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Franz Kafka is to film what lightning is to a bottle: many filmmakers try to capture him, but few succeed. Courageous men like Michael Haneke and Aleksey Balabanov have attempted the feat of translating Kafka's final work, “The Castle,” into the medium of cinema, only to end up with a square peg in a round hole. Now, we have a couple of new brave souls. Darhad Erdenibulag and Emyr ap Richard are co-directors from Inner Mongolia, who have chosen to tackle the labyrinthine world of bureaucratic abyss in Kafka's seminal novel as their sophomore feature. A supreme undertaking, and a valiant effort, ultimately, “K” is a resounding failure and a butterfingered attempt to capture the essence of a literary genius. For those unfamiliar with Kafka's work: firstly, I must implore you not to watch Erdenibulag and Richard's interpretation as an introduction. Secondly, the plot is wonderfully basic at its core.

The Eisner Awards, the "Oscars of Comics" have announced their nominations for the current season (they follow more of a Tony Awards timetable) and the results are heavy on Image comics with Marvel scoring in the top "continuing series" category with the current run of Hawkeye. Maybe there's hope for Jeremy Renner's unloved movie hero after all? Or maybe not. It's up against last year's winner Saga.

I want to share two categories that have particular appeal to us here at Tfe. They have an adapted category (which sometimes pulls from movies) and a digital comics category and you know I keep trying to start one though admittedly I never fully commit.

Best Adaptation from Another Medium

The Castle, by Franz Kafka, adapted by David Zane Mairowitz and Jaromír 99 (SelfMadeHero) The Complete Don Quixote, by Miguel de Cervantes, adapted by by Rob Davis (SelfMadeHero) Django Unchained, adapted by Quentin Tarantino,...

Actor and director who brought dark good looks and a commanding presence to his roles

Austrian by birth, Swiss by circumstance and international by reputation, Maximilian Schell, who has died aged 83, was a distinguished actor, director, writer and producer. However, he will be best remembered as an actor, especially for his Oscar-winning performance in Stanley Kramer's Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) – an early highlight among scores of television and movie appearances. He also directed opera, worked tirelessly in the theatre and made six feature films, including Marlene (1984) - a tantalising portrait of Dietrich, his co-star in Judgment, who is heard being interviewed but not seen, except in movie extracts.

Schell courted controversy and much of his work, including The Pedestrian (1973), dealt with the second world war, its attendant crimes and the notion of collective guilt. In 1990, when he was offered a special award for his contributions to German film, he refused to accept it.

Maximilian Schell dead at 83: Best Actor Oscar winner for ‘Judgment at Nuremberg’ (photo: Maximilian Schell ca. 1960) Actor and filmmaker Maximilian Schell, best known for his Oscar-winning performance as the defense attorney in Stanley Kramer’s 1961 political drama Judgment at Nuremberg died at a hospital in Innsbruck, Austria, on February 1, 2014. According to his agent, Patricia Baumbauer, Schell died overnight following a "sudden and serious illness." Maximilian Schell was 83. Born on December 8, 1930, in Vienna, Maximilian Schell was the younger brother of future actor Carl Schell and Maria Schell, who would become an international film star in the 1950s (The Last Bridge, Gervaise, The Hanging Tree). Immy Schell, who would be featured in several television and film productions from the mid-’50s to the early ’90s, was born in 1935. Following Nazi Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938, Schell’s parents, Swiss playwright Hermann Ferdinand Schell and Austrian stage actress Margarete Schell Noé,...

The AP is reporting that Austrian-born actor Maximilian Schell, a fugitive from Adolf Hitler who became a Hollywood favorite and won an Oscar for his role as a defense attorney in “Judgment at Nuremberg,” has died. He was 83.

Schell’s agent, Patricia Baumbauer, said Saturday he died overnight at a hospital in the Austrian city of Innsbruck following a “sudden illness.”

It was only his second Hollywood role, as defense attorney Hans Rolfe in Stanley Kramer’s classic “Judgment at Nuremberg,” that earned him wide international acclaim. Schell’s impassioned but unsuccessful defense of four Nazi judges on trial for sentencing innocent victims to death won him the 1961 Academy Award for best actor. Schell had first played Rolfe in a 1959 episode of the television program “Playhouse 90.”

Despite being type-cast for numerous Nazi-era films, Schell’s acting performances in the mid-1970s also won him renewed popular acclaim, earning him...

One of the greats has left us, and we'd be remiss to not mention the passing of Oscar winner Maximilian Schell this morning (Feb. 1, 2014) at the age of 83 in Innsbruck, Tyrol, Austria. He didn't dabble in the horror genre often, but when he did, it was memorable.

Per the AP via ABC News, Schell's agent, Patricia Baumbauer, said Saturday he died overnight at a hospital in the Austrian city of Innsbruck following a "sudden illness."

