Okay, ultimate movie question:
What movie are you dying to see?
I mean, anything. A book you love that has never been adapted. Your favorite actor in a role that defies the way they are typically cast. A fake movie that seemed like it would be better than the real movie it was created for. What is your ideal film that doesn’t already exist, however you define that?
Me? I want a film that goes with “Moviola,” by composer John Barry. This is the track from his collection of the same name [Amazon US | Amazon CA | Amazon UK | Apple Music US | Apple Music CA | Apple Music UK], which gathers together the absolutely iconic film themes he has written, such as those for Out of Africa and Midnight Cowboy. (I swear that I can hear the prairie grass swaying in the wind in his music for Dances with Wolves. I can hear the sunlight and the big sky.) “Moviola” is the music Barry wrote for the Ultimate Movie in his mind: it is sweeping and grand, full of huge emotion and delicate intimacy at the same time:
I don’t care what sort of story goes with this music, whether it’s a historical murder mystery or a contemporary romantic drama or a futuristic science-fiction action adventure: I want to meet the people and see their story that goes with this.
Your turn…
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Mostly, I want to see film versions of all the great musicals and plays I missed because of the pandemic. But I’d also be curious to see how Noah Hawley would adapt Angels in America into a movie. It might be a complete trainwreck, but it would be a fascinating trainwreck.
And as an urban fantasy geek, I’d like to see an adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere that actually follows his original scripts, but that would probably have to be a TV series instead of a movie.
Neverwhere was a TV series!
But maybe you didn’t like that?
Neverwhere was a very entertaining TV series, but it was only loosely connected to the scripts Neil Gaiman wrote. He got so frustrated—especially after the Great Beast of London showed up on set and turned out to be a big cow—that he adapted it into a novel, just to be sure there was a record of the story he originally had in mind.
Yes, I thought maybe this is kinda what you were referring to…
There are so many books and graphic novels and musicals I’d love to see turned into (good) movie adaptations. But mostly, tonight, I’m thinking of this Carl Sagan clip:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6ugFcwsgpE
“Our remote descendants, safely arrayed on many worlds throughout the solar system and beyond, will be unified by their common heritage, by their regard for their home planet, and by the knowledge that, whatever other life may be, the only humans in all the universe come from Earth. They will gaze up and strain to find the blue dot in their skies… They will marvel at how vulnerable the repository of all our potential once was, how perilous our infancy, how humble our beginnings, how many rivers we had to cross before we found our way.”
I want so desperately to time-travel—and possibly timeline-jump—to the point where Sagan’s brave optimism has proven right and all of this has come true. And then I want to see the epic documentary film about how, at last, we made it.
Ah, so about that fiction project I just alluded to in response to another of your comments… 😉 </cryptic>
When and if our little planet is found by others, they will view our ruins and our moldering films and videos and watch slack-jawed (their alien version of same) as we kill, burn, pollute, waste, and utterly trash the planet and ourselves. And even as it becomes clear we could not stop ourselves despite all the warning signs, perhaps our example will save others and their fragile “spaceship Earth.”
I fear you’re right. I hope you’re wrong.
It’s a big universe. Somewhere out there, SOME species must be getting it right. It’s a comforting thought.
I hope you’re right. WE may even be getting it right–in another universe in the multiverse.
Where is that cinema shown in the top picture?
It’s not my photo, but I do recognize the place: It’s Picturehouse Central in London.