Showing papers in "Journal of Adaptation in Film & Performance in 2014"

Avengers dissemble! Transmedia superhero franchises and cultic management

Abstract: Sherpa Romeo yellow journal. This is a pre-copyedited version of an article accepted for publication in the Journal of Adaptation in Film and Performance following peer review.

"Scenes of Marvellous Variety" : the work-in-progress screenplays of Maurice

Abstract: This article examines the work-in-progress screenplays of Maurice by Ivory (1987), which was adapted from E. M. Forster’s novel, published posthumously in 1971. The article examines the creative processes revealed in the writers’ treatment, and three manuscripts of the screenplay, held at King’s College, Cambridge, all of which differ from the film as it has subsequently been released in cinemas and on DVD. Writers James Ivory and Kit Hesketh-Harvey restructured the narrative order of the story in several different ways, before the film was eventually edited to follow (almost) the chronology of the novel. The screenplay was also significantly shaped through the collaborative assistance of Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, who is not credited as a writer for the film. This article charts these hitherto hidden creative and authorial processes, and argues that the narrative’s journey from page to screen was not a straight trajectory, but instead constituted a move away from mainstream narrative genres, such as the Bildungsroman and the love story, and then a recommitment to them in the film’s ‘final’ cut. The multiple versions of the screenplay add to the palimpsetuous inscriptions of this already multi-layered, in-flux narrative, which was revised repeatedly by E. M. Forster over a 45-year period, and has also been reworked through new book editions, a re-release of the DVD that includes deleted scenes as ‘extras’, and fan activity on the Internet.

Zhang Yimou's 'Blood simple':cannibalism, remaking and translation in world cinema

Abstract: Zhang Yimou’s 'A woman, a gun and a noodle shop' (2009) remakes the Coen brothers’ 'Blood simple' (1984) in a way that re-imagines the earlier film in a Chinese setting, adapting and recreating the narrative, but the film cannot be regarded as being aimed solely at a Chinese audience, as it was also released in the United States and United Kingdom. Drawing from translation studies and film studies, this article analyses how Zhang’s film adapts its source material, particularly its tendency to make explicit elements that were left implicit in the source text. The idea of cannibalization, from Brazilian modernist theory, helps explain the ambiguous orientation of the remake as both homage to and localization of the source text. This hybridity was not well received by American audiences and shows how the movie’s connection to both Zhang and the Coens leads to a dual voice in the film. The analysis demonstrates how translation and cross-cultural adaptation enrich ideas of world cinema.