One of my favorite films at this year's Philadelphia Film Festival, which is wrapping up now, was the Spanish time-travel thriller Timecrimes. (Yes, yes, I know, all of you saw it months ago at Fantastic Fest, or Sundance, or whatsuch. Bully for you.) We've known for a while that an American remake is in the works, courtesy of United Artists, and having seen the film, it's obvious why -- it's a brilliantly conceived, perfectly high-concept crowdpleaser. And now the remake seems to have revved up in earnest: The Hollywood Reporter says that Children of Men screenwriter Timothy J. Sexton has been hired to write the English-language screenplay.

The biggest pitfall here, as I see it, is that the original film is so simple, almost personal. That's part of its charm. The time travel is a matter of hours, not eons, and the main crisis implicates two guys, not the entire universe (though there are hints of possible larger implications). I hope that Sexton doesn't try to translate the epic scope of Children of Men -- more epic, as I understand it, than the P.D. James novel on which it was based -- to this very different project.

Sexton is also attached to the beleaguered Logan's Run remake, but who knows what's going on with that one.

After watching the stunning, and sadly under appreciated, Children of Men, I was hungry for two things. One, I wanted more movies with Julianne Moore and Clive Owen, as they have great chemistry together, and barely got to show it. Two, I wanted to see more of this world. It's a rich and interesting future landscape, one that is filled with tons of stories that we've never seen. Until now.

SciFi.com reports that the executive producer of Bionic Woman, David Eick, is writing a pilot script for a television series based on P.D. James' science fiction novel (the one that inspired the movie). Eick says: "It's really taking root more in the origins of the novels in that it will focus on the cultural movement in which young people become the society's utter focus." He goes on to make parallels between the obsession with LiLo's crazy tabloid lifestyle, and says: "it's about how, when you don't have a responsibility to the next generation and you're free to do whatever you want, where do you draw the line?"

If the success of Battlestar Galactica is any indication, this should be one great series. I've never been bugged to watch a show more than my friends pestering me to watch BG, which I will have to at some point, if for no other reason than my love of "frak" (as discovered on Veronica Mars). Obviously, I'll be anxiously awaiting this show, but how about you? Do you think the epic world of Children of Men will be good on the boob tube?

Every Friday morning, when I'm surfing the new movie reviews and I flip over to Ebert's site, I'm always a little surprised to see a new review for some movie that came out back when he was sidelined by cancer. Atop each of these retro reviews -- which I think I own the copyright on -- he affixes the following simple tag: "Doubling back to pick up some titles I missed while ill." This past Friday, he panned Spider-Man 3, giving it a weak two-star review. He cites his displeasure with the film's lack of a compelling villain and goes into detail about his problems with the symbiote, which he didn't enjoy at all. He also doesn't like Mary Jane anymore.

Children of Men and the Dixie Chicks documentary Shut up and Sing have both been retro-awarded high marks -- I agree with the latter verdict. The Fountain, a movie that was on my top ten list of that year, is mildly panned although what's most interesting about the review is that Ebert spends much of it musing on the concept of a retro review in itself. "Although as a doctoral candidate in English I was advised to be familiar with the existing criticism on a work before venturing to write my own, as a film critic I am usually writing before other reviews have even been published," he writes.

The Lives of Others and Zodiac get four stars -- Ebert's been a little too generous with the four star rating since his return, by the way -- while Grindhouse is panned for being "an attempt to recreate a double feature that never existed for an audience that no longer exists." I haven't pinned down the exact dates that Ebert was absent, so I have no idea how long his retro-reviewing will go on, but it's fun to read.

There's a pretty informative story about how, after getting the gig to adapt his own novel The Cider House Rules, John Irving sat down feeling fairly confident, thinking something to the effect that "Hey, all I have to do is re-type who people are, what they do and what they say -- this'll be a breeze ..." and, after doing that with his novel, found he had enough screenplay pages ... for a nine-hour film. Adaptations are tough: What do you leave in, what do you leave out? Is fidelity the only true measure of worth, or can carefully-made changes actually improve the film version of a book? Below are some of my picks for the best adapted screenplays of the past ten years; as ever, this list is wildly subjective, and our ever-hungry comments section awaits your picks. ...