Austrian-born Schell won his Best Actor Oscar in 1962 for Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) and also appeared in such genre fare as Deep Impact, The Black Hole, John Carpenter's Vampires, The Vampyre Wars, Darkness, House of the Sleeping Beauties, The Eighteenth Angel, and 1983 TV movie "The Phantom of the Opera," in which he played The Phantom opposite Jane Seymour and Michael York.

Despite being type-cast for numerous Nazi-era films, Schell's acting performances in the mid-1970s won him renewed popular acclaim,...

Austrian-born actor Maximilian Schell, a fugitive from Adolf Hitler who became a Hollywood favorite and won an Oscar for his role as a defense attorney in Judgment at Nuremberg, has died. He was 83.

Schell’s agent, Patricia Baumbauer, said Saturday he died overnight at a hospital in Innsbruck following a “sudden and serious illness,” the Austria Press Agency reported.

It was only his second Hollywood role, as defense attorney Hans Rolfe in Stanley Kramer’s classic Judgment at Nuremberg, that earned him wide international acclaim. Schell’s impassioned but unsuccessful defense of four Nazi judges on trial for sentencing innocent...

Film-maker known for his dark take on post-Soviet Russia

Aleksei Balabanov, who has died aged 54 after suffering a seizure, saw himself as the "anti-establishment rock'n'roller of Russian film" with an aim to make "scandalous, harsh cinema". Many of Balabanov's films are metaphorical black comedies that gaze unflinchingly at the bleakness and violence of the last days of communism and post-Soviet society, with classic Russian rock music on the soundtrack. His first two features, Happy Days (1991) and The Castle (1994), were based on Samuel Beckett and Franz Kafka respectively, and Balabanov's nihilistic oeuvre also takes in Nikolai Gogol, Fyodor Dostoevsky and Mikhail Bulgakov, whose Notes of a Young Doctor was the basis of Balabanov's Morphia (2008).

"I don't make movies with ideas. Ideas make for bad cinema," he said. "I don't make my movies for the intelligentsia, but for the people. That's why they like my films." This was demonstrated by the commercial...

★★★☆☆ Cannily released by arthouse distributors Artificial Eye in the same week as the Austrian auteur's 2012 Palme d'Or winner Amour, Michael Haneke's made for TV Franz Kafka adaptation The Castle (Das Schloß, 1997) is not regularly cited in rundowns of the director's very best work - more than likely due to its televisual origins. Regardless, any piece produced by Haneke is always worthy of appraisal (and, more likely than not, subsequent reappraisal), and beneath The Castle's rough exterior lies an intelligent, albeit obtuse, meeting of minds between two of the 20th century's most acclaimed artistic visionaries.

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An insurance clerk becomes determined to discover the truth behind a terror cell.

Kafka is the second feature directed by American part-time auteur, part-time studio Atm Steven Soderbergh. His first collaboration with writer Lem Dobbs (the two would soon work together again on The Limey), the film blends facts from celebrated Czech novelist Franz Kafka's life with elements taken from his fictional work.

The novels most heavily drawn from here are The Trial and The Castle, both tales of a single man's struggles with insurmountable...

Cologne, Germany -- German actor Frank Giering, who played a courteous psychopath in Michael Haneke's 1997 film "Funny Games" and starred in hit German crime series "Der Kriminalist," died Wednesday in Berlin. He was 38.

Born and raised in East Germany, Giering was well known and successful without ever becoming a star. In many ways, his career -- which began in theater before moving mainly to supporting, often small-screen roles -- resembled that of Christoph Waltz before "Inglourious Basterds." And like Waltz he was an actor's actor, often cited as an inspiration by a younger generation of performers.

"Giering is God," is how Robert Stadlober ("Krabat") put it.

But Giering also struggled with alcoholism and self-doubt, issues he discussed publicly. He once described himself as a "remnant" of the Gdr and not suited for modern life. German police are investigating the cause of death.

Giering has a series of small roles...

Robert here, continuing my series on great contemporary directors. I thought I’d stay overseas this week and feature a somewhat daunting European presence.

Maestro: Michael Haneke

Known For: difficult movies about human treacherousness and the breakdown of society.

Influences: Imagine the love-child of Robert Bresson and Franz Kafka. Then again, maybe don’t.

Masterpieces: The White Ribbon and Caché

Disasters: Not sure why Funny Games worked reasonably well in Europe but was a real misfire in it's American version. But it was.

Better than you remember: Let’s put it this way. If you remember a Haneke film as being bad because it was unpleasant, then it was probably better than you remember.

Awards: Nothing from the establishment, expectedly. But they love him in Europe, giving him the Palme d’Or for The White Ribbon and Best Director for Caché and the same for both films at the European Film Awards.