Highsmith Again

25 years after Claude Chabrol's dull-as-dirt version, Patricia Highsmith's novel The Cry of the Owl is making its way back to movie screens.

The new adaptation will star Julia Stiles as the wack-job attracted to peeping tom Paddy Considine. Thankfully, Anthony Minghella is in his grave and therefore cannot be hired to ruin this movie the same way he ruined Highsmith's The Talented Mr. Ripley, a terse and enigmatic book that Minghella managed to turn into a pretty, brainless travelogue of Italy.

Chuck Berry once said, "Beware middlebrows with guitars." I saw, "Beware middlebrows with movie cameras, especially when they don't understand down-and-dirty, reportage-style pulp storytelling."