1) Jackie Brown (1997)

A great example of how tweaking a good book can make it even better -- Quentin Tarantino's adaptation of Elmore Leonard's novel Rum Punch moved the setting from one coast to another, changed the race of one of the leads -- and, by ignoring such petty details, wound with a film that completely nails the talky, criminal, human spirit of Elmore Leonard's amazing body of work. Leonard's work also gave Tarantino the first grown-up story he's ever worked with, and Tarantino stepped up to the plate and delivered -- as fond as I am of Pulp Fiction's incendiary inventions, I still think Jackie Brown is the better actual film.

2) Children of Men (2006)

Another case where the screenwriters modified much of the book to the improvement of the story -- P.D. James's novel takes place over a period of months, while Curaron's film speeds by over a few days like a fever-dream nightmare. There are other changes, too (Clive Owen's lead is no longer related to England's all-powerful Big Brother, but, instead, Danny Huston's minor functionary), but the decision to strip Children of Men down to a few nightmare days was incredibly insightful -- and made for an adaptation that works as an amazing film.

It's usually only a matter of time before any filmmaker makes a bad film, but early in many careers it is easy to think certain directors can do no wrong. Currently I feel this way about Tom Tykwer, who has been solid since his debut film, Deadly Maria. I have to confess I haven't yet gotten around to viewing the two films he made prior to his breakthrough, Run Lola Run, but I mean to really soon (if only watching movies was my first priority these days). The thing that is so special about Tykwer, though is, visible just with his last four features: He keeps improving upon his visual style while constantly changing things up a bit. Following last year's beautifully enchanting Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, I am very eagerly awaiting his next film.

That film has just been officially announced as The International, and it is set to star Clive Owen. And, from the sound of what little there is to know about the plot, it sounds like this is a film for anybody who still wishes Owen could play James Bond. It is an action-thriller about an Interpol agent (Owen, I assume) working on a case involving corruption and arms-dealing within a powerful banking institution, one which his own agency seems to be protecting. Tykwer is expected to begin shooting from Eric Singer's script this September.

This news is exciting because Owen's involvement could expose Tykwer to a bigger audience. Run Lola Run should have made the director a big name, but unfortunately too few people saw his even better subsequent films. Of course, we all saw recently with Children of Men that Owen isn't exactly the big draw that he should be either. Whether or not people see the film, though, is their own business. For me, I am only a bit worried about this film's script. It seems to be Singer's first screenplay, so it is hard to be prejudiced, but that doesn't mean I'm not wary. That said, though, the director's last two films were based on the work of others (he was fortunate enough to work off of Kieslowski on one of those) and were still great, so hopefully this won't be a problem.

Though he'll most likely be playing James Bond for the next several years, Daniel Craig has not stopped that franchise from letting him secure a slew of other roles to take on in between his adventures as 007. The actor currently has two pretty big films (The Invasion, The Golden Compass) coming out later this year, and is now in talks to star in Blindness -- adapted from Nobel Prize winner Jose Saramago's novel -- and to be directed by Fernando Meirelles (The Constant Gardner). Also in talks to co-star alongside Craig is the very beautiful (and very talented) Julianne Moore.

Adapted by Don Mckellar, Saramago's book revolves around a blindness epidemic that sweeps through a contemporary city, paralyzing its citizens to a point where society is on the verge of breaking down. Craig and Moore will likely play book's two lead characters, a doctor and his wife. This whole "society on the verge of madness" storyline is familiar to Moore; the actress recently starred in Children of Men, which shares similar themes with Blindness, but on a much larger scale. Currently, there's no word on where the film will be set; the book takes place in an unnamed city in an unnamed country. Focus Features is handling all foreign sales, but there's no U.S. distribution deal in place as of now. Apart from Blindness, Craig is also set to reprise his role as 007 in the untitled Bond 22.

