A Facelift for the Ghastly Fagin & A New Incarnation of Oliver Twist:
The Roman Polanski Version by Wild About Movies (8/21/05)
Can Roman Polanski, Ben Kingsley and Oliver Twist each strike magic twice? In a year of dreadful movies, the chances that Roman Polanski's interpretation of Oliver Twist, starring Ben Kingsley (left) as the wretched Fagin, will at the very least secure Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor nominations are excellent.
It was in 1968 that the Carol Reed musical version, Oliver, cleaned up at the Oscars, winning Best Director, Picture and multitude of other technical awards.
Nearly forty years later, Polanski, exiled in France - since raping a 13 year old girl in the United States nearly thirty years ago - where he filmed his Oscar winning The Pianist three years ago, is at it again.
Will modern day audiences go for the Nicholas Nickelby-esque feature, sans music, this time around? Wild About Movies caught an advance screening of Oliver Twist a couple of weeks ago in Los Angeles, and the answer is a resounding, unequivocal "YES."
Academy Award winning actor Ben Kingsley (Ghandi) outdoes himself, as does Academy Award winning director Polanski (The Pianist).
For the uninitiated, the children who may be reading this that have not yet gotten to the Charles Dickens' novel in school:
Orphaned at an early age, Oliver Twist is forced to live in a workhouse lorded over by the awful Mr. Bumble, who cheats the boys of their meager rations. Desperate yet determined, Oliver makes his escape to the streets of London. Penniless and alone, he is lured into a world of crime by the sinister Fagin, the mastermind of a gang of pint-sized pickpockets... and on and on.
The Dickens story, written nearly 175 years ago, is timeless and this, the Polanski version, whether it wins Best Picture, Actor and/or Directoror not, (it will undoubtedly be competing with Steven Spielberg's Munich, Peter Jackson's King Kong, Cameron Crowe's Elizabethtown, and either The Producers or Rent), will stand the test of time - unlike its predecessor, the 1968 Oliver, which hardly anyone under 35 has either heard of or seen.
Stay tuned. Wild About Movies is your one-stop-spot to Advance Movie Screening passes for and virtually every other movie coming soon.
Oliver Twist opens natiowide September 30, 2005. Stay tuned for the Wild About Movies interview with Ben Kingsley. (Roman Polanski cannot travel to the United States for fear of arrest and conviction of that 1970s rape charge that is still outstanding.)
Official Oliver Twist Site
Can Roman Polanski, Ben Kingsley and Oliver Twist each strike magic twice? In a year of dreadful movies, the chances that Roman Polanski's interpretation of Oliver Twist, starring Ben Kingsley (left) as the wretched Fagin, will at the very least secure Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor nominations are excellent. 
The Dickens story, written nearly 175 years ago, is timeless and this, the Polanski version, whether it wins Best Picture, Actor and/or Directoror not, (it will undoubtedly be competing with Steven Spielberg's Munich, Peter Jackson's King Kong, Cameron Crowe's Elizabethtown, and either The Producers or Rent), will stand the test of time - unlike its predecessor, the 1968 Oliver, which hardly anyone under 35 has either heard of or seen.
