How silly I feel not to have been reading Filmbrain all along! My eye jumped immediately to this post about Charlie and the Chocolate Factory:

When talk of a remake first surfaced some years back, naturally Filmbrain was full of woe -- why would they bother? When it was revealed that Tim Burton would be directing, there were glimmers of hope -- surely the man who brought us Pee-wee's Big Adventure and Beetle Juice was an ideal candidate (actually, Filmbrain thought David Lynch would be a better choice). Then the rumors started flying around the Internet -- robot Oompa Loompas, Marilyn Manson as Wonka, etc. Then came Big Fish, which was syrupy-coated Burton, and a tremendous letdown for many of his fans. Would he ever be able to return to his darker, more playful former self?

Well, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is finally here, and the good news is that it's far, far better than Filmbrain imagined it would be. However... more.

Here's Anthony Lane's review of the movie; Lane makes some good jokes, which suggests that he's in air-conditioning somewhere. He's got the book clearly in mind, too, and that makes for some sound criticism; after noting Burton's dizzying visual style, Lane writes: "Roald Dahl was a man of speed. His imagination was fat as a pig, but his literary method was lean.... Dahl inherited from Dickens a direct feed into the terrors and wishful thinking of the young." It's very good. I've generally preferred Denby, but this review is as light and well-made as a Cadbury Flake.

I'm sad to say I can't say the same about the recent piece on Dahl by Margaret Talbot, which I did not like at all. (This isn't a blanket dismissal of Talbot; her numerous praiseworthy affiliations aside, I've liked stuff of hers.) I'm supposed to be packing for Canada right now, so I won't elaborate except to say she can't seem to figure out which side to take on the several and not very compelling Dahl Controversies she names. If I were writing a longer post, I'd count up her use of phrases like "most parents..." and "the average adult..." and "generally, readers..." I don't think I need to explain why I was so startled to read even one sentence of the kind in The New Yorker. (OK, one example: "Dahl is brilliant at evoking the childhood obsession with candy, which most adults can recall only vaguely." I think Hilary Liftin and Steve Almond would have something to say about that.)

It's a frustrating piece because it's about something I love—Dahl, his books, his characters, the transition from child fan to adult recommender/parent/reader—but, like a Tootsie Pop I encountered in the mid-'80s, it lacks a center. You know how sometimes you get the sense a story was rushed into print for some reason, or the author submitted a rewrite at the last minute and the editor had to scramble to smooth it out again, or the piece was constructed from a bunch of emails and notes and never quite jelled into something with a beginning, middle, and end? I have no idea what the tale is here, but something's amiss, and I was disheartened by the result. Not to mention that Talbot more than buries the lede—Jeremy Treglown's charge that Dahl was "a fantasist, an anti-Semite, a bully and a self-publicizing trouble-maker" is listed way after far fluffier objections. (Here's a simple but interesting perspective on the various serious charges against Dahl; this Beliefnet article lays out the charges concisely and responds thoughtfully.) And comparing Dahl's short fiction for adults to "Twilight Zone" episodes, even favorably (as Talbot does here), is an injustice to his best nuanced, deliciously sadistic stories of sex, deception, tattoos, cruelty, pickpockets, greyhounds, marriage, and corrupt antiques dealers. I'll elaborate when I can, because this piece is a real anomaly, and it could have been a pip. Odd.

As for the movie, I'm slightly wary—who decided it should be another head film?—but of course I'll see it. There's a terrific e-mail forum in the current issue of PEN America in which Jonathan Franzen, Hendrik Hertzberg, Tony Hiss, Mindy Aloff, and Mark Alan Stamaty, among others, submit their favorite movie adaptations of works of literature. Totally satisfying.