I don't mean to say that films can't stack up tension. They just don't have the ability to string you along for hours on hours like a book does. Some movies are great at building tension. Just one of the advantages words have over pictures is the length of build-up.
Last night I watched the film adaptation of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. I thought they got that one right for the most part. Of course, it is a Swedish film, so no credit goes to Hollywood, who would probably botch it. Worth watching.
It is slated for the Hollywood "treatment". I don't think Hollywood know how to do crime... proper crime, with a few exceptions. Only time will tell. 2 years to be exact.
Not so much right as better. The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith I am in the middle of reading the book and perhaps there are some cultural things I am not getting because of changes in America from the 50's to today, but the movie did a much better job, IMO, of giving direction and motive to the main characters. Examples: Movie ~ Dickie Greenleaf and Tom Ripley come from completely different worlds (rich man, poor man) and are unaware of each other's existence until the events of the story. Book ~ Dickie Greenleaf and Tom Ripley are still rich man - poor man, but not to the extreme they are shown in the movie, and for reasons which are never really explained, they do have a passing acquaintance before the story's events. *** Movie ~ Dickie Greenleaf is fun and whimsical and plays. The fabulous playboy. Easy to see why Tom Ripley might develop a man-crush (or a real crush for that matter) on him. Book ~ Dickie Greenleaf is as dull as dishwater. He's none too bright. Blah. He is described as handsome in a rather martinis at four, Martha's Vineyardy sort of way (not my type), but there is little in the makeup of the written character to explain Tom's sudden attraction to him. *** Sorry, Patricia, but you just didn't do a particularly good job of giving me the why of your characters. They are thrown together, rather like a mismatched omelette and you just don't give me any pieces that go together to make a satisfying breakfast. You don't give me any reason to believe they would do what they are doing. I am left thinking that they are very strange people with impossible to fathom motives. Both your book and the movie were a little disturbingly anti-gay, but I'm willing to live with that since both are set in the 1950's. Period piece and all that. But at least the movie gave me reason to believe in Tom Ripley's actions, damaged as they may have been. EDIT ~ 7/14/2010. Had the chance to finish reading this novel all at one sitting as I was waiting for my hubby in urgent care the other night. This book ends up being wildly different to the movie. And lo and behold, there are other books about Tom Ripley, one of which Hollywood also took a stab at, though with less fanfare and star power: Ripley Under Ground. Who knew? Not me.
OMG, I had no idea there was a movie of this, I will have to look that up. I love that book. I read it in high school for a class and loved it. I think the harry potter books were made into movies pretty well. Not that the books are that special, or the movies. Just good entertainment.
Don't Look Now, a must-see horror classic and iconic film, but it was British, not made in Hollywood. It was released in 1973. Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie are absolutely amazing as a husband and wife whose lives grow complicated when they go to Venice on holiday after their young daughter tragically drowns. The little running figure in a red raincoat motif has been spoofed or paid homage to, time and again, e.g. Schindler's List. The film was based on a very middle-of-the-road-short story by Daphne du Maurier. I heard that it's being remade, though--for some stupid reason. Cue another thread on 'which remakes are better or worse than the original'? Oh, and To Kill a Mocking Bird is just as great as the book. Loooooove Gregory Peck so much, he looks just like my father.
Action novels/swashbucklers generally turn out all right: Marathon Man is a great read and a great film. A lot of early Sabatini adaptations were great (Captain Blood especially), and I also really like the later Scaramouche adaptation from the fifties. I thought the Richard Brooks/Robert Blake film of In Cold Blood was sensitive and effective, but really closer to documentary than fictional film, because they used many of the actual locations and a lot of townspeople played themselves. Hitchcock generally had successful book-to-film translations. The French Lieutenant's Woman was good, but it had Harold Pinter doing the screenplay, so how could it be really unsuccessful? Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket is based on an excellent novella by Gustav Hasford, The Short-Timers, and I think it does the novella justice (even though the writing is better than the film, the film is fantastic.) I thought A Clockwork Orange did as good a job as it could with the source material (which comes close to "unfilmable," as brilliant as it is.) Seconding above: Don't Look Now is great stuff.
Stardust, by Neil Gaiman. I'll admit I watched the movie first, and then found the book. I will watch the movie many times to come, but I refuse to ever touch the book again.
I prefer both Dexter and True Blood over their source material. If A Game of Thrones can deliver on its promise, it'll be another example of cable television serving as an excellent medium for adapting novels to the screen.
A Wrinkle in Time That was an awesome adaptation. Everything Hollywood added in added more to the story. I was completely riveted.
I definitely think Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk was a great movie. It really captured the dark humor and eery mood of the book. My sister went to a book signing of his and apparently he said that he thought the movie was better than the book. Well, I don't know about that, but it's still a great movie, as it is a novel.
I thought the first Harry Potter film was a great adaptation of the book. Sadly, since then the films have been a spectacular let-down of JK Rowling's writing. But the first one did the book proud IMHO.
