This LitHub critique of the movie version of Inferno by poet Mary Jo Bang was spot on. Excerpts below. Full article here.
Mary Jo Bang Takes in Tom Hanks on a Friday Night in Missouri
November 17, 2016 By Peter Nowogrodzki
Inferno is Ron Howard’s latest attempt to breathe cinema’s magical, animating life-force into the cold corpse that is Dan Brown’s body of writing.
Howard’s film managed to debut at #1, grossing some $5.5 million dollars on its opening night (October 28)—but then, in only one week, reality kicked in. Box office returns plunged by 66.6 percent, a funny little statistical coincidence that is maybe as interesting as anything that happens in the screenplay.
But wait, I know what you’re thinking . . . Is there any actual relationship between Dan Brown’s Inferno and Dante Alighieri’s Inferno, other than the shared title and the authors’ shared birth sign (Gemini)? Who would win in an arm wrestle? Why aren’t we talking more about Moonlight? Or the election?
To get to the bottom of these questions, poet and academic Mary Jo Bang kindly took in the film at 6:30 on a Friday night in Missouri. She’s shared her thoughts below. Continue reading