| Adaptation (Superbit Collection) | 
| Actors: Jim Beaver, Nicolas Cage, Chris Cooper, Brian Cox, Gary Farmer
Studio: Sony Pictures
Category: DVD
List Price: $14.94
Buy New: $1.85
You Save: $13.09 (88%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:   (313 reviews)
Sales Rank: 8333
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, Dvd-video, Subtitled, Widescreen, Ntsc
Languages: English (Original Language), French (Original Language), English (Subtitled), French (Subtitled), French (Dubbed)
Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: DVD
Running Time: 114 minutes
Number Of Items: 1
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5.4 x 0.5
MPN: COLD07601D
ISBN: 0767879805
UPC: 043396076013
EAN: 9780767879804
ASIN: B00005JLRE
Release Date: May 20, 2003
Theatrical Release Date: January 10, 2003
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Description
The Superbit titles utilize a special high bit rate digital encoding process which optimizes video quality while offering a choice of both DTS and Dolby Digital 5.1 audio. These titles have been produced by a team of Sony Pictures Digital Studios video, sound and mastering engineers and comes housed in a special package complete with a 4 page booklet that contains technical information on the Superbit process. By reallocating space on the disc normally used for value-added content, Superbit DVDs can be encoded at double their normal bit rate while maintaining full compatibility with the DVD video format.
Amazon.com
Twisty brilliance from screenwriter Charlie Kaufman and director Spike Jonze, the team who created Being John Malkovich. Nicolas Cage returns to form with a funny, sad, and sneaky performance as Charlie Kaufman, a self-loathing screenwriter who has been hired to adapt Susan Orlean's book The Orchid Thief into a screenplay. Frustrated and infatuated by Orlean's elegant but plotless book (which is largely a rumination on flowers), Kaufman begins to write a screenplay about himself trying to write a screenplay about The Orchid Thief, all the while hounded by his twin brother Donald (Cage again), who's cheerfully writing the kind of formulaic action movie that Kaufman finds repugnant. By its conclusion, Adaptation is the most artistically ambitious, most utterly cynical, and most uncategorizable movie ever to come out of Hollywood. Also starring Meryl Streep (as Susan Orlean), Chris Cooper, Tilda Swinton, and Brian Cox; superb performances throughout. --Bret Fetzer
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| Customer Reviews: Read 308 more reviews...
 A movie without a script October 17, 2008
This is the story of how to write a screenplay from a book without a story. It is a desperate and obsessive research of emotions, of meanings, of love in the documentary "The Orchid Thief" that corresponds to an intimate research of itself that will culminate in the complete fusion between the story he is writing and his own life.
This movie should be just about flowers and nothing else, Charlie Kaufman (Nicolas Cage) says but it became a movie about its own script. It is original and explore the creativity of an artist.
 Not for the Casual Surface Dweller October 13, 2008
This movie Rocks! I can honestly say it is one of the most inspiring and intelligent movies of the decade. If you've ever been in a relationship (any will do) where you felt squashed and unable to breathe; due to your own inequities or imagined; Charlie Kaufman will free the jar of captured fireflies just for you; Meryl Streep is superb! Chris Cooper made me weep. I wrote a poem just for Charlie Kaufman once b/c I truly understand how he feels. All I can say is that I could watch this movie every day and not get bored.
A great film by Charlie Kaufman...so what's new? October 2, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This movie is absolutely great. It has great humor, action, and drama...not to mention, Nicholas Cage is actually good in it. Yes, the same Nicholas Cage guilty of having the worst fake accent EVER (in Con-Air) is really believable (and funny, in the case of Donald Kaufman) in this movie. The rest of the cast is also great, and the script is just plain brilliant. You can tell Kaufman had fun writing this one, and it is a hell of a lot of fun to watch.
