#Susan Shilliday

[movie-titlecards]

Legends of the Fall (1994)

My rating: 3/10

Mostly dull and rather silly, but what really makes it a chore to watch are the occasional bouts of "noble savage" type racial stereotypes. Brad Pitt is very pretty, yes, but surely there are better movies to ogle him in.

[adamwatchesmovies]

A Wrinkle in Time (2003)

While I didn't enjoy this film, that doesn't mean you won't. No matter what I say, the people involved in this project did it: they actually made a movie. That's something to be applauded. With that established...

Between the 2018 big-budget film adaptation of A Wrinkle in Time and the 2003 made-for-TV version… you’d be better off reading the novel by Madeleine L’Engle. This is the better of the two adaptations but you’ve got to sift through horrendous special effects, unconvincing performances, many plot holes and a frustrating climax to see the source material shine through.

Following the mysterious disappearance of her father (Chris Potter), Meg Murry (Katie Stuart) struggles at school and with her inner thoughts. When three strange women, Mrs. Whatsit (Alfre Woodard), Mrs. Who (Alison Elliot) and Mrs. Which (Kate Nelligan) summon Meg, her telepathic, genius-level little brother Charles Wallace (David Dorfman) and their new friend Calvin O’Keefe (Gregory Smith) are sent on a mission to rescue Dr. Murry. In the process, they oppose an embodiment of evil known as the Black Thing. Though Charles Wallace is the rare person who can stand up to the sinister force, his sister is the one who will play a key role in this battle.

Conceptually, there’s plenty to like. Most YA novel adaptations feature a seemingly ordinary child who is revealed to be anything but ordinary. Here, Charles Wallace is the “chosen one” but he's so young and impressionable his normal sister becomes the more active character. Meg is relatable. She’s filled with self-doubt and feels inadequate compared to her brother. She doesn’t feel pretty is frustrated by a world that doesn’t understand her and is still reeling from her father's disappearance. Katie Stuart is ok in the role. Not spectacular but usually fine.

The troubles begin as soon as the three guardian angels/witches enter. After bringing the children to a fantastical world, Mrs. Whatsit transforms into a winged centaur-like creature. The special effect is so terrible it’s impossible to ignore. I don’t like harping on special effects. Ultimately, the writing, story and performances make a movie. The eye candy is extra but someone should’ve said something. If you're still hesitant to call this take on A Wrinkle in Time bad at this point, just wait. While no other visuals look quite as awful as that nightmare beast, none of what follows looks or feels quite right. The story is rushed and besides Meg, no one receives the characterization needed for you to latch onto and love them. Charles Wallace is bullied by other children because he refuses (at least at the beginning of the film) to speak to anyone outside his family. Why does his mother (Sarah-Jane Redmond) still send him to a normal school? We’re told The Black Thing is a threat to the entire galaxy… but for the most part, the three children battle it on their own? What are the three ladies doing in the meantime? I'm almost certain the four-hour miniseries cut fixes many of these issues. As-is, 124 minutes is far too short for the material. Paradoxically, too much of this film’s plot is dedicated to elements that ultimately lead nowhere and are a waste of time. A planet with Wookie-like creatures and the aforementioned flying beast don’t serve much of a purpose in the grand scheme of things. They certainly don’t give the people watching much of a spectacle.

You can see why someone green-lit this production. There’s a gem of an idea at its core. At one point, our heroes travel to the planet Camazotz, whose people are forced into a conformist society controlled by IT/The Black Thing. Everywhere, there’s a certain rhythmic noise. It’s the bouncing of basketballs, the tapping of fingers on the desk, the footsteps of the people IT subjugates. The evil's suffocating control is brilliantly done. In terms of what you can look forward to, there's little else. A Wrinkle in Time simply isn’t well translated to the screen. The urgency we should be feeling during the climax is absent. This makes you realize how lacklustre the performances are and how thin your patience is getting. If I never hear someone yell “Charles Wallace!” again, it’ll be too soon. You find it hard to care about anything despite the promising beginning.

Most hilariously, the people at Disney Marketing knew they had a hard-sell on their hands, which is why the image of a castle and a pegasus (neither of which appear in the movie) are plastered all over the DVD. Even if you go in with low standards and understand the limitations of a made-for-TV movie, 2003’s A Wrinkle in Time disappoints. (On DVD, December 27, 2019)

[nowshowingnz]

Movie Review - Legends of the Fall (1994)

Movie Review – Legends of the Fall (1994)

Image Source

IMDb Rating: 7.5/10

R | 2h 13min | Drama, Romance | 13 Jan 1995 (Canada) | Movie

Metacritic: 45/100

Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 57% Rotten (Critic reviews) | 87% Fresh (Audience reviews)

Director: Edward Zwick

Writer: Susan Shilliday, William D. Wittliff, Jim Harrison

Stars: Brad Pitt, Anthony Hopkins, Aidan Quinn

Movie Tagline: ��He was a rock they broke��

[jessekg]

Behind the religious controversy and unfilmable status of A Wrinkle in Time

Madeleine L'Engle received 26 rejection letters before she could get A Wrinkle in Time published. In 1962, Farrar, Straus & Giroux published the difficult-to-categorize book, which blends science, religion and fantasy to tell the story of Meg Murray and her quest through time and space to find her missing scientist father.

