It’s Oscar month, and in honour of cinema’s big night, On the Shelf is changing things up a bit and profiling all the wonderful works of literature that served as source material for this year’s most nominated films.
The Revenant (Picador)
By Michael Punke
Photo Credit: Picador
For the second year in a row, Birdman helmer Alejandro González Iñárritu comes to the Oscars with the most buzzed film, dominating the major categories with nominations for Best Picture, Director, Supporting Actor Tom Hardy and of course, Lead Actor Leonardo DiCaprio. The role that’s all but guaranteed to break DiCaprio’s Oscar slump is famously based on the real-life survival story of 19th-century frontiersman Hugh Glass, who was abandoned by his cohorts in the unforgiving winter wilderness after being viciously mauled by a bear.
But the film itself is actually based on Michael Punke’s fictionalized account of Glass’s exploits, a novel which varies significantly from the events of the film, including one key difference that casts Glass’s thirst for revenge in an entirely new light.
By Andy Weir
Photo Credit: Crown/Archetype
The Academy was moved by another, far more playful survival tale this year, a film that has its origins back in 2011, when software engineer Andy Weir self-published this smart, funny and altogether exhilarating debut novel. It follows Mark Watney, an astronaut accidentally left behind on a manned mission to Mars; with limited supplies and the next ship over 400 days away, he must use his can-do spirit, PhD in Botany and unflappable sense of humour to hold on until NASA can figure out a way to save him. It’s a deeply endearing character that earned a well-deserved Best Actor nom for Matt Damon, whose everyman charisma has never been put to better use.
By The Investigative Staff of The Boston Globe
A fact-based throwback to the classic 1970s journalism flicks, Spotlight has netted noms for Best Picture, Director (Tom McCarthy), as well as Supporting Actors Rachel McAdams and Mark Ruffalo, who along with Michael Keaton bring to life The Boston Globe’s special investigative unit Spotlight; it’s a team that, in 2001, shocked both their city and the world by uncovering years of widespread child sexual abuse by Catholic priests and the subsequent cover-up by the Boston Archdiocese. This book, written by the reporters themselves, meticulously details every step of their Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation.
By Michael Lewis
Another Best Picture heavyweight after taking top prize at the Producers Guild Awards, The Big Short is based on Moneyball author Lewis’s funny, fascinating and ultimately infuriating account of the 2008 meltdown as seen through the eyes of an unlikely group of Wall Street eccentrics (including Supporting Actor contender Christian Bale) who saw the impending housing bubble was about to burst and bet against the market, ultimately profiting from the biggest financial disaster of our time.
In the film, Best Director nominee Adam McKay understandably felt the need to simplify the complex financial machinations that were at play with a series of tongue-in-cheek celebrity cameos (most memorably, Margot Robbie in a bubble bath), but if you’d like a more in-depth explanation of how American banks defrauded the public and got away scot-free, you can’t do better than this book.
By Colm Tóibín
Nearly nine years after her first nomination for Atonement, 21-year old Saoirse Ronan is back in the thick of the Oscar race for this stirring immigrant’s tale based on Irish author Tóibín’s 2009 novel. It’s the 1950s-set story of a young Irish woman named Ellis who leaves her family and travels to the titular city in search of new opportunities. Battling through heartrending homesickness, she eventually meets and falls for a charming Italian plumber. Soon enough, however, a tragedy calls her back to the motherland, where an unexpected romance leaves her torn between her old life and her new one.
Strangers on a Bridge (Scribner)
By James Donovan
Saving Private Ryan dream team Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks reunited to cover a different kind of war in Bridge of Spies, another Best Picture nominee. Hanks plays James Donovan, an attorney who becomes the unlikely advocate for Rudolph Abel (Supporting Actor hopeful Mark Rylance), one of the most effective Soviet spies ever captured on American soil during the Cold War. Braving death threats from his own countrymen, Donovan mounted a vigorous defense for Abel and eventually played an integral role in having him sent back to the USSR in exchange for two American prisoners, after a lengthy and complex negotiation process.
The film is partially based on this memoir written by Donovan in 1964, which offers a more detailed look at both the author and the men he took it upon himself to save.
By Emma Donoghue
Irish indie specialist Lenny Abrahamson found his biggest mainstream success to date with this tender, harrowing drama about five-year-old Jack (Canadian newcomer Jacob Tremblay) whose entire concept of the world begins and ends with the decrepit shack in which he and his Ma (Brie Larson) have been held captive since the day he was born. Abrahamson, Tremblay and Larson combine to craft perhaps the most deeply moving mother-son bond in cinematic history (Larson is, for good reason, the odds-on favourite to take home this year’s Best Actress trophy).
It’s a bond viewers can explore even more intimately by picking up Irish-Canadian author Emma Donoghue’s acclaimed 2010 novel, which also offers a deeper view into its young narrator’s limited yet magical understanding of the world.
The Danish Girl (Penguin)
By David Ebershoff
The King’s Speech director Tom Hooper applied his visually sumptuous style to American novelist David Ebershoff’s highly fictionalized account of early-20th century Danish painter Einar Wegener (Best Actor contender Eddie Redmayne), one of the first people in history to undergo sexual reassignment surgery. Along with his wife/fellow artist Gerda (fellow nominee Alicia Vikander), Einar struggles to come to terms with his evolving sense of self while Gerda, though supportive, must watch the man she loves slowly transform into someone else.
Steve Jobs: A Biography (Simon & Schuster)
By Walter Isaacson
In crafting this definitive portrait of the Apple co-founder (Best Actor hopeful Michael Fassbender), screenwriter Aaron Sorkin relied largely on Walter Isaacson, who, in writing this biography, was given unprecedented access to the people closest to Jobs and even got the notorious control freak’s blessing to craft a true warts-and-all account. What emerges on both screen and page is the story of a trailblazer who changed the course of all our lives while making life a living hell for his friends, family and coworkers with his obsessive, egotistical and often downright despicable behaviour.
Trumbo (Grand Central Publishing)
By Bruce Alexander Cook
A four-time Emmy winner for Breaking Bad, Bryan Cranston gets his first chance at an Oscar with Trumbo, a handsomely shot account of screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, the pen behind such iconic films as Spartacus. Following the Second World War, with communist paranoia on the rise, Trumbo was blacklisted for refusing to name names before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Standing firmly by his beliefs but now banned from working in Hollywood, Trumbo would continue churning out masterpieces on the sly, while slowly battling his way back from exile.
Cook’s titular biography takes us even further into this fascinating figure’s struggle against oppression, as well as his early years as a bootlegger and labour activist.
By Patricia Highsmith
Originally published in 1952 as The Price of Salt, this groundbreaking novel finally made its way to the screen last year, earning near-universal acclaim and Oscar noms for stars Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara. It follows the tentative romance that develops between young shopgirl Therese (Mara) and an elegant housewife named Carol (Blanchett) who catches her eye one day. Forced to contend with a society that’s not yet prepared to accept such things as well as Carol’s increasingly messy divorce, the two gradually forge a bond that’s among the sweetest and most authentic depictions of forbidden love ever composed.
All books available via chapters.indigo.ca.
Main Image Photo Credit: www.salon.com (books); AMPAS (Oscar statue)
Matthew Currie
Author
A long-standing entertainment journalist, Currie is a graduate of the Professional Writing program at Toronto’s York University. He has spent the past number of years working as a freelancer for ANOKHI and for diverse publications such as Sharp, TV Week, CAA’s Westworld and BC Business. Currie ...
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