Kathryn's Inbox

Sigh. Just checked IMDB and it appears that the new film adaption of Great Expectations won't be released in Australia until early March. (What, you mean I have to wait how long ...) I have no idea yet how faithful it will be to the book, but the short previews I've seen so far look promising. And all that made me stop and think about some of the greatest film adaptions of my favourite books. So here they are: Rebecca (1940) Alfred Hitchcock's first Hollywood film retains all of the suspense and mystery of Daphne Du Maurier's novel. (But can we expect anything less of a Hitchcock film?) There is also a fantastic little twist at the very end, that I'm sure Ms Du Maurier would have approved of. Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) Peter Weir's film perfectly captures the mystery and eeriness of the book. Beautifully shot in Victoria and South Australia. A Room With a View (1985) Beautifully shot, visually pleasing and faithful to the book....

Whew, who would have thought that a whole week would go by without any updates on here. Damn, that review on He's Just Not That Into You  must have really got me rattled. I still think the book was a whole lot of rubbish, pushing one silly and oversimplified catch phrase. Anyway, I'll move on to the next book for review, the delightfully mysterious Picnic at Hanging Rock  by Joan Lindsay. Like pretty much everyone who studied English Literature at a South Australian high school in the late 1990s, I first encountered this book at school. I was drawn in to the mystery of what happened to the three girls and their teacher who disappeared during a school picnic at Hanging Rock. Rereading this book as an adult, after finding it for twenty cents at a secondhand store was a revelation. There is no denying that Picnic at Hanging Rock is creepy. From Edith's hysteria to the subplot where the headmistress murders a student to the style in which the book is written (in the for...