But that was just the beginning of the struggle that L'Engle and her book faced, as A Wrinkle In Time has been banned or "challenged" in certain American schools, churches and libraries every decade since it was first published. In fact, the American Library Association listed it at No. 23 of the 100 most-challenged books of 1990-99, and again for 2000-09, where it came in at No. 90.

The bans, however, haven't affected sales, and in 56 years, A Wrinkle in Time has never been out of print. As of its 50th anniversary in 2012, it has sold more than 10 million copies worldwide and become a staple on school curricula. Disney has even adapted the story twice: one, a made-for-TV movie released, co-produced by a Canadian company in 2003; the other, a big budget Hollywood film starring Oprah Winfrey and Reese Witherspoon, directed by Ava DuVernay and out today.

Witchcraft, crystal balls and demons

But why has A Wrinkle in Time, a beloved children's classic for so many, faced so much criticism? The challenges vary. Some argue that it's simply too complicated for children while the major criticism has come from religious groups who question the book's mixture of science and religion. Like The Chronicles of Narnia and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the story is deeply rooted in Christian beliefs. L'Engle, a Christian and ecumenist, was the librarian and writer-in-residence at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine in New York, and her book is permeated with biblical quotations and allusions. It also heavily features quantum physics, magic and philosophy — points of contention in many of the challenges, which have claimed that the book promotes witchcraft, crystal balls, demons and New Age thinking (New Age still being in its nascent years when the book was published). Jerry Falwell Ministries have been among the many to claim that it undermines faith and religious beliefs.

Finally I said, 'Ah, the hell with it.' It's great publicity, really.''- Madeleine L'Engle

Although L'Engle has taken the criticism in stride, telling the New York Times in 2001, "It seems people are willing to damn the book without reading it. Nonsense about witchcraft and fantasy. First I felt horror, then anger, and finally I said, 'Ah, the hell with it.' It's great publicity, really.''

One particularly controversial passage places Jesus alongside the likes of Gandhi, the Buddha, da Vinci, Shakespeare and Einstein, to name a few, in a fight against darkness. Critics feared it reduced Christ's divinity, causing L'Engle to address it in her 1980 book Walking on Water, in which she writes, "to be truly Christian means to see Christ everywhere, to know him as all in all. I don't mean to water down my Christianity into a vague kind of universalism, with Buddha and Mohammed all being more or less equal to Jesus — not at all!  But neither do I want to tell God (or my friends) where he can and cannot be seen!"

It's a kind of spiritual pluralism that some have found disagreeable, which has placed A Wrinkle in Time in an odd position: on one hand, it's been called anti-Christian, while on the other, with it's reliance on religious themes, it's been deemed too Christian, pegging L'Engle as a Christian writer. A claim she devoutly refutes.

"No. I am a writer. That's it," she said in a 2000 PBS interview. "No adjectives. The first thing is writing. Christian is secondary."

Filming the 'unfilmable'

It's no wonder it's taken this long to bring the story the big screen. At one point it was called "unfilmable," a dubious honour it shares with Dune (the 1984 film version was panned) and Don Quixote (which has been 19 years in the works). The rights to Wrinkle in Time were purchased in 1979 by Norman Lear, but it wouldn't reach the screen until a widely panned 2003 adaptation that, in order to avoid controversy, stripped the story of its Christian themes. "I expected it to be bad and it is," L'Engle replied when asked if the film met her expectations.

While critics of the book have accused A Wrinkle in Time of denigrating Christian beliefs, removing those beliefs in order to avoid controversy, ironically enough, only serves to denigrate the story itself.

But that hasn't stopped writer Jennifer Lee (Frozen), who was tasked by Disney to write the current adaptation and has veered down that same road of removing the overt Christian references in favour of a less controversial notion of a universal spirituality.

"One of the reasons [the book] had that strong Christian element to it wasn't just because [L'Engle] was Christian, but because she was frustrated with things that needed to be said to her in the world and she wasn't finding a way to say it and she wanted to stay true to her faith," Lee said in an interview. "I think there are a lot of elements of what she wrote that we have progressed as a society and we can move onto the other elements. In a sad way, some of the other elements are more important right now and bigger — sort of this fight of light against darkness."

Reviews for the new Wrinkle in Time film have been mixed, and it currently sits at 43 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes,lending credence to the idea that some stories are so complicated — and controversial — that there is a reason they're deemed unfilmable.

Susan Shilliday, who wrote the script for the 2003 adaptation, says it best. "It's a beloved book," she told the Hollywood Reporter. "And maybe beloved books should never be adapted."

[straightfromamovie]

She was like the water that freezes inside a rock and breaks it apart. It was no more her fault than it is the fault of the water when the rock shatters.

One Stab, Legends of the Fall

[dbcpicturehouse]

Legends of the Fall—

screenplay by Susan Shilliday, William D. Whittliff; directed by Edward Zwick

Fun, always fun, but long.

[sundancearchives]

Creative Advisor Susan Shilliday and director David Riker discuss his screenplay The Girl during the 2007 January Screenwriters Lab. The Girl opened in NYC on Friday and expands to select theatres this week. Photo by Jill Orschel