Mr. Frostybum Strikes Again

As though being the 2nd place runner for cinemaworld's equivalent of Robert Pollard (behind Takashi Miike, natch) weren't enough, the ever-prolific Michael Winterbottom has chosen as his next project an adaptation of Laurence Sterne's The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy. (With Steve Coogan!) For those not familiar with the multi-volumed doorstop, it's one of the earliest examples of postmodernism. In fact, quake in your chair as I tell you it hails from the 18th century. Which begs the question: is it delusional for Winterbottom (and erstwhile scribe Frank Cottrell Boyce) to think he can make anything of the book -- whose charms and attributes are purely literary -- if he attacks it in his usual plow-through fashion? Or is that the exact kind of attitude -- devil-may-care, wholly instinctual, not over-thinking anything -- the screamingly unfilmable novel requires if it absolutely has to be movie-ized? Discuss.

While I continue to wonder if the word "freedom" has lost all meaning thanks to Bush II, here's my crap in the Weekly this round:
* An A-List on a marathon of Davey and Goliath shorts. I want to thank the internet for providing clips of a show I haven't seen since 1983.
* In the "Who's this for exactly?" department: an article outlining some suggestions on how to become a drooling cineaste. Placed smack dab at the beginning of the succinct Education Supplement, it's very probably the least self-depricating piece I've ever written that had a personal backbone. It also used to be gobs more suffocatingly self-righteous.
* Continuing my January dumping grounds purgatory, a review of Are We There Yet?.
* A fairly meaty Repertory.