Author Paul Clifford

Paul Clifford is a Highschool English teacher, avid film/music/literature fan, world traveller, and proud father of two! You can read more of his work at ‘Eloquent Graffiti’ on a variety of subjects that include education, parenting, and film analysis.

Special Edition
1

George Bluestone, the father of criticism in the field of ‘novel to film’ adaptation suggests that, “changes are inevitable the moment one abandons the linguistic for the visual medium” (Novels into Film). Somehow, acknowledging this fact doesn’t make it any easier when we wander into a theatre to view a film ‘based on’ one of our favourite stories! Are there any stories so precious to you that the announcement of a film adaptation causes you to shutter?

Special Edition
2

In The Dark Knight, the middle film in Christopher Nolan’s masterful, genre-defining Batman trilogy, Harvey Dent argues that, “you either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.” At the film’s climax, these words serve as self-fulfilling prophecy, and Batman accepts the mantle of villain, allowing Gotham City to memorialize her ‘hero’, Harvey Dent. Redemption on a grand scale–for our anti-hero and the city that rejected him–fuels the action and the intrigue in the story’s final chapter, The Dark Knight Rises.