On April 8, 2009, four individuals from Somalia boarded the cargo vessel Maersk Alabama, marking the first time a U.S.-flagged vessel became subject to an act of piracy in a century. Over the next four days, the drama of the capture played out in real-time for American audiences, as the pirates abandoned the ship aboard its lifeboat with its captain, Richard Phillips (Tom Hanks), as hostage, attempting to make for the coast of Africa…
The time: two years before the Civil War. The place: the deep south. The person: Django (Jamie Foxx), a slave being slow-walked across to auction in Texas. Or at least, he was, until his band is stopped…
Until just six short years ago, Bond films were familiar and comfortable like an old chair, as each iteration tried to out-Goldfinger the previous one. There would be a couple of Bond Girls with ridiculous names; a briefing with Q…
Normally, a ground-up reboot would be seen as a mixed bag. It means that your series has gotten off-track somewhere and needs to be brought back to its roots. Or that the filmmakers have completely run out of ideas and instead have chosen to go back…
It should go without saying that no adaptation is going to please everyone; it’s impossible to encompass all the nuances of one medium across the transition to another. Which makes comparisons not exactly a waste of time but certainly counterproductive…
