My Dog Tulip now on DVD. . .

I was hoping the animated movie of J.R. Ackerley's My Dog Tulip would open on a few movie screens in Canada, but the DVD is now already out.  This is a very funny book, the movie adheres very closely to the original and Christopher Plummer is perfect as the curmudgeonly Ackerley who, despite the many trials of Tulip, just can't help loving his dog.  I saw it about a year ago at the Toronto Film Festival and the book was one of my first NYRB Challenge titles. You can read my thoughts on the book and movie here.  I do like NYRB's new movie tie-in cover; it was one of the books we sold out of at Sunday's Word on the Street.

Friday Film Fest: Train of Thought. . .

Every librarian I've talked to in the last year has told me that DVD circulation is way, way up. I'm not surprised - or dismayed -  by this; after all, I'm a film buff too. But I do think that books and films can complement each other wonderfully - after all, the former is often the inspiration for the latter.  And so I thought it would be fun, every so often on a Friday, to recommend an interesting pairing for the weekend.  I'm not going to plug the obvious - the book with its own film adaptation - unless there's a particularly good reason for it, but instead I'll try to suggest book and movie combos that evoke similar themes or share a sense of place or historical period.  I promise that they'll all be films well worth seeing and I'd love to hear about your own recommendations.

In honour of the Toronto Film Festival which is currently underway, I thought I'd launch this with a bit of a mini-fest of my own.  I have an incurable train fetish. It's my favourite mode of transport and train stations, especially those in Europe, are so much sexier than any airport can ever dream of.  So when the Guardian recently posted a list of the ten best railway journeys in literature, I was immediately inspired to come up with a list of my ten favourite films featuring a train.  And here it is. Happy viewing.

All About Alice. . .

I'm still not sure whether I'll go and see Tim Burton's version of Alice in Wonderland - I'm gettting rather tired of movies that rely too heavily on computers for their special effects, though I'm sure it'll be visually stunning. However, the New York Times has this review of a 1933 version, that has just come out on DVD and I'll definitely be checking it out. Cary Grant as the Mock Turtle. Gary Cooper as the White Knight. W.C. Fields as Humpty-Dumpty. The imperiously delicious Edna May Oliver as the Red Queen. And the delightful Edward Everett Horton (you'll know him if you're a fan of Astaire/Rogers films) as the Mad Hatter! Can it get any better than this? The Times notes that, "seen today, it’s still a profoundly creepy experience. This Wonderland is not the proto-psychedelic playground of the 1951 Disney animated version, but a distorted, claustrophobic environment populated by menacing, bizarre figures."

Of course this is a great time to re-read Lewis Carroll's classic book. And on my reading pile is a new novel, Alice I Have Been by Melanie Benjamin, a fictionalized account of the girl who inspired it all - Alice Liddell Hargreaves. I can also recommend Stephanie Bolster's White Stone: The Alice Poems which I read many years ago when it was first published. It won the 1998 Governor General's Award for Poetry and explores the life of Alice, both the real girl and the literary legend. Like the kids who inspired Christopher Robin or Peter Pan - it's a tough and haunting legacy to live with.

A DVD With Attitudes. . .

One of my favourite reads so far in my NYRB Challenge has been Angus Wilson's Anglo-Saxon Attitudes (see my review here). So I've been treating myself with the three-part British mini-series, filmed in 1992. It's extremely well done and follows the book very closely. The screen writer is Andrew Davies who seems to be penning every British costume drama these days - you'll know him from the Jennifer Ehle/Colin Firth Pride and Prejudice or the recent adapation of Bleak House. Full of delightful British eccentrics played ably by a great cast including Richard Johnson, Douglas Hodge, Elizabeth Spriggs and Tara Fitzgerald. Look for a young, pre-Bond Daniel Craig and teenager Kate Winslet in minor roles.