Ben Kingsley and Penelope Cruz star in Elegy, the adaptation of Philip Roth's The Dying Animal (Red Envelope Entertainment)

Elegy (opened August 22 at Landmark's Hillcrest Cinemas) is based on Philip Roth's book The Dying Animal and focuses on aging academic David Kepesh and his affair with a student. The character of Kepesh has appeared in two other Roth works: The Breast and The Professor of Desire. As with most of Roth's books, the focus and the perspective are distinctly male. But what gives the new film adaptation of The Dying Animal a fresh spin is that it has been brought to the screen thanks mainly to a pair of women: actress Penelope Cruz and director Isabel Coixet.

When a high school threatens to cut drama from the curriculum, a teacher puts on a show to save the department. Unfortunately, the play involves Shakespeare and a Jesus who dances like Elvis. If that sounds politically incorrect, it is in the new comedy Hamlet 2 (opening August 22 in select San Diego theaters). You can listen to my interview with British comedian Steve Coogan and director Andrew Fleming about pushing the envelope in comedy. I spoke with them right after they presented a panel on the film at Comic-Con.

Director Alexandre Aja (center) and Kiefer Sutherland (right) on the set of Mirrors (20th Century Fox)

Mirrors was not screened for critics and as of yet I haven't managed to get out to see it. But as a fan of horror I did want to let people know that the film was out. Not screening a horror film for the press does not necessarily mean that the studio thinks the film is bad (although that is often the case with other kinds of films that go unscreened). The reason is that horror films have such a built in audience that studios sometimes just don't see a benefit to pre-screening their product. (Plus directors like Eli Roth claims he doesn't like press screenings because too much info leaks out and ruins the scares.) As someone who liked Alexandre Aja's French film Haute Tension, I was looking forward to Mirrors and am hopeful that it will contains some solid scares. The director and cast members Kiefer Sutherland and Amy Smart did hold a press conference at the Hard Rock Hotel during Comic-Con (studios now try to piggyback onto Comic-Con, tapping into the vast number of press people there, even if they don't present a panel at the convention itself). Aja showed a few gore-soaked scenes in a room that had been beautifully draped in thick curtains and adorned with a multitude of mirrors (the backdrop reminded me of the Night Gallery show). But he didn't show enough to really give a sense of whether a level of tension and scares could be maintained. The clips only proved that he is unafraid of delivering gore to his horror fans.

The 1985 poster for The Breakfast Club and the initial poster designed for American Teen (Paramount Vantage)

The new documentary American Teen (opening August 8 at select theaters) is something of a real life Breakfast Club (you remember that John Hughes film about "a brain, a beauty, a jock, a rebel, and a recluse..."). American Teen focuses on five teens representing such school cliques as jocks, geeks, and the popular set. I spoke with director Nanette Burstein about capturing contemporary teen life for her film. You can listen to my radio feature or read the extended interview.

We all remember that iconic and epic film The Breakfast Club. Either you were born watching it or your parents got you into it or even the latest fad of being retro required you to have a large knowledge of whether you were a princess, a brain, a criminal, etc. So when you walked down the theatre aisle and saw this new movie poster for the latest documentary directed by Nanette Burstein, American Teen, you probably had to take a second look, to make sure that it isn't a remake. This documentary has been compared to the most famous 80s movie, but this film is most definitely not a remake. This movie, being a documentary, takes a world that has been displayed in fiction, and in over-dramatic television "reality" shows, and it offers a more in depth and sincere look at the lives of the modern high school teen. The film includes the cliques, struggling to graduate, and teen heartbreak. Overall this film is a great model of what preteens have to look forward to, what teenagers have to live through, and what adults have successfully survived. After I had seen this film I had the great opportunity of meeting and interviewing the director, Nanette Burstein. In the way she spoke of her subjects, I saw the love she had for them and it assured me that this director only had the truest intentions in what that life is like, and I was grateful that this woman chose to deliver this message.

-- Candace Kavanagh just graduated from Mount Miguel High School. She spends her life absorbing celluloid images. She loves every type of film from so-called "chick flicks" such as My Fair Lady and Legally Blonde, to mind bending thrillers like Mulholland Drive and Hard Candy -- with every zombie movie, action flick, musical, and comedy in between.

Serial killer or funny guy? Baghead (Sony Pictures Classics)

When Mark and Jay Duplass were shooting their first indie film The Puffy Chair, they had to make long drives back and forth from the set late at night through the woods. On one of those dark nights the discussion turned to what's scary.

Mark Duplass recalls, "Somebody piped up from the back of the van, ‘I think if you are sitting in your living room and you look out the window and a dude with a bag on his head is looking back at you that would be pretty terrifying.' Everybody started laughing but that night everybody was totally freaked out. The next morning that sensation that it's really funny and its kind of creepy too got us inspired to try and make some kind of horror comedy hybrid that had the most low-fi, stupidest villain ever." And so Baghead (opening August 1 at Landmark's Hillcrest Cinemas) was born.

