Shorts, 2/28.

By David Hudson on 02/28/2009

"Martin Provost's 'Séraphine,' the story of early 20th-century French painter (and cleaning lady) Séraphine de Senlis, took home no less than 7 Césars [Friday night], including best film, best original screenplay, and best actress for Yolande Moreau in the title role," reports Andre Soares. Also at the Alternative Film Guide, Massimo David has the full list of nominees and winners. "Séraphine" screens this Friday and the following Sunday, by the way, as part of "Rendez-Vous with French Cinema" in New York.

"I'm currently teaching a course that highlights some of the instances in which fine books have been adapted into fine films," writes Salman Rushdie:

Is it impossible? Is the intangible in our arts and our natures, the space between our words, the things seen in between the things shown, inevitably discarded in the remaking process, and if so can it be filled up with other spaces, other visions, that satisfy or even enrich us enough so that we do not mind the loss? To look at adaptation in this broad-spectrum way, to take it beyond the realm of art into the rest of life, is to see that all the meanings of the word deal with the question of what is essential - in a work adapted to another form, in an individual adapting to a new home, in a society adapting to a new age. What do you preserve? What do you jettison? What is changeable, and where must you draw the line? The questions are always the same, and the way we answer them determines the quality of the adaptation, of the book, the poem, or of our own lives.

Also in the Guardian: "An ultra-dark, unashamedly literary crime writer, in the last 10 years [David] Peace has produced a formidable body of work chronicling the 'occult history' of northern England, while amassing admirers as varied as literary critic Terry Eagleton and TV's Michael Parkinson," writes Justin Quirk. "This month sees the dramatisation of three of his early novels on Channel 4 as 'Red Riding,' and the big-screen release of 'The Damned United,' starring Michael Sheen, Jim Broadbent and Timothy Spall - his re-imagining of the disastrous period in 1974 when Brian Clough took over from Don Revie as Leeds United manager and was frozen out by his own team in just 44 days."

And Ben Child has word that an adaptation of "King Lear" that was to have starred Anthony Hopkins, Keira Knightley and Gwyneth Paltrow "may have fallen victim to the recession."

"There is not a playwright working in English after 1968 or so who doesn't owe something to the stripping down and refurbishing of theatrical language in [Harold] Pinter's early masterworks - a meld of poetry, jargon, slang and strategic silences," writes Richard Byrne in the Nation. "Just as crucial, however, was the way Pinter unhitched English-speaking drama from its most-treasured certainties - clear narrative, defined character. Beckett and Kafka are obvious wellsprings for works such as 'The Caretaker' and 'The Birthday Party,' but Pinter's innovation was to root existential dilemmas in the quotidian."

Also via Bookforum, Greg Veis, blogging for the New Republic, talks with novelist and screenwriter Tom Perrotta about the "Evolution of Tracy Flick."

For ArtInfo (and via Movie City News), Kris Wilton talks with Dean and Britta about scoring Warhol's "Screen Tests." Related online viewing: Mike Everleth has Warhol painting Debbie Harry on an Amiga.

"Daddies and daughters lend a wistful emotional core to 'Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li,' an otherwise generic martial-arts movie with video-game credentials," writes Jeannette Catsoulis. More from Sam Adams (Los Angeles Times), Alonso Duralde (MSNBC), Nathan Rabin (AV Club) and Nick Schager (Nick Schager).

Also in the New York Times, with "Sunshine Cleaning" opening in a couple of weeks, Ella Taylor profiles Emily Blunt (related: Blunt talks with Rupert Friend for Interview), while Douglas Wolk reviews three new comics collections.

Online viewing tip. Rocky Mountain News presents "Final Edition," via Ray Pride.

[Photo: "Séraphine," Music Box Films, 2008]

Tags: David Peace, Harold Pinter, Martin Provost, Salman Rushdie, Séraphine, Yolande Moreau