a retired female wrestler and a human trafficking ring. But the most difficult thing Mari has to do is get past the years of resentment and her reflexive withdrawal to remember and reconnect with a big sister who would protect her in darkness.

Geek Love - the Binewski siblings

The Lisbon siblings' isolation has nothing on the Binewskis'. The children of this family are children, yes, but they're also products: bred specifically for the freak show at their parents' traveling carnival. They don't attend school, and besides a few carnival employees, they have no companions other than each other. The siblings are charismatic and flippered Arty, conjoined twins Electra and Iphigenia, hunchbacked albino dwarf Oly, and powerfully psychic but gentle Chick. Their sequestered lives continue without change until Arty stumbles upon a business venture far more lucrative than a carnival: a cult. As Arty's megalomaniac tendencies run further out of control, the siblings' close-knit bonds turn to tragedies of passion and jealousy. 

Firefly - Simon and River Tam

Sean Maher as Simon and Summer Glau as River.

Sure, River Tam might be deadly and prone to erratic fits and will spy on you having sex, but she's still a way less annoying Joss Whedon younger sibling than Dawn Summers. Hell, Avengers' Loki's a less annoying Joss Whedon younger sibling than Dawn Summers, and he killed Agent Coulson and kept the Avengers so busy that Thor didn't even have time to bang Natalie Portman on his return trip to Earth. In cult classic series Firefly, young doctor Simon Tam boards spaceship Serenity with a strange box - which turns out to hold the naked body of a young woman in stasis. The young woman is his sister, River, who has had her brain torn apart by the government to make her into a psychic assassin. Extremely (extremely extremely) devoted Simon has risked everything to rescue her, and now the brother and sister are on the run, hiding out on Serenity. By turns endearing, terrifying, and kick-ass ("I can kill you with my brain"), River is eventually embraced by the rest of the crew.

Finnegans Wake - Shem and Shaun

Signed cover page of a published excerpt. Joyce sucks at J's.

Can you really call them - or anyone in James Joyce's Finnegans Wake - characters? They're more...concepts...and the figures mostly known as Shem and Shaun are the ultimate concept of the two brothers: forever opposites and forever united. The sons of two other figures in the book, Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker and Anna Livia Plurabelle, Shaun is the "good" conformist brother and Shem is the screw-up troublemaker. They are a seemingly endless list of opposing but eternally connected brothers: Cain and Abel, Esau and Jacob, and alcoholic writer James Joyce and his own straighter arrow brother Stanislaus. Michael Bluth and Thor are definitely Shauns, and GOB and Loki are definitely Shems. Which are you?

Four Adaptations I'd Like to See (If Done Right)

Still in mourning over the demise of my romcom-ready love-hate relationship with the Bradley Cooper Paradise Lost movie, I at least have Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby to look forward to. Sure, there are some concerns (Why is Daisy so much younger than Gatsby? Will the 3D be used to make Myrtle's mangled body come flying right toward us?), but sometimes the projects you have concerns about turn out the best, like how everyone was raising eyebrows over Christopher Nolan casting pretty boy Heath Ledger as the Joker and then Ledger was iconic. And you know Luhrmann can nail the decadent party scenes.

Literary adaptations are a tricky thing. If it's a novel and not a short story that's being adapted, some aspects will have to be whittled down or cut. And if it's a beloved novel, there will be asshole fans like me who will probably only be satisfied if the movie turns out exactly as we had pictured in our head.

Anyway, here are four movies I would totally produce/bankroll if I won a reasonably large lottery. Hopefully they'd avoid becoming an entry in a sequel to Nathan Rabin's My Year of Flops (or at least make the "secret success" or balls-out "fiasco" categories).

Oryx and Crake, Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood has quite the oeuvre to choose from, but I think 2003's Oryx and Crake would translate best to the big screen. This is the post-apocalyptic story of Snowman aka Jimmy, whose best friend Crake and their lover Oryx have created a brave new world and left him alone with it. Through flashbacks, we learn how the desolate Earth reached this point. Atwood's alternative near-future of corporation-run cities and execution-themed reality TV shows feels eerily real and, along with the other timeline's wreckage-scattered silent beaches, would make for a compelling movie setting. My biggest concern here would be the handling of Oryx's character. There's how Jimmy sees her, but there's also the between-the-lines Oryx, the survivor of childhood exploitation with her defiant stare. This project would need a director and actress who can see Oryx as more than just "tragic love interest."

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle or Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, Haruki Murakami

My dream is for David Lynch to take one of these novels on. This is probably the most unlikely to happen of all my dream projects, but hear me out. Yes, Murakami novels tend towards the unwieldy, Lynchs' fanbase is smaller than studios would like, and both artists have their own very strong motifs and points of view, but I think there could be magic here. They both tend towards magical realism, borrow from genre, utilize music, are masters of atmosphere, and deftly juggle multiple planes of reality in a single work. Stylish, controlled scenes like the infamous Winkie's nightmare in Mulholland Dr. remind me of Murakami's ability to present bizarre situations in a matter-of-fact way. And they both have a thing for mysterious nightclubs. With their noirish mystery and range of visuals, I think The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle or Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World are best suited to film - and to Lynch in particular.

