"adaptation"

Frank Pavich’s documentary, “Jodorowsky’s Dune,” tells the remarkable story of director Alejandro Jodorowsky’s failure to make an adaptation of the sci-fi classic, “Dune.” But it’s also about the eternal conflict between art and commerce in Hollywood, and what can happen when an artist’s uncompromising vision of a film causes those opposing forces to collide.  In the end, what was to be Jodorowsky’s crowning achievement instead became a heartbreaking episode that truncated his career as a director.  The director and his producing partner, Michel Seydoux, had secured the rights to Frank Herbert’s wildly popular book and raised about $10 million to produce it. Jodorowsky was ecstatic, even manic. He scoured Europe for the finest artists to visualize the narrative he had pouring out of his mind. Every character, costume, spaceship, and set was meticulously designed and catalogued.

Continuing our series comparing the greatest actors in the world, past and present, we come to a pair of forever-young superstars. Both are considered potent sex symbols to this day, despite their age or ability to breathe. Why Dean and Depp? Both are or were considered iconoclasts. Both were called rebels, and could be considered so in their on-screen personas. Both had explosive starts to their careers, becoming teen heartthrobs after being catapulted to stardom virtually overnight. And both exuded that smoldering, mysterious cool that makes men jealous and ladies swoon. So which one is the shiniest superstar? Which one will take home the Best Movies by Farr “Hunkiest Heartthrob” trophy? Let’s find out.

Though the celebratory pomp won't literally explode (with a 21-cannon salute!) until her "Official" birthday in June, it’s today that Queen Elizabeth II actually turns 90, and she shows no signs of slowing down. Her Majesty still rides horses, carries out Investitures (those big ceremonies where diplomats and Rolling Stone singers become Knights), and brightens over 400 engagements each year with her little-legged corgis and big hats. 

Like the old saying goes, art imitates life. Before the women’s movement changed the landscape forever in the mid-late sixties, most Hollywood films limited women to playing “traditional” roles of housewife and mother.

No surprise then that so many movies feature couples tying the knot, for better or for worse. From acknowledged classics like “Gone with the Wind”(1939), “The Philadelphia Story” (1940), and “The Sound of Music” (1966), to more recent crowd pleasers like “Meet the Parents” (2000) and “Mamma Mia” (2008), a wedding always features in the plot.

With families brought together for the holidays, we’re naturally drawn to evergreen movies that light up a room, the house, and the season, their very familiarity part of the aura of comfort and joy. These movies are the favorites we love to gather around, which only get better with repeat viewings.

An opening scene of a movie is like a cinematic thermometer. You take a movie’s temperature by that first scene. It holds you, intrigues you, grabs you — or it doesn’t. Though it’s true that plenty of great movies take their time building up our involvement, obviously they can’t take too long. Then there are those others that start off with a bang. It’s this latter group we’re celebrating today. Here are fifteen of our favorite movie openers, covering seven decades of filmmaking:  

The movie’s interest in itself is not as self-serving as it might seem. How these magical and mysterious creations come into being is a subject that fascinates audiences as well as filmmakers, and we are endlessly interested in what goes on behind the camera.

Movies with similar titles often show up next to each other on the shelf, or line up in a search, but are usually very different animals—animals you don’t want to get mixed up.