Following up their acclaimed debut, BEING JOHN MALKOVICH, screenwriter Charlie Kaufman and director Spike Jonze are back to metaphysical moviemaking with ADAPTATION. The film stars... more
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Adaptation [2003]
Perhaps the cleverest Hollywood movie of its generation, Adaptation is a loose adaptation
... more
of Susan Orlean's novelistic non-fiction book The Orchid Thief. It is also a unique exercise in autobiographical fantasy on the part of screenwriter Charles Kaufm...
Adaptation [2003]
Perhaps the cleverest Hollywood movie of its generation, Adaptation is a loose adaptation
... more
of Susan Orlean's novelistic non-fiction book The Orchid Thief. It is also a unique exercise in autobiographical fantasy on the part of screenwriter Charles Kaufm...
Advantages: funny, touching, cleer Disadvantages: not for the conventional-minded
Adaptation is presently one of my top favourite films of all time. This is largely due to Charlie Kaufman's superb and inventive screenplay, but also due to Spike Jonze's superb and naturalistic direction, which does sound justice to the outrageously absurd nature of the movie.
From the writer of Being John Malkovich and the late Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Adaptation is a film with a certain surrealism and self referential humour, which ... ...projects.
The script to Adaptation is essentially an auto-biography about the process of writing the script itself. I will explain. Charlie Kaufman, in 2002, was commissioned to write a screenplay adaptation of Susan Orleane's novel The Orchid Thief. In this novel (which is itself an autobiography), the orchid thief is "a skinny man with no front teeth", a likeably eccentric character with a tremendous sense of natural vitality. His hobby - to steal ...
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Advantages: great acting Disadvantages: ending is a big let down
~~INTRODUCTION~~ Are you a fan of strange and weird films? If the answer is yes, then you must be familiar with BEING JOHN MALKOVICH, a film written by Charlie Kaufman and directed by Spike Jonze. Guess what both men have teamed up again and this time they have come out with ADAPTATION. If that wasn’t enough, you get double helping of Nicolas Cage as well as the wondering Meryl Streep. Read on to find out if this film is going to be just as eccentric ... ...a step further? ~~THE PLOT~~ What makes anyone think that a story about orchids would make great viewing is beyond me but that is what happened when Charlie Kaufman was asked to write a screenplay for THE ORCHID THIEF, an unremarkable non-fiction novel written by Susan Orlean in 1999. The novel is about an eccentric orchid hunter named John Laroche and his search for the quasi-mythical orchid called 'ghost orchid'. Actually this guy is a thief as ...
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Advantages: Well-acted, well-directed Disadvantages: Less than the sum of its parts
...Laroche. The third is an adaptation of that book into an action film with Charlie and Donald as the stars. It takes a while to get used to skipping between plot threads and film styles and the film feels disjointed at times. There are also some heavy-handed references to adaptation (read mutation), with regard to adapting a book to a film , a single personality to two or one type of flower into many.
Each plot thread runs at a consistent pace in ... ...rhythm and left me feeling alienated from the on-screen action. It became increasingly difficult to disentangle the plot strands in my mind, leaving me with even less idea what was going on than before. The mish-mash of ideas and film styles was also confusing. It conveyed Kaufman’s state of mind and rising panic perfectly, but once more distanced the audience from the characters.
Nicolas Cage plays the fat, balding, sweaty twins Charlie and ...
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Advantages: Great Acting, Original Disadvantages: Suffers from weak final act
...do not know. In essence Adaptation is a surreal movie about writers block…..and flowers.
It shouldn’t surprise you that this movie comes from the minds of Charlie Kaufman and Spike Jonze. Their previous collaboration was Being John Malkovich, which is probably one of the most original and twisted movies I’ve ever seen. Adaptation is nowhere near as funny as that film but it’s probably a lot smarter. This starts as a regular kind of plot driven movie ... ...But then when you look back you wonder if this was an ending set in reality or just the imagination of a writer trying to end his script.
Adaptation is one of the most interesting and original movies I’ve seen in years. I would definitely recommend it to anyone. ...
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Advantages: Looks Good Disadvantages: Way too clever for me
...a film about a book. Adaptation is from the same brain that created Being John Malkovic, and it has a very similar feel to it. If you didn’t like Being John Malkovic you won’t like this.
The film is very “post-modernist” in tone. It deals with Charlie Kaufman(played by Nick Cage) he is commissioned to write a film based on a book by Susan Orlean(Meryl Streep). The book called The Orchid Thief and is a very unpromising basis ... ...write. Basically the book centres on an Orchid Thief who steals rare Orchids. The central characters are Charlie Kaufman and his twin brother Donald, both obviously played by Nick Cage. Charlie is nervous and neurotic with an endless internal dialogue going on inside his head. Donald is smoother and more confident. I think that they are really supposed to represent different aspects of the same person. Whether they are different personas of the same ...
