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Features: DVD, Widescreen, Aspect Ratio 2.35:1, Dolby Digital (5.1), English, Subtitled, French, Dubbed & Subtitled
Director Spike Jonze delivers a stunningly original comedy that seamlessly blends fictional characters and situations with the lives of real people: obsessive orchid hunter John Laroche (Cooper), New Yorker journalist Susan Orlean (Streep), Hollywood screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (Cage), and his twin brother Donald (also Cage). As Charlie struggles to adapt Orlean's best-selling book "The Orchid Thief," he writes himself into his own movie. The various stories crash into one another exploding into a wildly imaginative film. ADAPTATION, the year's most talked about movie, is at once a hilarious drama and a moving comedy.System Requirements:Starring: Nicolas Cage, Meryl Streep, Tilda Swinton, and Chris Cooper. Directed By: Spike Jonze. Running Time: 115 Min., Color. This film is presented in "Widescreen" format. Copyright 2003 Columbia Tri-Star.Format: DVD MOVIE
"Two Very Enthusiastic Thumbs Up!" Ebert & Roeper
"Cage, Streep and Cooper give their strongest performances in years..." Jeffrey Anderson, San Francisco Examiner
"Smart, inventive, passionate and rip-roaringly funny... An altogether remarkable movie." Peter Travers, Rolling Stone
Editor's Note
Following up their acclaimed debut, BEING JOHN MALKOVICH, screenwriter Charlie Kaufman and director Spike Jonze are back to metaphysical moviemaking with ADAPTATION. The film stars Nicolas Cage as both Charlie Kaufman himself and his fictionalized identical twin brother, Donald Kaufman. While the boisterous Donald freeloads off of his sibling and works on a serial-killer movie script, Charlie is tormented by both his own army of neuroses and his new project, adapting THE ORCHID THIEF by Susan Orlean into a screenplay. As Charlie struggles to shape the nonfiction novel into a film, he begins writing himself into the story of Orlean (Meryl Streep), a sad-eyed journalist, and her subject, renegade Florida flower expert John Laroche (Chris Cooper). The resulting tale extends far beyond the scope of the book, stretching from Hollywood to New York to...Hollywood four billion years ago.Equally as inventive as BEING JOHN MALKOVICH, ADAPTATION revels in its gloriously absurd premise. Kaufman and Jonze skillfully sidestep the pitfalls of such a seemingly self-indulgent project, creating a multilayered film that focuses on the writing process as well as the nature of beauty, the beauty of nature, and dozens of other significant themes. Cage makes a stunning return to pre-Bruckheimer form in the roles of the Kaufman brothers, giving their identical appearances completely different personalities and making them believable to boot. Meanwhile, the consistently excellent Streep and the often underrated Cooper are perfectly matched as Orlean and Laroche. Even the less central roles are played by great actors--Brian Cox, Tilda Swinton, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Ron Livingston appear as supporting characters. Careening wildly between the hilarious, the ridiculous, and the poignant, Kaufman and Jonze's ADAPTATION is another fine example of their bravura yet sincere style of cinema.
| Features | Animated Menus | | Scene Selection | | High bit rate digital transfer process that optimizes video quality | | Subtitles: English, French | | Cast & Filmmaker Filmographies | | Trailer | | Digitally Mastered Audio & Anarmorphic Video | | Mastered in High Definition | | Audio: English Dolby Digital 5.1, DTS 5.1, Dolby Digital Surround, Dolby Digital Stereo, French Dolby Digital 5.1 |
| Technical Info
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Release Information
| | Studio: Columbia Tri-Star |
| Release Date: 10/23/2007 |
| Running Time: 115 minutes |
| Original Release Date: 2002 | | Catalog ID: 07601 | | UPC: 00043396076013 | | Number of Discs: 1 |
Audio & Video
| | Original Language: English | | Available Audio Tracks: English, French Dubbed | | Available Subtitles: English, French | | Video: Color |
Aspect Ratio | | 2.35:1 |
| Cast & Crew
| Awards |
Oscar (2003) |  | Chris Cooper, Winner, Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role | | | Nicolas Cage, Nominee, Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role | | | Meryl Streep, Nominee, Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role | | | Charlie and Donald Kaufman, Nominee, Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material Previously Produced or Published | |
Golden Globe (2003) | | Chris Cooper, Winner, Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture |
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| | Professional Reviews | Rolling Stone
"...Few scripts toss more challenging balls in the air, and Jonze juggles them all with artful, light-stepping ease. It's magic..." 12/12/2002 p.105New York Times
"...Mr. Cage and Mr. Jonze share a casual, daredevil sensibility, and the two of them -- or should I say the three of them? -- pull off one of the most amazing technical stunts in recent film history..." 12/06/2002 p.E1 USA Today
"...Cage gives one of his best performances..." 12/06/2002 p.7E Entertainment Weekly
"...[Featuring] Nicolas Cage in his lightest, loosest, best performance since MOONSTRUCK....ADAPTATION demonstrates that Kaufman, the real Charlie Kaufman, has a rare and really weird talent....The guy is fun..." 12/06/2002 p.65-6 Los Angeles Times
"...The boldest and most imaginative studio film of the year..." 12/06/2002 p.C1 Box Office
"...A wickedly funny movie....It's refreshingly unique..." 01/01/2003 p.56 Premiere
"...ADAPTATION is life-affirming..." 01/01/2003 p.18-19 Variety
"...Every bit as clever and surprising as MALKOVICH....Streep gives a quietly alert performance that permits emotional revelation in well-judged stages..." 11/11/2002 p.25-8 Total Film
"...It has all the pleasing confusion of an optical illusion....A dizzying, unique work..." 03/01/2003 p.102 Wall Street Journal
"Ms. Streep and Mr. Cooper deserve on another, and that's meant as high praise for both." 08/07/2009 L.A. Times 7 of 10
It's typical of the nerve, the bravado, the sheer giddy playfulness and sense of fun that characterize what has to be the boldest and most imaginative studio film of the year that Adaptation, written by Charlie Kaufman, starts with a character plaintively asking, "Do I have an original thought in my head?" - Kenneth Turan
Washington Post 8 of 10
Screenwriter Charlie Kaufman and director Spike Jonze (the inspired duo that made Being John Malkovichi) have created a fun-undrum of a movie that's full of stories within stories, ideas within ideas, questions within questions and metaphors within metaphors. It's the cinematic equivalent of those Russian wooden dolls that pack neatly inside one another. You're invited to pull them out, one by one, spread them in any configuration you'd like, and decide what this movie is about. - Desson Howe
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