I hated Berlin Alexanderplatz. I couldn't finish it.
Buffista Movies 7: Brides for 7 Samurai
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.
The first Terminator movie was written before the advent of the World Wide Web. If Skynet did in fact attain self-awareness, I trust that thanks to 4Chan it is currently constructing a robot for the express purpose of erasing its own memory banks.
I would include Room With a View as a great movie from a great book, personally.
(Is it annoying to discuss these sorts of things with someone who's never had a film class?)
On the contrary, I'd say it's almost always less annoying!
I wonder why filmmakers feel the need to tackle 'unfilmable' books.
If I was at home I could get the exact quote, but Cronenberg has said something like he always wants to film the unfilmable. But he is a bit of a special case.
It may also be worth noting that Ballard was very impressed by the movie. I do get what Hec & Tommyrot are saying about how Ballard's style is key to the book, but think Cronenberg breaks some rules for film narrative to mimic that effect. I haven't seen it in a while... I'm not sure I would say Crash is great, but it'd be in consideration.
But I wouldn't say The Princess Bride is a great movie, either. I enjoy it, I have lots of affection for it (and even more for the book), but... I dunno; I'm pretty stingy with my A+s.
From my book salon list on "Best Picture" Adaptations, here are some arguably great books that Academy voters thought were good enough for the top prize:
All the King’s Men
(Robert Penn Warren)
All Quiet on the Western Front
(Erich Maria Remarque)
The English Patient
(Michael Ondaatje)
Gone with the Wind
(Margaret Mitchell)
Hamlet
(Shakespeare)
A Man for All Seasons
(Robert Bolt)
No Country for Old Men
(Cormac McCarthy)
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
(Ken Kesey)
Out of Africa
(Isak Dinesen)
Pygmalion
(George Bernard Shaw)
Rebecca
(Daphne du Maurier)
Schindler’s Ark
(Thomas Keneally)
Tom Jones
(Henry Fielding)
I'm pretty stingy with my A+s.
Let's see that list.
What makes the Strega A+ List?
Susan Sontag once had a conversation with Kurt Vonnegut and he said that only he and Margaret Mitchell should be happy with the filmed versions of their books. (Slaughterhouse Five in his case.)
But Ellroy also liked L.A. Confidential, and rightly so. I think it's better than the book. It helped that Curtis Hanson was obsessed with the project and worked on the screenplay for several years to get it right.
The Outsiders?