In the works: Murakami's "Norwegian Wood"?

2008-07-31 20:00:01

In the works: A great bit of news from indirectly, Screen Daily: French-Vietnamese director Tran Anh Hung, of the acclaimed "Vertical Ray of the Sun" and "The Scent of Green Papaya," will next been working on a Japanese-language adaptation of Haruki Murakami's "Norwegian Wood." The only work of Murakami's to be adapted to the screen so far have been two short stories -- "Tony Takitani," which was made into a minimalist feature by Jun Ichikawa, and "All God's Children Can Dance," which apparently yielded a short from Robert Logevall starring Joan Chen. Most of Murakami's work would seem impossible to adapt for the screen, save his recent "After Dark," which reads, unfortunately, like an annotated screenplay, and (hey!) "Norwegian Wood," one of his earlier and most straightforward novels, the chronicle of a college student during Tokyo's turbulent late 1960s who's involved with two different women. It's a favorite of mine,...

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