All the Perl that's Practical to Extract and Report

Dumb waste of time

lachoy on 2002-05-02T04:57:53

In crappier news, Captain Corelli's Mandolin is a steaming pile of poo. It was so bad that we not only couldn't believe that somebody wrote the dialogue, but that actors (some good ones!) actually spoke it. Eeek!

Correlli's Mandolin

james on 2002-05-02T09:18:57

Which is a shame really, because the book. while not as good as Louis De Bernier's other efforts was alright.

There aren't that many good book to film translations out there, but I think one of the all time best has to be The Silence of the Lambs.
It was done very well.

Books to film

lachoy on 2002-05-02T12:00:35

I agree, Silence of the Lambs was an excellent translation and an amazing film. Books to film are so difficult to do that it's easier to pick out the good ones and assume everything else is bad. It's not even that the movie leaves out parts of the book -- that's just going to happen unless the original is less than 100 pages or so. It's that the movie hits the same tone as the book, has the same rhythm.

I usually don't even bother seeing the movie if I've read the book because I know I'll be disappointed. Lord of the Rings was an exception, and I went ahead and saw A Beautiful Mind even though I knew hollywood biographies of even semi-complex people suck.

Off the top of my head, here are a few adaptations I can think of that were good movies as well as good adaptations. (So for instance I leave John Grisham books out since the fact that they're good adaptions is because his books are all plot.)

  • Manhunter
  • Stand By Me
  • Shawshank Redemption
  • Pet Semetary
  • The Hot Rock
  • Primal Fear
  • Primary Colors
  • L.A. Confidential

There are a ton more, but it's quite early :-) There are probably some I didn't even know were adapted from a book, and also many movies for which I never read the book, so all the E. M. Forster stuff is out because I'm a lazy bastard :-)

There were other movies I liked (e.g., The Natural) that weren't good adaptations. There are also some movies better than the book, like The Godfather.

Re:Books to film

ziggy on 2002-05-02T13:06:20

I agree, Silence of the Lambs was an excellent translation and an amazing film.
Yep. I think the only thing that was changed in the movie was that Hannibal's cell was on the other side of the hallway, and had iron bars instead of a plexiglass wall.

Hannibal on the other hand was a different matter all together. I read it as soon as it came out, and I could never shake the sense that this book was explicitly written to not be made into a film. It was way too gory, even by hollywood standards. Nevertheless, I saw the film, much as I tried to avoid it. At least Ridley Scott got the flick, and he did some interesting things with the cinematography to convey a sense of horror in some places without actually being graphic about it.

Then again, he also took massive liberties with the story line, but not as drastic as he did with Blade Runner.