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      in Movies

      Test Yourself on These Screen Adaptations of Popular Books

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      Welcome to Great Adaptations, the Book Review’s regular multiple-choice quiz about books that have gone on to find new life as movies, television shows, theatrical productions, video games and more. This week’s challenge is focused on books with a sharp comic edge that were adapted for the screen. Just tap or click your answers to the five questions below. And scroll down after you finish the last question for links to the books and their filmed versions. More

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      in Theater

      Drawing From Bob Dylan’s Songbook, Learning Lessons in Mortality

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      Ordinarily, the actor-writer-musician Todd Almond is a pretty unflappable stage presence. But normal rules do not apply when you discover at intermission that Bob Dylan is in the audience of the performance you’re giving of a musical that’s saturated with his songs — and your harmonica solo is coming up.“I don’t know if you’ve ever panicked,” Almond writes in his new book, “Slow Train Coming: Bob Dylan’s ‘Girl From the North Country’ and Broadway’s Rebirth.”An oral history, it chronicles the journey of Conor McPherson’s “Girl From the North Country” from the Public Theater in 2018 to Broadway in 2020, then through the theater’s traumatic pandemic shutdown to a restart in 2021 on a much more fragile Broadway. Rigorously footnoted, informed by interviews with fellow company members as well as industry figures, the book is shaped by Almond’s own memories as a cast member making his Broadway debut.Its publication dovetails with Audible’s audio release of Almond’s surreal, nearly solo musical “I’m Almost There,” about one man’s fear-filled, distraction-strewn path to love. Inspired by “The Odyssey,” it had a limited run at the Minetta Lane Theater in Manhattan last fall, directed by David Cromer.Earlier this month, Almond, 48, spoke by phone from his house on an island in Maine. These are edited excerpts from that conversation.Almond, center, in the musical “Girl From the North Country” at the Belasco Theater in Manhattan in 2020.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Music

      A Soundtrack to a Fabulous Memoir Crackling With Music

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      Hear songs from Lucy Sante’s “I Heard Her Call My Name” by ESG Public Image Ltd., the Floaters and more.Françoise Hardy holds special meaning for the writer Lucy Sante.Evening Standard/Hulton Archive, via Getty ImagesDear listeners,I read a lot of books about music. When I’m really enjoying one, sometimes I’ll make a playlist of songs mentioned in its pages to stave off that bittersweet feeling that always comes upon finishing a satisfying read. That way, I can always crawl back into a book’s atmosphere just by pressing play.The book that inspired today’s playlist, the cultural critic Lucy Sante’s “I Heard Her Call My Name,” isn’t about music per se. As its subtitle attests, it is mostly “a memoir of transition,” centered around Sante’s decades of gender dysphoria and her eventual coming out as a trans woman in 2021, in her late 60s. The experience “cracks open the world” for her, as she eloquently puts it.I found it a gorgeously written, admirably honest book, and I’m not alone in that opinion: The New York Times Book Review named “I Heard Her Call My Name” one of the 10 best books of 2024, and in a laudatory review, Dwight Garner wrote of Sante, “Her sharpness and sanity, moodiness and skepticism are the appeal.”But another potent part of the book’s appeal is the way Sante depicts culture — and music in particular — playing a vital role in her lifelong journey to becoming more herself. (That she is such a sharp cultural observer will come as no surprise to anyone who has read any of her other books, like the New York chronicle “Low Life” or the collection “Kill All Your Darlings.”)Eye-opening avant-garde art beckons her to New York as a teenager, and the pulsating sounds of the city — from groundbreaking artists like ESG and Grandmaster Flash — provide a soundtrack to her 20s and 30s. Sante uses music to bring long-gone New York haunts back to life (like a certain bar where the Fall is always on the jukebox) and, eventually, thanks to her childhood idol Françoise Hardy, to arrive at the version of femininity that resonates most deeply with her.If you haven’t read this book yet, I highly recommend it. And if you have, may this playlist bring you back to the distinct atmosphere between its pages.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Movies

      Watched ‘Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy’? Read These Romance Books Next