I just caught Philip Gröning's extraordinary documentary Into Great Silence (2 screens and opening wider), about Carthusian monks living in a charterhouse in the French Alps. It runs just past two hours and 45 minutes and I would wager that no more than two hundred words are spoken throughout. The film merely shows the monks going about their daily business: praying, chanting, caring for gardens, shoveling snow, sawing firewood, cooking, eating, etc. I have to admit part of my enthusiasm for the film stems from the fact that it contains no talking heads or clips; I was just about ready to scream if I saw one more documentary shot in that tired old PBS format. But I was also drawn to the film's meditative rhythm.

Or is it just slow? Already some of the reviews have trudged out the word "boring" to describe the film, and certainly it's a hard sell. But why? It's apparent that Gröning doesn't have any particular viewpoint about the monks; he's not trying to sell us on their dignity or righteousness, nor is he trying to uncover some secret, seamy underbelly. He merely wishes to show them to us. And in his great, quiet stretches, a viewer can easily get lost in his or her own thoughts. Indeed, I believe that Gröning actually prefers us to get lost in our own thoughts.

As far as the Oscars are concerned, the best way to get a handle on the year's best films is to look at the Best Screenplay nominees. The writers who vote for the ten films nominated in the Original and Adapted categories are the closest things to outsiders the movie community has. They're generally smarter and lower paid than anyone else, and they tend not to work on movie sets, hobnobbing with famous directors and movie stars. And so they have a more objective outlook on what's good and what's not.

The screenplay category has historically shown more foresight and flexibility than its fellows. After all, some of the past winners include filmmakers William A. Wellman, Orson Welles, Preston Sturges, Mel Brooks, Quentin Tarantino and the Coen Brothers, none of which ever had a shot as Best Director. Other nominees include Budd Boetticher, Andre de Toth, Nicholas Ray, Jacques Tati and Jacques Demy. Certain filmmakers such as Francis Ford Coppola, Oliver Stone and Bill Condon won Screenplay Oscars long before their careers as directors took off. And even some genuinely legendary writers have heard their name called: William Saroyan, James Agee, Tennessee Williams, John Steinbeck, Paddy Chayefsky, Vladimir Nabokov and Arthur Miller.

Once a year or so for the past several years, usually around awards season, somebody somewhere writes a story about how TV has gotten so much better than the movies. This year's article on the state of TV versus the movies is over at Newsweek, and there's a lively debate going on over at Hollywood Elsewhere on the topic, with people trumpeting their favorite TV shows (The Wire, Lost, 24, Heroes, even, god help us, American Idol) over the offerings at the multiplex.

Now, I can see the value of a well-made television program. I've been addicted to Jack Bauer and 24 since episode one of season one, and I'm not even sure how I feel about seeing 24 up on the big screen. There's something about the intimacy of curling up on the couch each week with Jack, Chloe and the gang that would be lost in translation to the silver screen. And I know lots of folks, some of them living in my very own house, who can't make it through a week without checking in with Heroes or Grey's Anatomy, but that doesn't mean that those shows are better than the films I can see at one of the arthouse cinemas in town (although I might buy the argument that they're better than what's showing down the road at the multiplex).

When I look at my own top ten films for 2006, I see films like Children of Men, Pan's Labyrinth, Liittle Children and The Proposition, films which cry out for a big screen in a dark theater. Even The Lives of Others (which would have had a spot on my list if I'd seen it in time) uses the big screen to make you feel the weight of the Stasi oppression through its gloomy cinematography. TV storytelling may have gotten better over the past decade or so, with more focus on compelling stories, but I'm not sure you can even objectively compare the two media -- even the Newsweek article says, it's like "comparing apples to tubas" -- but then author Devin Gordon goes on to do just that, asserting that television is "running circles" around the movies.