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Actor Matthew Goode came to Comic-Con this past weekend to promote the upcoming adaptation of the graphic novel Watchmen. But he also had time to talk about his new role in another literary adaptation, that of Evelyn Waugh's 1945 novel Brideshead Revisited. Goode had literally just gotten off the plane before being brought to the Hard Rock Hotel's cabana for interviews, and he seemed a little punchy from the trip. He had no idea what would await him in Hall H for the panel on Watchmen, only that there were going to be a lot of people, and many fans of the graphic novel that he feared would grill him. British actor Matthew Goode had first impressed me as an actor when I saw him in The Lookout where he played a small-time American crook who took cruel advantage of the brain-damaged character played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt. That role followed on the heels of his role in Woody Allen's Match Point where he played a charming British rich kid. The contrast between the two roles was impressive. In fact, I didn't realize it was him in The Lookout until I read the end credits. Goode is proud of his work in The Lookout and says that without that film demonstrating his range he never would have gotten the role in Watchmen.

Here's what he had to say about working on Brideshead Revisited. I began by asking him if this latest adaptation brought something new to the story in comparison to the popular 1981 PBS mini series.

You can see a video of Goode discussing his work on Watchmen on our KPBS Comic-Con blog.

Wesley and Fox in Mark Millar's graphic novel Wanted (Top Cow)... and Wesley (James McAvoy) and Fox (Angelina Jolie) in the film version of Wanted (Universal). I know a few guys who would have liked to see Jolie in that outfit the comic book Fox wore.

Adapting anything from one medium to another is difficult because there's always a comparison to be made. The book was better because it was more complex, the TV show was better because it had more time to develop a storyline, the play was better because there was more respect for the dialogue... well you get the idea. But graphic novels provide a particular challenge because they essentially look like elaborate storyboards for movies. So in one respect the task sems easy, yet in another fans of the source material have very vivid ideas about what the film should look like. But the vivid visuals of a graphic novel may also be one of the reasons why Hollywood has taken such a liking to adapting them to the screen -- executives don't have to imagine what the film will look like, it's all right there in front of them. So far, there have been some very successful film adaptations of graphic novels, most notably Daniel Cloves' Ghost World, Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, and Frank Miller's Sin City and 300. But there have also been some duds -- Daredevil and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, to name but two. The latest graphic novel to hit the big screen is Mark Millar's Wanted.

Wanted... on the page and on the screen (Top Cow/Universal)

So for any fans of Millar's very adult and totally kickass graphic novel, here's a brief comparison between the comic and the new film directed by Russia's Timur Bekmambetov. The main thing fans of Millar's book will notice is that the costuming is much more realistic. That might be because capes and tights are hard to pull off well on the big screen or because some of the characters in Millar's tale of super-villains taking out the world's super-heroes looked a bit too much like ones copyrighted by DC and Marvel.  But the gravity defying action remains pretty much intact. You can't put a copyright on that. I'll have my review tomorrow. In the mean time, here's Millar commenting on the film version of his graphic novel, including the famous scene of Wesley being asked to shoot the wings off of flies. Millar did not write the screenplay for the film but did stay close to the production. Michael Brandt, Derek Haas and Chris Morgan are the credited screenwriters for Wanted.

Well here's one more thing to make me feel old. Big Wednesday, the John Milius surf film from 1978, is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year. I was in high school when the film came out, and the only surfer I knew was my cousin who had come down to San Diego one summer to try and learn. I remember watching him fall off his board more than he rode any waves. But I had seen Endless Summer and could understand the lure of the waves. But I have to admit that as a teenage girl back then the real appeal of Big Wednesday was not the surfing but rather the cast of three hunky young guys - Jan Michael Vincent, William Katt, and Gary Busey. As for the surfing, I remember the film having this mythic quality to it.  Surfing was not a sport or a hobby, it was a way of life. Much of that mythic quality came from director John Milius (who also wrote Apocalypse Now and directed Red Dawn) who endowed the character of Bear (Sam Melville) with both an autobiographical edge and a bit of Papa Hemingway.  But while the films does serve up some tasty waves, it also delivers a coming of age tale set against the backdrop of the turbulent 60s and the Vietnam War. It boasts a certain melancholy nostalgia as well as an appreciation for good friends and the challenge of some big waves.

Big Wednesday will have a 30th anniversary benefit screening on June 26 at 6pm at the La Paloma Theatre (471 S Coast Highway 101, Encinitas). In attendance will be Denny Aaberg who co-wrote the film with director John Milius. He will present the film and answer questions after the screening. I had a chance to shoot a few questions his way before the screening. Here's what he had to say about the film from the perspective of three decades later.

Tadanobu Asano stars as Genghis Khan in the new film Mongol (Picturehouse)

Genghis Khan is probably best remembered as a bloody conqueror. But to Russian filmmaker Sergei Bodrov the Mongol ruler was much more than that. Bodrov attempts to correct some misconceptions about the 13th century leader with his Oscar nominated film Mongol (opening June 20 at Landmark's Hillcrest Cinemas. (You can listen to our KPBS Film Club discussion of the film and to my interview with the director for The World.)

Genghis Khan is a well-known name in Russia, though the Mongol conqueror is not remembered fondly there, says director Sergei Bodrov.

SERGEI BODROV: "He was described as the cruelest person in the world but he was so bad in all my school books that when I was growing up that I started to be suspicious. His history was written by his enemies. And you have to question this."

And that's what Bodrov's new film Mongol does. It questions how history has depicted Genghis Khan. The film focuses on the Mongol ruler's youth, when he was known simply as Temudgin (played by an impressive Odnyam Odsuren as a boy, and with quiet confidence by Japan's Tadanobu Asano as an adult).