I did not see this movie, but I understand BillyTheMountain has a lot to say about it.
Adaptation
JJuggle,
Do you want me to RUIN the movie for you, dude??!
Take out the DVD (or, if that technology hasn’t come to NJ yet, your video), and we’ll start talking.
Anyone else, please chime in.
Billy
PS Thanks for the opp, I’ll jump in in a day or so…
I don’t like Adaptation. How’s that for chiming in? 
Hey Phlegm!
You are not alone. What did you not like about it?
Billy
It was very well done for a movie about flowers. hehe
I love the originality of it. Its something I’ve never seen before, and I like it.
I always enjoy Nicholas Cage movies. Chris Cooper plays an interesting role, and Meryl Streep did good as well. The acting is excelent in this movie.
i’ll just say this: it’s probably the most honest portrayal of a screenwriter i’ve ever seen. overall B+
avant garde
I’m with you on that MarkF. He’s like Woody Allen:D only moreso.
The movie is about internal conflict resolution. In the beginning after the bee sequence, Charles Darwin offers: when you find a flower you’re attracted to, follow your heart. At the end when they are being hunted in the swamp, Cage’s twin in essence tells him to give up his social self consciousness, that love is his to shine wherever he wishes. The action ending, which we inevitably feel as a startlingly new storytelling voice in the movie, is his twin’s and McKee’s, the lecturer he has a drink with.
The movie title “Adaptation” is a double entendre referring to both the act of artistic creation and the creative self-changes required to avoid extinction. The frequent use of literary terms, like "deus ex machina, " deconstructionist and "denouement, " which the protagonist criticizes his twin for mispronouncing, challenges us to have a little fun with film criticism.
The movie is a story within a story, harkening back to 1001 Arabian Nights, wherein the protagonist told stories to avoid sex and her death. Adaptation’s protagonist and his literary/movie agent are interested in dead-end sex acts (masturbation and anal sex) with no creative/reproductive potential. There are multiple references to swallowing oneself: the oraborus snake which swallows its tail and the Deconstructionist killer in his twin’s script “The 3,” who makes his victims eat pieces of themselves are metaphors for the protagonist’s extreme self-reflexion/self-involvement. Until the end, Cage (the protagonist) is eating himself up inside, which interferes with his ability to engage in sex or to write.
Re: avant garde
I haven’t seen this movie, but I own and have read several versions of 1001 Nights, from Burton to Lane to Mardrus/Mathers, and Sharazade does not tell stories to avoid sex, only death. There is a lot of sex, and death, in her stories, sometimes together, sometimes not. However, she and King Sharyar have a great sex life from beginning to end. Rather than being a sick portrayal of fear, as you imply, 1001 Nights is the overarching story of a loving, brave woman helping a good, powerful man overcome a natural revenge tendency to betrayal by his wife.
In truth, it’s kinda hard to miss that, since it occurs nearly 1001 times over the course of several volumes…
U-Turn,
I read the post-Bush abstinance version:D
Billy
Wow! Really! I got to see that one again!
It’s the sequel to “Being John Malkovitch.”
Billy