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Actor(s): Nicolas Cage, Meryl Streep, Chris Cooper, Tilda Swinton, Judy Greer, Brian Cox, Brian Cox, Ron Livingston, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Curtis Hanson, Cara Seymour, John Cusack, John Malkovich, Catherine Keener, John Cusack
Director(s): Spike Jonze
Genre: Drama
Classification: 15 years and over
Production Year: 2002
Running Time: 1 hour 50 minutes
Video Category: Feature Film
Country Of Origin: United States of America
Plot: A screenwriter with no self-belief and a freeloading twin brother, struggles with his latest commission and the original author.
Release details
DVD Region: Region 2 (Europe)
Studio(s): SONY PICTURES HOME ENTERTAINMENT; CINRAM LOGISTICS
Release date: 04/08/2003
No of Discs: 1
Catalogue No: CDR 32707
Barcode: 5035822270732
Composer: Carter Burwell
Screenwriter: Charlie Kaufman, Jonathan Demme
Executive Producer: Charlie Kaufman
Music: Carter Burwell
Producer: Jonathan Demme
Author: Susan Orlean
Languages
Main Language: English
Subtitle Language: English, Hindi, Italian
Hearing Impaired Language: English
Technical information
Special Features: Featurette, Trailers
Aspect Ratio: 1.85 Wide Screen
Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1
Dubbing Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1 English
Award information
OSCAR: Best Actor In A Supporting Role 2003 (Chris Cooper)
DVD Description
Following up their acclaimed debut, BEING JOHN MALKOVICH, screenwriter Charlie Kaufman and director Spike Jonze are back to metaphysical moviemaking with ADAPTATION. The film stars Nicolas Cage as both Charlie Kaufman and his fictionalized identical twin brother Donald. While the boisterous Donald freeloads off his sibling and works on a serial-killer movie script, Charlie is tormented by both his own army of neuroses and his new project, adapting Susan Orlean's book THE ORCHID THIEF into a screenplay. As Charlie struggles to shape the nonfiction novel into a film, he begins writing himself into the story of Orlean (Meryl Streep), a sad-eyed journalist, and her subject, renegade Florida flower expert John Laroche (Chris Cooper). The resulting tale extends far beyond the scope of the book, stretching from Hollywood to New York to...Hollywood four billion years ago. Equally as inventive as BEING JOHN MALKOVICH, ADAPTATION revels in its gloriously absurd premise. Kaufman and Jonze skillfully sidestep the pitfalls of such a seemingly self-indulgent project, creating a multilayered film that focuses on the writing process as well as the nature of beauty, the beauty of nature, and dozens of other significant themes. Cage makes a stunning return to pre-Bruckheimer form in the roles of the Kaufman brothers, giving their identical appearances completely different personalities and making them believable to boot. Meanwhile, the consistently excellent Streep and the often underrated Cooper are perfectly matched as Orlean and Laroche. Even the less central roles are played by great actors--Brian Cox, Tilda Swinton, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Ron Livingston appear as supporting characters. Careening wildly between the hilarious, the ridiculous, and the poignant, Kaufman and Jonze's ADAPTATION is another fine example of their bravura yet sincere style of cinema.
"...[Featuring] Nicolas Cage in his lightest, loosest, best performance since MOONSTRUCK....ADAPTATION demonstrates that Kaufman, the real Charlie Kaufman, has a rare and really weird talent....The guy is fun..." (Entertainment Weekly, p.65-6, 06/12/2002)
"...The boldest and most imaginative studio film of the year..." (Los Angeles Times, p.C1, 06/12/2002)
"...Mr. Cage and Mr. Jonze share a casual, daredevil sensibility, and the two of them -- or should I say the three of them? -- pull off one of the most amazing technical stunts in recent film history..." (New York Times, p.E1, 06/12/2002)
"...ADAPTATION is life-affirming..." (Premiere, p.18-19, 01/01/2003)
"...Few scripts toss more challenging balls in the air, and Jonze juggles them all with artful, light-stepping ease. It's magic..." (Rolling Stone, p.105, 12/12/2002)
"...It has all the pleasing confusion of an optical illusion....A dizzying, unique work..." (Total Film, p.102, 01/03/2003)
"...Cage gives one of his best performances..." (USA Today, p.7E, 06/12/2002)
"...Every bit as clever and surprising as MALKOVICH....Streep gives a quietly alert performance that permits emotional revelation in well-judged stages..." (Variety, p.25-8, 11/11/2002)
