BRICK LANE

Thursday 31 March 2011 1pm BRICK LANE

Book: Author Monica Ali Publisher Random House

Nazneen, a teenager, finds herself in an arranged marriage with a man 20 years older. Away from the mud and heat of her Bangladeshi village, home is now a cramped flat in a high- rise block in London’s East End. Nazneen knows not a word of English and is forced to depend on her husband. But unlike him, she is practical and wise and befriends a fellow Asian girl Razia, who helps her understand the strange ways of her adopted new British home. Nazneen keeps in touch by letters with her sister Hasina, who has a troubled life, back in the village. Confined in her flat by tradition and family duty, Nazneen sews furiously for a living, shut away with her buttons and linings - until the radical Karim steps unexpectedly into her life. On a background of racial conflict and tension, they embark on a love affair that forces Nazneen finally to take control of her fate. Strikingly imagined, gracious and funny, this novel is at once epic and intimate. Exploring the role of fate in our lives; those who accept it - those who defy it; the story traces the extraordinary transformation of an Asian girl from cautious and shy, to a bold and dignified woman.

Film: UK/India 2007 102 min Rated M Director: Sarah Gavron Cast: Tannishtha Chatterjee; Satish Kaushik; Christopher Simpson

In an arranged marriage to a man she has never met residing in Britain, Nazneen finds herself trapped within the four walls of her flat in East London. While racism prevails in the community, especially from white supremacists groups, it escalates after the events of September 11, 2001. Nazneen finds herself confronted with some difficult choices. “There are layers to the film in every respect, and the craftsmanship is first class, with great music to underscore the drama and the relationships” Andrew L. Urban - Urban Cinefile

What are your thoughts on arranged marriages? Was it the culture shock or her husband's inability to succeed in work and finances that rocked the marriage? Would Chanu and Nazneen survived a marriage if they lived in a Bangladeshi village?

JANE AUSTEN BOOK CLUB

Author Karen Joy Fowler Publisher Penguin Books

Six people, five women and a man meet once a month in California’s Central Valley to discuss Jane Austen’s novels. They are ordinary people, neither happy nor unhappy but each of them is wounded in different ways, they are all mixed up about their lives and relationships. Over the six months they meet, marriages are tested, affairs begin, unsuitable arrangements become suitable under the guiding eye of Jane Austen, a couple of them even fall in love. “A thoroughly delightful comedy of contemporary manners” Entertainment Weekly.



USA 105 mins Rated M Dir: Robin Swicord
Cast: Maria Bello, Emily Blunt, Kathy Baker, Amy Brenneman, Maggie Grace, Hugh Dancy, Jimmy Smits

Today’s central California may be far removed from Regency England, but some things never change. We’re still every bit as preoccupied with the complexities of marriage, friendship, romantic entanglements, position, and social manners and mores as was Jane Austen at the turn of the 1800s. THE JANE AUSTEN BOOK CLUB reveals the lives of an ensemble of present-day friends through the witty prism of their literary heroine.

Did you identify the six characters from Jane Austen's books that each of the six book club members are based on?

BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN

Author Annie Proulx
Publisher Harper Collins

Brokeback Mountain is set in the beautiful, wild landscape of Wyoming where cowboys live as they have done for generations. Hard, lonely lives in unforgiving country. Jack Twist and Ennis del Mar are two ranch hands -
′drop-out country boys with no prospects, brought up to hard work and privation, both roughmannered, tough spoken′ - glad to have found each others company where none had been expected. But companionship becomes something else on Brokeback Mountain; something not looked for, something deadly.

Canada/USA 134 min Rated M, Dir: Ang Lee
Cast: Heath Ledger, Jake Gyllenhaal, Randy Quaid, Michelle Williams,
Anne Hathaway

The Director, Ang Lee, won an Oscar for Direction with this film and Heath Ledger was nominated for Best Actor in a Leading Role, Jake Gyllenhaal was nominated for Best Supporting Actor, Michelle Williams was nominated for Best Supporting Actress. ” Directed with piercing intelligence and delicacy by Lee, the film of Annie Proulx’s 1997 short story -- the unerring script by Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana is a model of literary adaptation -- wears its emotions on its sleeve.” Rolling Stone Review

Because Brokeback Mountain, written by Annie Proulux, is a very short story, the filmmaker should have had the luxury of staying faithful to the book. Did Ang Lee do exactly that?

THE READER

Author Bernhard Schlink Publisher Random House

Hailed for its coiled eroticism and the moral claims it makes upon the reader, this mesmerizing novel is a story of love and secrets, horror and compassion, unfolding against the haunted landscape of post war Germany







USA 124 min Rated MA15 Dir: Stephen Daldry
Cast: Kate Winslet, Ralph Fiennes, Jeanette Hain, David Kross

When he falls ill on his way home from school, fifteen-year-old Michael Berg is rescued by Hanna, a woman twice his age. In time she becomes his lover—then she inexplicably disappears. When Michael next sees her, he is a young law student, and she is on trial for a hideous crime. As he watches her refuse to defend her innocence, Michael gradually realizes that Hanna may be guarding a secret she considers more shameful than murder.

"The Reader" by Bernhard Schlink is a morally complex story. Did the film version deal with the complicated issues and deliver a powerful and emotional story to match the book?

DISGRACE

Author J.M Coetzee Publisher Random House

A divorced middle-aged English professor finds he is increasingly unable
to resist affairs with his female students and when discovered by the college authorities is expected to apologise and repent in an effort to save his job. Refusing to become a scapegoat in what he sees as a show trial, designed to reinforce a stringent political correctness, he pre-empts the authorities and leaves his job and the city, to spend time with his grown-up lesbian daughter on her remote farm. Things between them are strained and the situation becomes critical when they are the victims of a brutal and horrifying attack. Coetzee uses all his formidable skills to engage with a post-apartheid culture in unexpected and revealing ways.