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      Whether you’re in the mood for another Jane Austen adaptation, a British rom-com or a love story with a fabulous older heroine, we’ve got you covered.Good news for fans of everyone’s favorite hapless British diarist: Bridget Jones is back. The wearer of short skirts, smoker of endless cigarettes and romancer of the playboy Daniel Cleaver and the stealth charmer Mark Darcy takes her fourth turn on the big screen in “Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy.” The movie, which premieres on Peacock on Feb. 13, finds Bridget as a widowed 51-year-old mother re-entering the bizarre world of dating.The movies are based on a best-selling book series by Helen Fielding, and there are many things to love about Bridget in both formats: the cheeky reinterpretation of Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice,” the zany British humor, the irrepressible heroine herself. If you’ve already torn through the originals and are craving more romance books with similar vibes, we’ve got some suggestions — whichever aspect of the Jonesiverse you’re craving.If Austen retellings are your dearest loveIf I Loved You LessBy Aamna QureshiThis retelling of “Emma,” set on Long Island, retains all of the original’s charming banter and complex emotions. Humaira Mirza is a matchmaker with an impressive success rate, and when it comes time to find her own perfect man, Rizwan Ali ticks all her boxes. The only problem? Her longtime family friend and verbal sparring partner Fawad Sheikh disapproves, forcing Humaira to confront her own feelings about Fawad and how well he sees her, flaws and all.Pride and ProtestBy Nikki PayneLiza Bennett, an activist and D.J., is determined to stop the developer Dorsey Fitzgerald from building expensive condos in her Washington, D.C., neighborhood. But when Liza’s protest spawns a viral meme that turns her life upside down, the foes find themselves turning to each other. Payne gives the hallmarks of “Pride and Prejudice” a modern spin: Dorsey is a Filipino adoptee who feels like a misfit, while Liza’s family, true to the original, causes her endless embarrassment. If you want your Austen with more spice, you’ll find plenty here!We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 175 Shares189 Views

      in Movies

      Interview: Helen Fielding on ‘Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy’ and Her Reading Life

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      With “Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy” streaming, the novelist talked in an email interview about what moviemakers keep cutting from adaptations of her best sellers. SCOTT HELLERDescribe your ideal reading experience.I love a vacation binge-read — I read all 800 pages of “The Goldfinch” in Greece (that’s Greece, not Greek). I also love it when you’re waiting for a novel to come out and can’t put it down when it does. It was like that with “Atonement.” I managed to escape and hide when it arrived and read it all at one sitting.What kind of reader were you as a child?I was crazy for novels as a child and teenager. I read several a week, never distinguishing between heavy and light. Enid Blyton, Jane Austen, Jackie Collins, Thomas Hardy — I loved them all. Ironically, the joy was dampened when I went to university to read English. I’d worked as an au pair in France all summer and somehow failed to tackle the reading list. I ended up trying to read the entire works of Dickens in three days. I lost my reading mojo for some years.Have you ever gotten in trouble for reading a book?I’ve got into trouble for not reading a book: “Bleak House.”What books are you embarrassed not to have read yet?“Bleak House.” And I’ve got into terrible trouble for giving quotes for book covers. My quote once got a bad review: “There is only one thing wrong with this novel — the cover quote from Helen Fielding. Whilst it is true, it is also trite.”What’s your favorite book no one else has heard of?“Ernest Hemingway on Writing.” It’s a brilliant collection of quotes about writing from his letters. I don’t know what I’d do without it.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Movies

      Grieving With Paddington

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      A newly mourning daughter finds an unexpected companion in the beloved films, whose star, a little bear, sets an example of how to live with loss.It was on the flight home from my father’s funeral that I first met Paddington. In search of an easy watch to take our minds off things, my partner, David, and I thought a movie about the adventures of a C.G.I. bear in a floppy red hat might do the trick. We went in cold, neither of us having grown up with the children’s books.If you’re familiar with the story, you’ll know this was a naïve, if not poor decision in a time of grief. Almost immediately, Paddington, already an orphan, loses his Uncle Pastuzo in a cataclysmic earthquake in Peru. Soon after, his Aunt Lucy tells him that he must find a new home — alone, without her. Orphaned doubly in the first 10 minutes. I began to cry.Since I was a child, I had been consumed with my father’s needs and longed not to be the parent to my parent. Poor Paddington, forced to navigate the world of adults.The “Paddington” films have acted as a strange benchmark. At 31, I watched the first movie the day after laying my father to rest in a pine box, and the sequel, which was pure delight and offered a reprieve from the darkness of mourning, a few months later. By the time “Paddington in Peru,” the third movie, is released on Feb. 14 in the United States, it will be nearly two years since my father passed. The series has become an unexpected grief tracker; Paddington, my fortuitous companion.My father and I had, at best, a complicated relationship, as he had with just about everyone. An addict with more than a few mental health disorders and, later, dementia, he’d burned bridges with anyone who tried to offer that fleeting, suffocating thing called help.There were years of unemployment, stints in rehab, bouts of disappearances and countless emergency-room visits. I thought I had “pre-grieved,” to borrow a term from Roman Roy, so the ripples of hopelessness and thoughts of what’s the point of it all? that followed his death arrived as a sick aftershock. I was emptied.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 163 Shares169 Views

