An awesome and ridiculous film that leaves you thrilled beyond the point of your natural endurance
2012
Theatre
The show has suddenly become quite wonderful, and the galvanising factor is the terrific stage debut of Melanie C
Blood Brothers
Music
The British pop music industry may be eating itself but if Muse are the pick of what it can offer the world in 2010 then British music is in rude health indeed
Muse
I was smitten by both Gilberts enormous luxuriant moustache and the intelligence and nuance of this highly entertaining play
I totally recommend Babbo to anyone who is looking for really good and traditional Italian food
Always been a fan but never seen them live. I was ecstatic to be part of this epic event. WOW!
London,
Nick Curtis's rating
Reader rating
Phone: 0207930 3647
Trains: BR/Tube: Charing Cross 
Screen success: James McAvoy and Keira Knightley in the film version of Ian McEwan's Atonement
A famous British author, asked some years ago how it felt to sell the film rights to her gritty northern novel to a Hollywood producer, replied: “It’s a bit like leaving your teenage daughter on Jack Nicholson’s doorstep; you know no good will come of it.”
This quote epitomises the belief that the cinema — “a brutish and deeply unsophisticated medium”, according to Ian McEwan — plays fast and loose with great literature, and that only bad books make good films.
Now, however, a mini-season at the ICA aims to challenge that view, by screening four of the 39 films so far adapted from novels that won or were shortlisted for the Booker Prize, alongside discussions with those whose work has been adapted, and those who have done the adapting.
The Booker at the Movies takes place on Sunday afternoons throughout June, kicking off this weekend with Neil LaBute’s screen version of AS Byatt’s Possession, starring Gwyneth Paltrow and Aaron Eckhardt as a pair of literary sleuths drawn into an affair by the discovery of a romance between two Victorian poets.
Byatt is not now able to attend, but her place will be taken by Beryl Bainbridge, who saw her own novel An Awfully Big Adventure translated to celluloid in 1995. The following week, Roddy Doyle will be present (along with Lynda Myles and Claire Armistead) for a screening of his fond Irish family drama The Van, his second successful collaboration with Stephen Frears after The Commitments.
Then it is the turn of a brace of dramatists who have acted as middlemen between a novelist and a film director. On 22 June, Simon Gray will trawl his phenomenal memory to discuss Pat O’Connor’s 1987 adaptation of JL Carr’s A Month in the Country, for which Gray wrote the script. He will be joined by Deborah Moggach and John Mullan.
Finally, on 29 June, Christopher Hampton will discuss with Rosie Goldsmith the rigours of turning McEwan’s Atonement into a workable (and as it turned out, hugely successful) screenplay for director Joe Wright.
This is exactly the kind of thing the ICA is good at: offering a chance to see much-loved films on the big screen, informed by intelligent debate and anecdote.
Sundays until 29 June. Information: 020 7930 3647, www.ica.org.uk.
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
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