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Tom Stoppard

Film

Flavorwire’s Flick of the Week: ‘Anna Karenina’ Is a High-Spirited, Robust Adaptation

By Jason Bailey on

Joe Wright’s new adaptation of Anna Karenina opens with a wide shot of a stage, the sounds of an orchestra tuning, and a curtain rising. The telling of the story that follows is immersed in artifice, much of it taking place in a fluid theatrical space with lighting and staging effects, and moving flats, backdrops, and scenery. What Wright and his screenwriter Tom Stoppard (who knows a little something about The Theatre) have done is not adapt Tolstoy’s novel so much as they’ve staged it, creating a fluid three-way dialectic between the page, the stage, and the frame. It’s a fresh and ingenious approach, and results in a surprisingly high-spirited picture. … Read More

Theatre

15 of Tom Stoppard’s All-Time Greatest Lines

By Emily Temple on

Happy birthday, Tom Stoppard! The prolific and highly acclaimed playwright and screenwriter turns 75 years old today. Stoppard is one of our favorite playwrights of all time, and is particularly known throughout the world for his wit, winking meta-narratives and deft language-play — not to mention the fact that his plays are wildly entertaining yet still concerned with deep philosophical concepts. So, to honor Stoppard on this milestone of a birthday, we’ve collected fifteen of our favorite, lip-smackingly good lines from across his body of work. Click through to remind yourself of some of the best Stoppard moments (or discover them for the first time) in our collection of our favorite lines from his dramatic work. And of course, these are only our favorites — please chime in with your own in the comments! … Read More

Books

25 Writers, Artists and Critics on James Joyce

By Emily Temple on

In case you haven’t been trolling the literary blogs in the past week, we are happy to inform you that today is Bloomsday, the unofficial international holiday dedicated to canonical Irish writer James Joyce, and more specifically, to his most famous work, Ulysses. Though  he has many enthusiastic fans (the man died over 70 years ago and still has young ladies dancing in the streets once a year to celebrate his life), he has always been a controversial figure in critical and social circles. For our own mini celebration of Bloomsday, we’ve put together a collection of some of our favorite quotes about the great writer and his work — some so flattering they read like silver-tongued worship, and some, well, significantly less flattering. Click through to read a cacophony of famous figures sounding off on James Joyce, and then get out there and decide on his merit for yourself. … Read More

Books

Two-Typewriter Homes: Famous Literary Roommates

By Emily Temple on

Recently, The Rumpus dug up a great article from a 1998 edition of the LA Times, wherein Saul Bellow describes living with Ralph Ellison in a grand old house in upstate New York. Inspired by this pairing, we decided to poke around to try and find out which other famous writers have lived together, whether before they became famous, while scribbling away, or as established authors living the high life. Just to be clear — we’re not counting famous literary couples (or at least not constant ones, anyway). That’d just be too easy. Click through to read about a few literary greats who split the rent, and you might start looking at that aspiring novelist roommate of yours in a whole new light. … Read More