May28
For those of you unfamiliar with blog hops, here how it works: One blogger asks a question that other bloggers answer on their own blog. They all link to the original blogger’s blog (following me?) so if you enjoy the topic, you can click on the “Blog Hop” button and then find other blogs discussing the same thing. Whew!
SO, this week Jennifer over at Crazy for Books has asked “What book-to-movie adaption have you most liked? Which have you disliked?”
Gone with the Wind
comes to my mind as the best movie adaptation ever. How they condensed a thousand pages into only four hours and didn’t seem to leave out anything of import is still a marvel to me. I first saw GWTW when I was in grade 12, after having read the book once a year since ninth grade. The book was near and dear to my teenaged heart and the movie did not disappoint me. I do remember thinking that Olivia de Haviland was so much prettier than Vivien Leigh and should have played Scarlett, but now I think the roles were perfectly cast because, after all, Melanie really was the beautiful one.
Choosing a miss is somewhat harder. Oscar and Lucinda
was a great adaptation except that the ending was completely different from the book. Was it better? Happier, yes, but…
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
wasn’t even close to the book, but I still thought it was a good movie. I thought Inkheart
was a terrible movie, but then so was the book. And so on. I’m really drawing a blank on the miss.
If you’d like to see what some other book bloggers have thought about book-based movies, click on the bloghop link above.
Before you go, though, leave a comment here and tell me your picks for best & worst book-to-movie.
I’d like to read Gone With the Wind but the length puts me off!
I know what you mean – GWTW IS long, but it’s not hard to read, so it goes fairly quickly.
The biggest miss for me was The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. It’s a fantastic graphic novel for book geeks, packed with references subtle and unsubtle, but the film was flat-out awful. Similarly, I watched the 1943 film of Phantom of the Opera last week and it was pretty bad. The story had been changed a lot, they’d taken out the romanticness of the romance and added some slapstick humour. Weird.
Hits I find harder to think of. Scott Pilgrim Vs the World is a great film based on a brilliant comic series, and though changes were made they’re changes that make sense. I love the film Breakfast at Tiffany’s but I must admit I only quite liked the book.
I saw Phantom of the Opera at the theatre and quite liked it, but when I read the book I discovered depths that just hadn’t been mined on the stage.
Thanks for your insights!