Little Children, the movie

I don't usually write about movies, even when they're based on books. First, there are too many; it would turn this book blog into a movie blog. Second, books are usually better than the movie, and there's no sense in repeating that over and over. But I'm optimistic about the movie of Little Children, based on the book by Tom Perrotta. I thought the book was a compelling little novel mining rare territory -- boredom and self-obsession in contemporary suburban family life. Movies are pretty comfortable with this landscape (see American Beauty, Edward Scissorhands and The Truman Show, to name but a few). So it will be interesting to see what results.
Here's a bit from a review in the Los Angeles Times. The reviewer seems to differ from me and agree with me in a few ways:

"Little Children" is one of those rare films that transcends its source material. Firmly rooted in the present and in our current frame of mind -- a time and frame of mind that few artists have shown interest in really exploring--— the movie is one of the few films I can think of that examines the baffling combination of smugness, self-abnegation, ceremonial deference and status anxiety that characterizes middle-class Gen X parenting, and find sheer, white-knuckled terror at its core.

Read the whole review here. Perrotta also wrote Election, which was turned into a movie -- a biting satire of the high school student council starring Matthew Broderick and Reese Witherspoon.
And while I'm going all multi-media on you, I will point out that my favorite band, The Shins, has a new website that shows the band members hanging out at the library. Cool!