BOOKS ON SCREEN: 12 YEARS A SLAVE, THE RAILWAYMAN, THE WOLF OF WALL STREET

Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup

From this autobiographical book, Steve McQueen's major new film starring Brad Pitt, Michael Fassbender, Benedict Cumberbatch, Paul Giamatti, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Quvenzhane Wallis. A great, touching story nominated as Best Movie for 2014 Oscars. One of the latest movies I've seen. Good but not as much as I expected. What about reading the book now? I've got it in my to be read soon list, the ebook from amazon kindle store is just a bargain.

Solomon Northup is a free man, living in New York. Then he is kidnapped and sold into slavery. Drugged, beaten, given a new name and transported away from his wife and children to a Louisiana cotton plantation, Solomon will die if he reveals his true identity. This is the searing true story of his twelve years as a slave: the endless brutality, daily humiliations and constant fear, but also the small ways in which he and his fellow men try to survive. Twelve Years a Slave is a unique, unflinching record of slavery from the inside, and the incredible account of one man whose life was ripped from him - and who fought to get it back. "A moving, vital testament to one of slavery's "many thousands gone" who retained his humanity in the bowels of degradation". (Saturday Review). 

"I could not believe that I had never heard of this book. It felt as important as Anne Frank's diary, only published nearly a hundred years before". (Steve McQueen). 

Solomon Northup was a free man kidnapped into slavery in Washington, D.C. in 1841. Shortly after his escape, he published his memoirs to great acclaim and brought legal action against his abductors, though they were never prosecuted. The details of his life thereafter are unknown, but he is believed to have died in Glen Falls, New York, around 1863.

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The Railway Man by Eric Lomax
Another moving autobiographical story  which I still haven't seen nor read. But I want to! Especially because ... Don't you like me miss our always dashing Mr Darcy? Well, it's time to see him in action again in a very complex role:  Colin Firth stars in The Railway Man with  Nicole Kidman and Jeremy Irvine. 
During the Second World War,  Eric Lomax was forced to work on the notorious Burma-Siam Railway and was tortured by the Japanese for making a crude radio. Left emotionally scarred and unable to form normal relationships, Lomax suffered for years until, with the help of his wife, Patti Lomax, and of the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture, he came terms with what happened. Fifty years after the terrible events, he was able to meet one of his tormentors. The Railway Man is a story of innocence betrayed, and of survival and courage in the face of horror. 

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Wolf of Wall Street  by Jordan Belfort

Another autobiographical book aiming at getting at least one Oscar. Let's hope it is Leonardo Di Caprio's turn to get his well-deserved and long-waited-for one. Finger crossed for the proper recognition to a great actor. In this book to movie biopic, directed by Martin Scorsese Di Caprio stars as Jordan Belfort  
'What separates Jordan's story from others like it, is the brutal honesty" said Di Caprio about the man he brought to life on screen. 
By day he made thousands of dollars a minute. By night he spent it as fast as he could, on drugs, sex, and international globe-trotting. From the binge that sunk a 170-foot motor yacht, crashed a Gulfstream jet, and ran up a $700,000 hotel tab, to the wife and kids who waited for him for at home, and the fast-talking, hard-partying young stockbrokers who called him king and did his bidding, here, in his own inimitable words, is the story of the ill-fated genius they called... the Wolf of Wall Street.  In the 1990s Jordan Belfort, former kingpin of the notorious investment firm Stratton Oakmont, became one of the most infamous names in American finance: a brilliant, conniving stock-chopper who led his merry mob on a wild ride out of the canyons of Wall Street and into a massive office on Long Island. In this astounding and hilarious tell-all autobiography, Belfort narrates a story of greed, power, and excess no one could invent - the story of an ordinary guy who went from hustling Italian ices at sixteen to making hundreds of millions. Until it all came crashing down. 
With Di Caprio,  MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY (Mud, Magic Mike), JONAH HILL (Moneyball), JEAN DUJARDIN (The Artist), KYLE CHANDLER (Friday Night Lights, Zero Dark Thirty) AND JOANNA LUMLEY (Absolutely Fabulous). 
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