Aust/South Africa 119 min Rated M Dir: Steve Jacobs
Cast: John Malkovich, Jessica Haines, Paula Arundell, Eriq Ebouaney

Australian Director, Steve Jacobs, brings to the screen J. M.Coetzee’s Booker Prize winning novel “Disgrace”. David Lurie,twice-divorced and dissatisfied with his job as an English professor in post-apartheid South Africa, finds his life falling apart. When he seduces one of his students and does nothing to protect him from the consequences, he is dismissed from his teaching position. He takes refuge on his daughter’s farm in the Eastern Cape and in the aftermath of a vicious attack on the farm, he is forced to come to terms with more than his disgrace alone.

This story deals with difficult issues and complex characters. Did the Director remain faithful to the book in his adaptation. Did you empathise with the characters?

Literary/Film Festival

Thursday 6th May 2010 1 pm MYSTIC RIVER
Author: Dennis Lehane Film Director: Clint Eastwood
There are threads in our lives. You pull one, and everything else gets affected.
When they were children, Sean Devine, Jimmy Marcus and Dave Boyle were friends. But then a strange car pulled up their street. One boy got in the car,
two did not, and something terrible happened – something that ended their
friendship and changed all three boys forever. Twentyfive years later, Sean Devine is a homicide detective. Jimmy Marcus is an ex-con who owns a corner store. And Dave Boyle is trying to hold his marriage together and keep his demons at bay – demons that urge him to do horrifi c things. When Jimmy
Marcus’ daughter is found murdered, Sean Devine is assigned
to the case.

USA 137 min Rated: MA15+ Dir: Clint Eastwood
Cast: Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, Kevin Bacon, Laurence Fishburne,
Marcia Gay Harden, Laura Linney
Clint Eastwood has an impressive reputation as a Director of
high quality work and Mystic River won two Academy Awards.

Did Eastwood keep the essence of Lehane's book intact despite the fact that the the three boys' childhood to manhood years were excluded?

Literary/Film Festival

Thursday 29th April 2010 1pm THE ENGLISH PATIENT
Author: Michael Ondaatje Film Director: Anthony Minghella
With ravishing beauty and unsettling intelligence, Michael Ondaatje’s Booker Prize-winning novel traces the intersection of four damaged lives in an Italian villa at the end of World War II. Hana, the exhausted nurse; the maimed thief, Caravaggio; the wary sapper, Kip: each is haunted the English patient, the nameless, burned man who lies in an upstairs room and whose memories of passion, betrayal, and rescue illuminates this book like flashes of heat
lightning.

UK/USA 161 min Rated M Dir: Anthony Minghella
Cast: Ralph Fiennes, Juliette Binoche, Willem Dafoe, Kristen Scott
Thomas, Naveen Andrews, Colin Firth

The film had twelve nominations and nine Oscar wins.

Did the film succeed in evoking the mystery and passion as portrayed in the book?

Literary/Film Festival

Thursday 22nd April 2010 1pm ENDURING LOVE
This story begins on a windy day in the Chilterns when the calm, organized life of Joe Rose is shattered by a ballooning accident. The afternoon, Rose reflects, could have ended in tragedy, but for his brief meeting with Jed Parry. Unknown to Rose, something passes between them - something that gives birth in Parry to an obsession so powerful that it will test to the limits Rose’s beloved scientific rationalism, threaten the love of his wife Clarissa and drive him to take desperate measures merely to stay alive. Totally compelling, utterly and terrifyingly convincing, Enduring Love is the story of how an ordinary man can be driven to the brink of murder and madness by another’s delusions.

UK 100 mins Rated MA15+ Dir: Roger Michell
Cast: Daniel Craig, Samantha Morton, Rhys Ifans, Bill Nighy

The film differs from the book with some very obvious changes like the names of some of the characters and their occupations. Jed doesn't appear to be living a wealthy life and his final act differs to the book. Putting all that aside, do you think that the film's director has given us a rivetting interpretation of McEwan's book?

Literary/Film Festival-In The Winter Dark

We are delighted to open the Festival with a film which has been adapted from a book written by West Australian Tim Winton and directed by James Bogle, also a West Australian.
Thursday 8th April 2010 1pm IN THE WINTER DARK
Author: Tim Winton Film Director: James Bogle
Night falls. In a lonely valley called the Sink, four people prepare for a quiet evening. Then in his orchard, Murray Jaccob sees a moving shadow. Across the swamp, his neighbour Ronnie watches her lover leave and feels her baby roll inside her. And on the verandah of the Stubbs’ house, a small dog is torn screaming from its leash by
something unseen. Nothing will ever be the same again.


Aust. 92 min Rated M Dir: James Bogle Cast: Brenda Blethyn, Ray Barrett, Richard Roxburgh, Miranda Otto, Steve Le Marquand.
Does James Bogle capture the essence of Tim Winton's acclaimed novella?

Did the actors portray the characters as you had imagined when reading the book?
Join the discussion, post a comment

Literary/Film Festival

Thursday 15th April 2010 1pm
LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA
Author: Gabriel Garcia Marquez Film Director: Mike Newell

"Love In The Time of Cholera has been called a masterpiece of sensuous prose, because of its ability to summon up the textures, sensual pleasures, tastes, and smells associated with living in a particular place at a particular time." "Love in the Time of Cholera: Introduction." Novels for Students. Ed. Marie Rose Napierkowski. Vol. 1. Detroit: Gale, 1998. eNotes.com. January 2006. 2 March 2010. .

Does the film create a sense of time and place through its visual language and is the significance of the title of the book portrayed in the film?

Is it love or cholera that is the ailment?