|
Lemony Snicket's a Series of Unfortunate Events - the bad
beginning
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Movie
| Book
| Author
| Director
& cast
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Book: Lemony Snicket's a Series of Unfortunate Events - the bad
beginning (1999)
Movie: Lemony Snicket's a Series of Unfortunate Events (2004)
Official website:
http://www.lemonysnicket.com/index.cfm
Premise
movie:
"This is the story of the Bauedelaires, three young
orphans, Violet (Browning), Klaus (Aiken) and Sunny, looking for a new
home, who are taken in by a series of odd relatives and other people,
including Lemony Snicket, who narrates the film, and starting with the
cunning and dastardly Count Olaf (Carrey), who hopes to snatch their
inheritance from them. Violet is the oldest of the Baudelaires at 14,
and is their brave and fast-thinking leader. The only boy is middle
child Klaus, 12, who is intensely intelligent and obsessed with words.
The youngest is infant Sunny, who speaks in a language only
her siblings can understand, and she has a tendency to, bite..."
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Premise
book:
"Make no mistake. The Bad Beginning begins badly for the
three Baudelaire children, and then gets worse. Their misfortunes
begin one gray day on Briny Beach when Mr. Poe tells them that their
parents perished in a fire that destroyed their whole house. "It is
useless for me to describe to you how terrible Violet, Klaus, and even
Sunny felt in the time that followed," laments the personable
(occasionally pedantic) narrator, who tells the story as if his
readers are gathered around an armchair on pillows. But of course what
follows is dreadful. The children thought it was bad when the
well-meaning Poes bought them grotesque-colored clothing that itched.
But when they are ushered to the dilapidated doorstep of the
miserable, thin, unshaven, shiny-eyed, money-grubbing Count
Olaf, they know that they--and their family fortune--are in real trouble. Still,
they could never have anticipated how much trouble. While it's true
that the events that unfold in Lemony Snicket's novels are bleak, and
things never turn out as you'd hope, these delightful, funny,
linguistically playful books are reminiscent of Roald Dahl (remember
James and the Giant Peach and his horrid spinster aunts), Charles
Dickens (the orphaned Pip in Great Expectations without the mysterious
benefactor), and Edward Gorey (The Gashlycrumb Tinies). There is no
question that young readers will want to read the continuing unlucky
adventures of the Baudelaire children in The Reptile Room and The Wide
Window."
from:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/
0064407667/ref=pd_sbs_b_1/103-9731806-0230248?
%5Fencoding=UTF8&v=glance
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Author:
"Daniel Handler a.k.a. Lemony Snicket (born February 28, 1970
in San Francisco, California) is an American author, screenwriter, and
accordionist. He graduated from Wesleyan University in 1992. His
novels are The Basic Eight and Watch Your Mouth; they are comedies
with a Gothic mood and rather adult subject matter. His screenplays
were produced as the 2003 films Rick (based on the Verdi opera
Rigoletto) and Kill the Poor (based on the novel by Joel Rose). His
accordion playing can be heard most notably on The Magnetic Fields'
album, 69 Love Songs. He lives in a 1907 Victorian house on a steep
hill in San Francisco, California. Under the pen name Lemony
Snicket, Handler has written a series of children's novels, A Series of
Unfortunate Events. Handler has also developed Snicket the narrator as
a character, referring to him in the third person, ascribing character
traits to him, and even writing a book entitled Lemony Snicket: The
Unauthorized Autobiography. (The U.S. hardcover edition of this book
has a reversible dust jacket so that it can be "disguised" as The
Luckiest Kids in the World Book 1!: The Pony Party by
"Loney M. Setnick".) Handler originally came up with "Lemony Snicket" as a pseudonym to use
rather than placing his real name on the mailing lists of several
right-wing organizations he was researching for one of his novels. It
became something of an in-joke with his friends, who were known to
order pizzas under the name. When he found himself writing a series of
children's books, he decided to use the Snicket name to add an air of
mystery to proceedings; Lemony Snicket is an elusive figure. Handler
has a considerable amount of fun with the Snicket character in the
author biography sections of the books, in a page at the end of every
book where Snicket makes complicated arrangements for the delivery of
the manuscript of the next book to his publisher, on the Lemony
Snicket website and in Snicket's Unauthorized Autobiography. He is
described, among other things, as having been born beside the sea and
now living underneath it, as a distinguished scholar, and as having
been stripped of the Honorable Mention and the Grey Ribbon.
Photographs of Snicket are shown, but are always taken from behind,
except that in The Unauthorized Autobiography there is a photograph of
the crew of a ship (whose names all seem to be those of famous
authors), with a caption indicating that Snicket is in the photo, but
the face of the sailor said to be Snicket has been mysteriously torn
from the photograph."
from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Handler
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Director:
Brad Silberling
Cast:
Jim Carrey (Count Olaf), Meryl Streep (Aunt Josephine), Jude
Law (Lemony Snicket voice), Emily Browning (Violet Baudelaire), Liam
Aiken (Klaus Baudelaire), Kara Hoffman (Sunny), Shelby Hoffman (Sunny), Timothy Spall (Mr. Poe), Billy Connolly (Uncle Monty), Catherine
O'Hara (Justice Strauss) and others.
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