      in Music

      The Bangles, One of the Biggest All-Girl Bands, Want to Reclaim Their Legacy

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      The music industry pushed the group behind hits like “Manic Monday” and “Eternal Flame” hard, then pulled them apart. A new book tells their story.The first time Susanna Hoffs and the Peterson sisters sang together and their voices blended, the frisson was unmistakable. “We knew we had something,” Hoffs said. “We created a band in that moment.”Hoffs, 66, beamed at the memory, sitting in her kitchen on a late January afternoon. Dressed in a sweater and slacks, the diminutive singer and guitarist sipped coffee, an old Margaret Keane painting hanging above her. Her airy Brentwood, Calif., home is just a few blocks from where the Bangles were born, on a cool evening in early 1981 in her parents’ garage.“It’s an overused word, but we were organic,” the guitarist Vicki Peterson, 67, said. “We formed ourselves, played the music we loved, we really were a garage band.” But a garage band “that somehow became pop stars,” the drummer Debbi Peterson, 63, noted. Both sisters were interviewed in video conversations.The Bangles broke big, scoring five Top 5 hits and storming MTV with inescapable songs like “Manic Monday” and “Eternal Flame.” They were one of the era’s rare all-girl groups — and became one of the most successful female bands of all time — a crew of puckish 20-somethings showcasing their collective songwriting and vocal chops.But one of the defining bands of the 1980s also ended in spectacular fashion. Less than a decade after its birth, the group imploded in its manager’s Hollywood mansion, the sisterhood of its members lost amid a farrago of fame and mental fatigue.That story plays out vividly in “Eternal Flame: The Authorized Biography of the Bangles” by Jennifer Otter Bickerdike, out on Feb. 18. Bickerdike — the author of books about Nico and Britney Spears — fashioned a history of a bygone era in the music business, one in which the outsize influence of major labels, domineering producers and Machiavellian managers could routinely make or break a band.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Television

      Michael Palin on His Diaries and Adventurous Life

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      In 1969, the British comedy writer and performer Michael Palin, then building a career out of being extremely silly, did something utterly sensible: He quit his 40-cigarettes-a-day smoking habit and began keeping a diary instead.Over the years, his meticulously maintained journals captured the rise of Monty Python — the hallowed sketch troupe he formed with Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle and Terry Jones — including the creation of “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” and “Life of Brian.” Later, they chronicled a surprising career development, when Palin reinvented himself as an amiable presenter of travel documentaries, crossing the globe for acclaimed series like “Around the World in 80 Days.”The first volume of his diaries, “The Python Years,” was published in 2006. The fourth, “There and Back,” will be released in the United States on Tuesday. In a video interview from his home in northwest London, Palin, 81, fielded questions about the four decades’ worth of life covered in his diaries and more. He’s come to expect this sort of inquisition.“That’s the thing about publishing your diaries,” Palin said. “I have to be able to justify my behavior in my life in a way.” These are edited excerpts from the conversation.How did quitting smoking lead you to start keeping a diary?When I gave up smoking — it was virtually overnight — it was a quite extraordinary feeling of effective use of willpower. In the back of my mind, I thought, how else can I use this newly enlivened willpower? Keeping a diary must have been the first thing that came into my head.Palin started keeping a diary in 1969, the same year Monty Python began. “The diaries constantly surprise me, how I completely contradict myself,” he said.Max Miechowski for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More