ATONEMENT is as close to perfection as mere mortals can aspire to. This translation to the screen of the Booker Prize-winning novel by Ian McEwan flawlessly captures the complex and powerful play of emotions that propel the story while annotating it with a visual component that amplifies rather than distracts. The plot hinges on what… Read More »
Michael Hoffman at THE LAST STATION
Idealism and living those ideals in the real world is only one of the intriguing issues that screenwriter/director Michael Hoffman wrestled with in adapting THE LAST STATION from the book by Jay Parini to the screen. When I talked to Michael Hoffman on January 6, 2010, he explained how he used Anton Checkov to get… Read More »
The ATONEMENT of James McAvoy & Joe Wright
The power of words, the questioning of received wisdom, and the reasons behind a recurring porcine motif were all on the table when I talked with James McAvoy and Joe Wright about ATONEMENT on November 28, 2007. They were by turns philosophical and whimsical while discussing how to use naughty words in an elegant film, filming the… Read More »