 Mediocre September 25, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Adaptation was a highly lauded film, critically, but nowhere near a great film. Yes, Chris Cooper won an Oscar for his turn as botanist John LaRoche, & it is a good performance until the film tanks, as well as his acting. Again, it's no defense to claim the screenplay or director wanted deliberately bad, hammy, over-the-top acting. Anyone who's seen CC in earlier roles in John Sayles films such as Matewan or Lone Star knows he is 1 of the best actors of our times. Adaptation is not in a league with either of those 2 performances. Anyway, here's the basic precis of the film: The L.A. screenwriter of the film Being John Malkovich- Charlie Kaufman (played by Nicolas Cage)- is having trouble adapting the next film assignment he's been given. The book is a non-fiction best-seller called The Orchid Thief, written by a Susan Orlean (Meryl Streep)- a writer for The New Yorker- about an oddball character, who is obsessed with orchids, she was sent to profile for a magazine piece. This is CC's LaRoche character. The book (a real book, by the way) proves difficult to adapt- for both its substance & its style. So the fictional CK character is stuck. Now, here's the 1st twist: the real CK, who wrote the actual film, decided to create a fictional twin brother for the fictional version of himself. This character is Donald Kaufman (also played by Nicolas Cage). Here's where the 1st problems with the film arises- & it's not about Post-Modernism, but then the film exploits every known cliche about writers & twins. CK has writer's block, & suffers, & is an outcast, filled with angst, & a putz around pretty women. His brother is his near exact opposite- smooth, witty, uncreative, not-too bright, yet he tries to mimic his brother by becoming a screenwriter & working on the text for a dull slasher film. CK, of course, disdains & looks down upon DK.
Of course, the rest of the film follows a pretty predictable track, even as it intercuts between the artistic dilemmas of the 2 brothers, CK's going to a screenwriting guru (at DK's behest), & the presumed `real' tale of John LaRoche & SO's profiling of him. Predictability sets in when CK's artistic paralysis increases, DK's screenplay is lauded as brilliant by CK's agent & he gets a huge advance, then CK turns to his brother for advice on how to finish his adaptation of The Orchid Thief. DK ends up going to interview SO about the book, posing as CK- who requested it. DK suspects that SO is a liar & hiding her true feelings for JL. This is where the film really tanks- what happens next is so predictable I feel almost foolish extrapolating- but here goes: this is where DK's `influence' on the real `outer' screenplay is felt. De facto- this is where the real Charlie Kaufman (not the NC version) felt he could slack off, & indulge all his worst instincts & fob off the film's failings on the Post-Modernist crutch. Let me chart the precipitous plunge. Basically, SO & JL turn out to be drug-addled lovers who capture the spying CK (who's followed SO to Florida with his brother to see what she's up to). They plan to murder him & dump him in the swamps where JL went hunting orchids. DK, of course, kiboshes the plan & both twins become the hunted. DK ends up dead, along with JL, & CK heads back to L.A. for the film's denouement, to explain lessons learned. The fictive DK is credited as co-writer & the film even ends with a memorial dedication to the dead fictive writer.
Here is where the film's advocates declaim its brilliance- that the film is actually mocking predictability by being predictable because, of course, this was the fictional DK's influence. That the real film does not tell us more about the interesting characters from the actual book is glossed over in favor of the real CK's presumption of his own (or his fictive self's) interestingness is treated as some artistic breakthrough, when it's really an infantile throwback to the `art' films of the 1960s & 1970s. The best performance in the film actually comes from perpetually underrated standout actor Brian Cox, as the screenwriting guru Robert McKee who inspires DK, then CK. There are the obligatory star cameos by actors from Being John Malkovich playing themselves- including director Spike Jonze, John Malkovich, Catherine Keener, John Cusack, & the real Susan Orlean playing a woman in a grocery store.
You don't have to be dumb to hate this one. September 24, 2008
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
I guess if you think you're smart and an extreme film buff, then you could go with the flow of critics and give this one 5 stars, but if you're looking for anything even remotely entertaining as "Being John Malchovich", then you will be sorely sorry you decided on this piece of fluff.
The story moves at a snails pace, the acting is sub-par(Don't even know why Chris Cooper got an Oscar) and the only chemistry going for it, is Nicolas Cage playing off of...Nicolas Cage.
It's not as smart or intellectually stimulating as "Malchovich", and I know it's not the same movie, but when you have the same director and writer, you do expect something close to being as original and funny as "Being John".
Skip it, you won't miss anything in this over-hyped and uninteresting film.
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