Scénarios

Death is always the issue—in life, and in the Western. Joel and Ethan Coen’s The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is a movie of six Western stories. In each, our common destination is approached by a different road. Through each, diverse characters hurry for their final appointment: Oregon Trail-travelers, a gold prospector, a motley crew of stagecoach passengers, a high-plains drifting bank robber, even a singing cowboy. These six stories escort them with a care that either respects, or mocks, the dignity of all.
The film stars Tom Waits, James Franco, Liam Neeson, Tim Bake Nelson and Zoe Kazan and is shot with the harsh grandeur of the classic John Ford westerns.

The Innocence of Memories is an important addition to the oeuvre of Nobel Prize-winning author Orhan Pamuk. Comprised of the screenplay of the acclaimed film by Grant Gee from 2015 (by the same name), a transcript of the author and filmmaker in conversation, and captivating colour stills, it is an essential volume for understanding Pamuk’s work.

Drawing on the themes from Pamuk’s best-selling books, The Museum of Innocence, Istanbul and The Black Book, this book is both an accompaniment to the author’s previous publications and a wonderfully revelatory exploration of Orhan Pamuk’s key ideas about art, love, and memory.

In Directing Herbert White James Franco writes about making a film of Frank Bidart’s poem, Herbert White. Though the main character, Herbert White, is a necrophiliac and a killer, the poem – and the film – are an expression of life’s isolation and loneliness. A poem became a film.

In the rest of book, Franco uses poems to express what he feels about film: about acting; about the actors he admires – James Dean, Marlon Brando, Sean Penn; about the cult of celebrity and his struggles with it; about his teenage years in Palo Alto, and about mortality prompted by the death of his father.

In his highly acclaimed novel Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro (The Remains of the Day) created a remarkable story of love, loss and hidden truths. In it he posed the fundamental question: What makes us human? Now director Mark Romanek (One Hour Photo), writer Alex Garland and DNA Films bring Ishiguro’s hauntingly poignant and emotional story to the screen.

This unsettling black comedy about private passion and public shame is based on Zoe Heller’s acclaimed novel, adapted for the screen by celebrated dramatist Patrick Marber (Closer).

With Venus, Hanif Kureishi turns his piercing gaze onto the pains of old age. Maurice (Peter O’Toole) and Ian (Leslie Phillips) are veteran stage actors whose slow, inevitable decline is disrupted by the arrival in their lives of Ian’s niece Jessie (Jodie Whittaker). While Jessie’s housekeeping skills make for a bone of contention with Ian, Maurice finds himself attracted to her.

Acclaimed film-maker Ang Lee’s concept for his film adaptation of the classic Marvel Comics series, The Hulk, combines all the elements of a blockbuster visual effects-intensive superhero movie with the brooding romance and tragedy of Universal’s classic horror films. In depicting The Hulk as both a superhero and a monster, a wish fulfillment and a nightmare, Lee and his team have stayed true to the early subversive spirit of the character created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, while completely updating The Hulk and projecting it into the dangers and aspirations of contemporary times.

Funny, touching and real, this second collection of Alan Bennett’s classic work for television from the late 1970s and early 1980s is full of fine observations of life as it is lived. Often imitated but never equalled, Bennett’s work is a masterclass in how to write for the small screen and gives as much enjoyment in the reading as it did in the viewing.

The television plays included in this volume are Our Winnie, All Day on the Sands, One Fine Day, Marks, Say Something Happened, Rolling Home and Intensive Care. This volume also contains a new general introduction by Alan Bennett.