I never really liked the Harry Potter movies - the first was disappointing BECAUSE it did occasionally almost actually get there, only for some other small thing to let it down. Then the films got worse and worse and all hope vanished. I still go see them at least once each though, and in the cinema, because Harry Potters are among my favourite books. Also, Lord of the Rings is really good considering what they had to work with. Love the books - even after reading them AFTER the movies, don't see how they could ever be made into a movie the way they are. I totally geek out over the bits that weren't in the movies but at the same time I look at the movies and think, wow, he really made the best of it. If he'd been as loyal as many people would like, no one but Lord of the Rings geeks would have gone to see the movies, and unless he'd used a 10th of the funding to account for that, he'd have bankrupted himself before he could get halfway to the last book. As is, we have a totally epic, amazingly beautiful portrayal of Middle Earth and you can fill in the gaps and just assume, like, between this shot and the other that the Hobbits did the whole Tom Bombadil thing. Aaaanyway, only thing I'm annoyed about is Faramir, because I'm totally his biggest fangirl, and I yell at the screen when he is anything less than perfect. Much, much prefer him in the 3rd film to the 2nd because of that. And, of course, massively, massively prefer Book Faramir to Movie Faramir.
The thing that really annoyed me about the LOTR films was the whole final battle. Firstly, the pirates were completely pointless given that the orcs already had an army of 500,000, so why did Aragorn get so worked up when he saw a dozen or so pirate ships, with probably no more than 4,000 men in total? And the ghost army was the ultimate deus ex machina. In the book, unless I am remembering incorrectly, Aragorn uses the ghost army to defeat the pirates and then brings an army of men up from the south on the ships. Not only was that more logical, but it presented a better message - men from all parts of the world uniting to defeat a great evil. Jackson couldn't have done this in the movie because the orc army was made too large just so they could have a bigger battle than any other film before it. And, for me, it completely ruined the trilogy because the ending is always in your mind as you re-watch them.
Goodbye Mr Chips (1939) is my favourite ever novel to screen adapatation it is one of the few where the film for me was much better than the book. Daphne du Maurier like Madhoca pointed one out but is one example of an author that seems to always transfer well to film. Does Much Ado About Nothing count? it's a play so probably not lol Harry Potter visually for me was not a disappointment everything looked the way I had imagined. I missed the humour of the books but they worked. I preferred LOTR but then I disliked the books it made it more palatable for me.
It was written by James Hilton, the 1939 film somehow managed to be more rich, create a better atmosphere and depth than his novel. I didn't sob my way through the book, the film I had to watch three times because of not being able to see through the tears lol but I cry at everything.
It truly is a tremendous film. I saw a later remake of it, but it wasn't even a fraction of the 1939 version in terms of how well it was done.
I hate the Twilight novels with a burning compassion hotter and brighter than every star in the night sky. The movie rocked. I actually enjoyed the film. It was a faithful adaptation, the acting was damned good, setting and photography were winsauce. If the the vampires didn't sparkle and growl, I would have called it the best someone could possibly do with Twilight. Unfortunately, it's Twilight. Nobody can fix Twilight. Catherine Hardwicke did a damned good job adapting it. Maybe that's why they fired her first chance they got. The worst is Eragon. I also hate the novel series with a burning passion hotter and brighter than every star in the night sky. At least the book was readable. The film was a horrific adaptation. Characters cut out, events dropped. The acting was stilted. They got damned good actors (except Ed Spieler) to do the film, man! We won't be seeing a sequel anytime soon.
Which is a shame. The RiffTrax of Eragon was spectacular. More than worth the price (and shame) of the movie rental. I wasn't a fan of the LotR books. They were ok, and they were really great examples of what are now fantasy writing tropes, and a fine example of descriptive writing. They were also as sleep inducing as listening to Ben Stein doing play-by-play for a little league soccer match while at a NASCAR race. The first two movies, though, I thought were magnificent. The third... well, I enjoyed the first 2/3 of it, but I felt it all went down hill from there. It felt like they took a hurry-up-and-wait approach to the ending. The climactic battle finished up in seconds. The movie lingered on for what felt like hours after that. My favourite novel film adaptation, though, is easily Carl Sagan's Contact. They may not have gotten everything right (Matthew McConaughey? Seriously?) but on the whole it adapted the spirit book to the big screen really well.
The Name of the Rose, which is one of my all time favourite films. I tried reading the book about 10 years ago and nearly fell asleep during the endless worldbuilding exercise at the beginning. Eco should have written a history book and then, once that was out of his system, the novel. I may give it another chance once I'm 70 and got time. Anyway, the film gets me every time. I'm not sitting at a distance watching a story pass me by, but rather I'm sucked right into the wet, cold and arid landscape of medieval Northern Italy, and get to see the world through the eyes of a novice monk full of the superstitions, curiosity and feelings he should rightfully possess.
When you're seventy, you'll probably consider time precious enough that you will select your reading very carefully. So many books, so little time.
To be fair I think Hollywood gets often more crap than it deserves because it has done quite a few good adaptions but i'm going to go with the Lovely Bones. The filming is was so good in that one! Also Stanley Tucci was just amazing in it! Oh and I finally saw We Need to Talk About Kevin few days ago and I thought that it was quite brilliant.