So what do you think? Are your fave TV shows better than the movies Hollywood studios are churning out?

[ via Hollywood Elsewhere ]

Aside from the short film categories, the hardest part of your Oscar pool will be guessing the winners of the artisan trophies. But thanks to guild awards, you can at least have an idea of who to pick on your ballot. This past weekend a number of these guild awards took place, and though none of the winners are sure bets, their chances are now narrowed down a lot.

• Children of Men (and its DP, Emmanuel Lubezki) won the top feature film honor at the American Society of Cinematographers' Outstanding Achievement Awards. A lot of people are rooting for Lubezki for the Oscar, so you can't feel wrong picking him for your pool.
  
• The American Cinema Editors Eddie Awards had a tie for its top award for dramatic film editing, which went to Babel editors Stephen Mirrione and Douglas Crise and The Departed editor Thelma Schoonmaker. The ACE also gives out a comedy/musical award, which this year went to Dreamgirls editor Virginia Katz and a documentary award, which this year went to An Inconvenient Truth editors Jay Lash Cassidy and Dan Swietlik. Both Babel and The Departed are nominated for editing Oscars, but since Schoonmaker has already won twice, Mirrione has won only once and Crise has never won, expect the award to go to Babel.
  
• The Costume Designer Guild splits their awards into three categories. The period film winner is Chung Man Yee for The Curse of the Golden Flower. The fantasy film winner is Lala Huete for Pan's Labyrinth. The contemporary film winner is Consolata Boyle for The Queen. Both Chung Man Yee and Consolata Boyle are nominated for Oscars, but the Academy will likely choose something from a period piece. Then again, my predictions for the guild awards were all wrong.
  
• The Art Directors Guild Awards are also split in the same manner, and the honored films were nearly identical to the costumers' honored (and nearly identical to my predictions). The period film winner is Tingxiao Huo for The Curse of the Golden Flower. The fantasy film winner is Eugenio Caballero for Pan's Labyrinth. The contemporary film winner is Peter Lamont for Casino Royale. Of these winners, only Caballero is nominated for an Oscar.

The good folks over at CHUD have a nifty little promo going with Universal to coincide with the upcoming DVD release of Children of Men. CHUD readers can submit questions to director Alfonso Cuaron about the film, and he will personally answer three to five of them. I interviewed Cuaron back in December, and, trust me, he is a very passsionate interview subject, speaking eloquently about his film, the filmmaking process, and whatever else conversation may turn to. So turn on those brain cells, head over to CHUD, and toss director Alfonso Cuaron a question he hasn't answered 5,000 times already. Do not submit your questions for Alfonso here -- go to CHUD and enter them there.

Devin and Nick at CHUD both had the film in their top tens, as did James Rocchi, Scott Weinberg and I -- a pretty diverse group of cinematic tastes to be drawn to one film. There's also a nice little discussion on the film in the forums -- a little outdated, but interesting to read. Check it out while you're over there, and toss your own two cents into the mix.

Who do you want to talk to? To which other directors would you most like to be able to submit questions?

The only award Casino Royale picked up Sunday at the British Academy Awards (BAFTAs) was for Best Sound. It was nominated in nine categories -- ten if you count the publicly voted Rising Star Award, which did go to Casino Royale actress Eva Green. But it would have been very shocking if the 007 movie had beaten The Queen for the Alexander Korda Award for Best British Film. Oh wait; The Queen didn't win it either. Surprisingly, The Last King of Scotland won Best British Film, as well as Best Adapted Screenplay (for Jeremy Brock and Peter Morgan, who also wrote The Queen) and, of course, Best Actor for Forest Whitaker. The Queen did win for Best Film, though, and also took the obvious prize for Best Actress for Helen Mirren.