Notre-Dame de Paris/The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Victor Hugo

I've written about my favorite novel that is so not an appropriate source for a Disney movie before. But even non-Disney attempts at filming this novel have stumbled, generally getting caught up in the costumes and melodrama (the lucky French have a record-breaking RENTish stage musical of it, however). Notre-Dame de Paris needs a filmmaker who understands the characters, their inter-connectivity, and their society. 1400s Paris is depicted by Hugo as a dirty, dog-eat-dog world - it's a tense, dangerous time for anyone who stands out. Frollo, Quasimodo, and Esmeralda are all suspected of being the devil at some point by a paranoid, lynch-happy populace, and they all experience the grand Notre-Dame cathedral as both safe fortress and isolating prison. It's a large story of humanity and a society in transition, and also a small story of makeshift families that almost make it, but ultimately fall apart. BTW, Phoebus and Fleur-de-Lys would be perfect dinner party friends for Tom and Daisy.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain

I think the biggest roadblock with adapting this novel, even moreso than concerns about race, is that it gets weird. Really weird. We all know about the raft and slavery thing, but remember the whole part with the King and the Duke? Seriously, that goes on forever. And then once Huck finds Jim, Tom shows up, and Tom's antics bring the process of freeing Jim to a dehumanizing crawl. I think these issues can only really be tackled by a screenwriter and director who get the tone of the piece and are able to be true to that without making a ten-hour long movie. Huckleberry Finn is a satire, but also very, very dark. Most adaptations try to gloss over the serious child abuse in the beginning and play the story up as a feel-good old-timey adventure, which works okayish until you get to con men putting on bizarre nudie shows. These traveling scoundrels were kind of the ShamWow guys of their time, and some of the then-topical humor just doesn't translate to contemporary audiences. All is not lost, we just need someone who can contextualize Twain's tour of the South appropriately and present with their own vision what Twain was trying to say - something beyond "omg white boy has adventure!!!"

Rain, Sex, and Records: Norwegian Wood in Film

The first change I noticed about the long-awaited film adaptation of Haruki Murakami's beloved novel Norwegian Wood was, well, the first seconds of the movie. The novel opens with our narrator at age 37, landing in dreary weather at a German airport for one of what we sense has been a monotonous string of business trips. Then an instrumental version of the Beatles' odd, melancholy "Norwegian Wood" begins to play, and our narrator drifts back in time to that fabled year of '69.

Of course I am not implying that a good movie adaptation necessarily sticks to the book verbatim. And in film, this opening might have come off as a bit cliched, or aging the actor playing Toru Wantanabe, our protagonist, from 19 to 37, might have come off as inauthentic. But I mention this difference between book and film because I feel like sticking to this framing device might have made this somewhat disjointed retelling feel a bit more grounded.

Murakami's Norwegian Wood is the story of Toru, a college student newly transplanted to Tokyo, and his love for Naoko, the girlfriend of his childhood friend Kizuki, who committed suicide. When Naoko and Toru reunite, they seem to be newly discovered soul mates, but Naoko's crippling depression soon greatly complicates matters, as does Toru's introduction to sparkling, sexually frank Midori. Toru is soon caught between two worlds: Naoko in her remote but gorgeous rural sanitarium, and Midori in vibrant, changing Tokyo.

Film adaptations of novels are almost always going to have cut content; that's just the reality of the medium and commercial movie lengths. However, I didn't feel like this adaptation by director and writer Ahn Hung Tran always cut and kept wisely. We get lots of beautiful, long shots of nature and the dim light of city apartments on rainy days - which set the tone perfectly - but there are also scenes that feel randomly inserted (Toru being helped by old hippies after a workplace accident, a go-nowhere plot point with Midori's dad) and could have been sacrificed, their time put to better use by letting us get a fuller sense of these characters and their relationships. The character of Reiko, an older musician who is Naoko's caring, wry sanitarium roommate, is especially shortchanged. I was most saddened with the ruthless paring down of a scene that occurs near the end: what was in the novel a multi-layered scene of two people connecting over loss and gathering the strength to move on becomes a rote sex act with little explanation (and no 60's acoustic guitar strumming!) in the movie. Even in the equally whittled-down context, the scene makes little sense.

But this isn't to say I hated the movie. It is gorgeous, and as I mentioned, Tran captures the mood beautifully.  The true bleakness of depression is tangible here, as is the majesty of the hills and woods surrounding the rural clinic. It's hard to imagine a more breathtaking aerial shot of a blow job performed against a barren snowy landscape, and I say that sans snark. Rinko Kikuchi, who plays Naoko, brings the swirling, overwhelming emotions of depression to the screen with great authenticity. This character - pensive, secretive, sweet, intelligent, and often on the verge of a breakdown - is a tough role to do well, and Kikuchi (Oscar-nominated for 2006's Babel) excels.

In the end, the movie generally captures Murakami's story: in a turbulent time, a young man moves from a beautiful but tragic past to a more hopeful but uncertain future. Perhaps I am so critical because I love the book so much. The friend I saw the movie with, who is also a fan of Norwegian Wood, had a similar reaction. I'm not sure what someone who hasn't read the novel would make of this jumble of lovely scenes. The "look" and feeling of the story is there, but disjointed editing and too-deep cuts to character development hinder this adaptation from being the powerful film it could be. I guess I'll have to hold out hope for the perfect David Lynch adaptation of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle that I've produced in my head.