Wash ,'Objects In Space'
A place to talk about movies--old and new, good and bad, high art and high cheese. It's the place to place your kittens on the award winners, gossip about upcoming fims and discuss DVD releases and extras. Spoiler policy: White font all plot-related discussion until a movie's been in wide release two weeks, and keep the major HSQ in white font until two weeks after the video/DVD release.
I had a film professor declare that there has never been a great film made from a great book.
Spoken like someone who has never read The Princess Bride.
[eta: There's another one tickling the back of my mind. Something fairly recent where massive sweeping changes were made but both versions worked exquisitely for their respective media. Not LotR, though that would also qualify. Damn it, this is going to drive me crazy.]
Spoken like someone who has never read The Princess Bride.
In fairness, a very rare instance of a novel written by a great screenwriter, who then wrote the screenplay.
In fairness, a very rare instance of a novel written by a great screenwriter, who then wrote the screenplay.
No fairness applies. If you say it can't be done, then it can't be done.
No fairness applies. If you say it can't be done, then it can't be done.
I applied the fairness standard, and qualified it with "very rare." So, not-never, but hardly-ever.
But I really don't believe in that dictum. I just think it's easier to adapt a short story or novella to a film - it's a matter of narrative length really. You can make a great miniseries out of a novel (Fassbinder's Berlin Alexanderplatz). Or a great series of movies (cf., LotR).
I wonder what "great" means. For example, the 3rd Harry Potter book is one I liked as a novel, but the film version was FABULOUS. Incredibly evocative of the book. They left some things out, but kept all of the right elements in.
If all the adaptations of the HP books had been that good, I would not be complaining (esp with book 6, how dreadful).
To Kill a Mockingbird--great book, great film.
When this professor made that statement LOTR movies were far in the future. I'm not sure about Princess Bride. I'm pretty sure it had been released.
I'd like to think he made the statement to generate discussion in the class but I don't really remember that happening. Although I do remember rolling my eyes at him.
I wonder what "great" means.
Well, the professor in question used Gone with the Wind as his primary example so...(which, granted, it is a pretty bad book, in my opinion, but I don't think it's that great of a movie either)
More Hunger Games casting:
You can make a great miniseries out of a novel (Fassbinder's Berlin Alexanderplatz).
That's next up in my queue!
Uhm, after I tackle Under the Cherry Moon and Lost in La Mancha.
To Kill a Mockingbird--great book, great film.
See! it would have been so easy to shoot him down but I really don't remember anyone bringing that up. It was over 20 years ago, though, and I don't have the best memory in the world.