About thirteen or fourteen years ago I read Porno, Irvine Welsh's sequel to Trainspotting. I thought it was excellent, and wished they'd make a film of it, though it was hard to see how they could given that much of the plot was devoted to the project of making a pornographic film.
But the real story is of the reunion of Renton, Sick Boy, Spud, and Begbie. And they finally did make a film of it. And I kept putting off watching it, because I wanted to be in the right mood, though I didn't know what that mood was.
Tonight, it turns out, I must have been in that mood.
So the double feature tonight was Trainspotting (1996), which I first saw in the cinema when it came out and which I have loved since that evening. And then T2 Trainspotting (2017).
The first is of course excellent. And the second, it turns out, is also excellent, even if they did miss out the porn, though only by switching to prostitution instead
There are very few films to which I award the title "As good as a film as the book is as a book"; a category I invented when I realised that, films and books being so different, it wasn't fair to compare the two directly. I invented the category to describe my opinion of both the book and the film One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, and there are very few films based on books that make it in. But Trainspotting did (though admittedly I read the book after seeing the film in that case), and so does T2 Trainspotting.
It's a great reflection on how we change yet remain the same as we age, and the ways we come to understand that by seeing it in others we knew when we were younger. And I think it also knowingly challenges the audience to reflect on how they responded to the first film, and how they respond to both it and the new film now, and how the stories thereby tell them something about themselves. And it was only when watching it that I realised that those were the true themes of the book, not the (very funny) story of the porn film they were trying to make. And it's also good fun
After that: The West Wing double episode thing. Good enough, but not one of the best ones.
Goodnight all
But the real story is of the reunion of Renton, Sick Boy, Spud, and Begbie. And they finally did make a film of it. And I kept putting off watching it, because I wanted to be in the right mood, though I didn't know what that mood was.
Tonight, it turns out, I must have been in that mood.
So the double feature tonight was Trainspotting (1996), which I first saw in the cinema when it came out and which I have loved since that evening. And then T2 Trainspotting (2017).
The first is of course excellent. And the second, it turns out, is also excellent, even if they did miss out the porn, though only by switching to prostitution instead
There are very few films to which I award the title "As good as a film as the book is as a book"; a category I invented when I realised that, films and books being so different, it wasn't fair to compare the two directly. I invented the category to describe my opinion of both the book and the film One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, and there are very few films based on books that make it in. But Trainspotting did (though admittedly I read the book after seeing the film in that case), and so does T2 Trainspotting.
It's a great reflection on how we change yet remain the same as we age, and the ways we come to understand that by seeing it in others we knew when we were younger. And I think it also knowingly challenges the audience to reflect on how they responded to the first film, and how they respond to both it and the new film now, and how the stories thereby tell them something about themselves. And it was only when watching it that I realised that those were the true themes of the book, not the (very funny) story of the porn film they were trying to make. And it's also good fun
After that: The West Wing double episode thing. Good enough, but not one of the best ones.
Goodnight all
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