My latest “Adapt This” column for IFC recommends the 2008 graphic novel Bluesman, which is one of those amazing stories that manages to fly under the radar for most readers. It’s a compelling, heart-wrenching book about an African-American blues musician in the late 1920s who’s accused of a crime he didn’t commit, and must flee across Arkansas.
The book is unique for a number of reasons, including a few I get into in this excerpt from the column:
Bluesman combines the most compelling elements of a period piece set in the deep South in the heat of vicious segregation with a chase story that has its main character fleeing across the state via foot, truck, and train. The story is structured in three sections of four chapters each — like a traditional 12-bar blues song — which also lends itself nicely to a television miniseries format.
Ideally, an adaptation of Bluesman would take the form of a cable miniseries, able to plumb the racially heated depths of that time in American history, and refrain from pulling any punches with the realities of what a black man trekking across the state was likely to encounter. Set the entire tale against a soundtrack of classic blues songs of the era, and you’ll have a road-trip story unlike any other.
Last night, I got an early look at “The Dictator,” the new film from “Borat” star Sacha Baron Cohen. I went into the film feeling like I was taking one for the team, but I came out of it pleasantly surprised by what I’d seen.
Here’s an excerpt from my review:
I admit it, I wasn’t expecting to enjoy The Dictator, Sacha Baron Cohen’s new film in which he plays a dimwitted despot who finds himself down and out in New York City.
It was somewhere around the halfway mark in his 2006 film Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan that I fell out of love with Cohen’s shtick, in which he turns himself into a caricature of cultural stereotypes, puts real people into awkward situations, and then edits these encounters together into a semi-coherent narrative. He followed the same mockumentary-style formula with 2009′s Bruno, in which he pretends to be a flamboyant Austrian fashion designer, and early press for The Dictator made it seem as if it would be more of the same, with Cohen playing a Muammar Gaddafi-like tyrant from a fictional North African nation.
But lo and behold, I did enjoy The Dictator, which mines its comedy from the film’s talented cast instead of the reactions of people he pranks, and feels like a very different film than what we’ve come to expect from Cohen.
The film is actually very, very funny — though it feels like it will find more success in the home video market than at the theater. Here’s a clip that features some segments from one of my favorite scenes in the film:
Rick Marshall is a full-time journalist, professional geek, occasional photographer, indentured servant to incestuous cats, unwilling party host, speedy talker, and obsessive story collector. This is his personal blog.
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My latest “Adapt This” column for IFC recommends the 2008 graphic novel Bluesman, which is one of those amazing stories that manages to fly under the radar for most readers. It’s a compelling, heart-wrenching book about an African-American blues musician in the late 1920s who’s accused of a crime he didn’t commit, and must flee across Arkansas.