Some of the other unexpected wins were Paul Greengrass for the David Lean Award for Direction and Alan Arkin for Best Supporting Actor for Little Miss Sunshine, which won for Best Original Screenplay. Other prizes went to Pan's Labyrinth for Best Film Not in the English Language, Best Makeup & Hair and Best Costume Design, Children of Men for Best Cinematography and Best Production Design and Babel for the Anthony Asquith Award for Film Music. For the most part, the British Academy disagreed with last week's London Film Critics Circle Awards, which gave added honors to specifically British performers like Emily Blunt, Toby Jones, Michael Caine and Leslie Philips. However, Casino Royale fared badly with the critics' choices too.

The way the Writers Guild divvies up writing credits has always been a bit of a mystery, especially when there are controversies around who wrote what. When Oscar nominations get thrown into the mix, it gets even more interesting. Back in December, I interviewed Alfonso Cuarón, director of Children of Men, and he had some interesting things to say about his take on the writing creds for the film (the WGA credited Cuaron and his writing partner Timothy Sexton, along with three other writers -- David Arata, Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby, who had worked on earlier versions of scripts for the film).

When I interviewed Cuarón, the fiery director had this to say about the script that he used in filming Children of Men:

" ... So I asked my writing partner, Tim Sexton, to read the book, and I said, okay, I don't want to read the book because I don't want to sidetrack myself or second-guess myself. I had a very clear vision of the movie I wanted to do. So I said to him, you read the book, and based on this movie I'm telling you, there are elements of the book which you will write into the movie. That's what happened."

More after the jump ...

For me the most entertaining part of the annual Oscar schpiel is not seeing which films get awards and what actors earn the most respect; it's scratching my head through the boneheaded decisions that seem to come a) out of nowhere and b) from a bunch of people who really ought to know a little better. Here are my picks for the seven biggest pieces of silliness regarding this year's Oscar nominations:

7. Borat for best adapted screenplay? Whaaaaat? Did we see the same movie? Don't get me wrong: I absolutely LOVED this movie -- I called it "one of the funniest movies ever made" and I stand by that opinion today -- but didn't most of the funniest bits come from moments best described as "off the cuff," "reaction-driven" and "semi-improvised"? I understand that more of the flick was scripted than one might expect, but c'mon. Unless all of Borat's interview subjects were given lines to read, I really don't see how this nomination makes any sense. I love seeing the movie get some respect, but what a silly way to do it.

6. Click gets nominated for best makeup ... but Pirates of the Caribbean 2 does not? What the hell? Did any of the Academy members see this movie? Yeah, I know that most of the more dazzling FX were full-bore CGI, but heck; the makeup used on Naomie Harris was more impressive than anything in freakin' Click! Fat suits and really lame "old man" makeup is all it takes to get an Oscar nom these days? Sheesh. Plus I just don't like living in a world that calls Click an Oscar nominee.

5. Nominating The Devil Wears Prada for Best Costume Design is like nominating Talladega Nights for Best Product Placement. Welcome to the world of Home Shopping Cinema.

He may be prettier than Humphrey Bogart, but Clive Owen sometimes reminds me of the Casablanca star. I guess I just see a lot of Owen's characters as being the kind who would say that they stick their neck out for nobody. And then there's Owen's voice, which has been heard in voice-overs before and which would work perfectly in a film noir. Of course, Owen isn't distinguished enough to be cemented into the consciousness of cinema in the same way that Bogie has been. In one hundred years, Humphrey Bogart will still be the better remembered actor.

For the time being, though, Owen is probably the best person to take on the part of Philip Marlowe (maybe Billy Bob Thornton would be good, too), a character that most of us associate with Bogart, despite the fact that so many others have played the role, some more than once. Producer Marc Abraham told Louisville, Kentucky's Courier-Journal that he will be following up Children of Men with another collaboration with Owen that will be based on one of Raymond Chandler's detective stories. He didn't specify which story would be adapted, but he did say that Owen would be playing Marlowe.