H/T to SugarFree for the topic!
We’ve all been there. We take a chance on viewing a film adaptation of a beloved book. And, most of the time in my experience, it’s a shitshow. Often not having any relation to the book whatsoever.
Or, the film stays pretty true to the book, then in the last 30 minutes, it changes direction which completely reverses the point of the original book.
The only one I can think of off the top of my head that didn’t disappoint me was the 1993 version of The Secret Garden.
Your turn!
Like I have ever read a book.
Super Mario Bros.
Ron Jeremy nailed the role of Mario.
Was that all he nailed in the movie?
Well, drawing on my kids here, Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief – In their words, as I remember it throughout the whole movie: When did this happen in the book(s)? That isn’t the right character? What the heck is going on? Oh my gosh dad, this is terrible.
Agreed. Percy was too old. That guy writes so many books, they’d be better as a Netflix series.
His writing captured my oldest when he was young. With those books my son got an award for reading 5 million words (he was bullied at school so sat in class during recess for a whole year)
Lord of the Rings had the potential to be as bad an adaptation as…The Hobbit, but it (LOTR, not the Hobbit) was a good adaptation other than sending Frodo to Osgiliath, the dwarf jokes, and some other issues.
I thought LOTR was decent adaption. The Hobbit not so much so I agree I think.
I will also add, it was ? can’t count the decades between reading them and the movies. But I still knew the Hobbit was way off base because I read them all a dozen times.
The Hobbit was a blatant cash grab. The fact that they stretched a rather short novel into three movies is the tell.
The one respect in which the movie was better was at least it put the love story into the main storyline instead of an appendix.
I knew what LOTR was after watching 3 seconds of a preview. It looked exactly as I’d imagined it.
The Led Zeppelin songs were better.
🙁
It’s a joke. Maybe not such a good one?
One doesn’t jest about such things!
Well, maybe one does.
The Rush song even more so…
Ooh, Rivendell and the Necromancer
(just searched for “Rush” “Tolkien”)
I liked the movies. Barely a wasted minute.
The books bored me to tears. Except the linguistic bits at the very end.
The movies did wrong by Faramir and Sam, but on the whole they were very good
One does not simply walk in to JRR Tolkein books and make them into a hollywood saga.
The Lord of the Rings was three movies that should have been nine. The Hobbit was three movies that should have been one.
Never saw the second half of the second Hobbit movie nor any part of the third.
I endured part I, the one with T. H. White’s Merlin – I mean Radagast – as the emergency backup wizard. (I suspect Tolkien didn’t have Radagast as a character because he would have been too derivative of White’s Merlin)
Wait? The Hobbit adaptation had Radagast? I thought he was only in LOTR (books) for a brief moment in a flashback expository from Gandalf? I disregarded The Hobbit as I was so thoroughly disappointed with Jackson’s LOTR (adding a love scene and a bloody car-chase, excising Bombadil)
I think Jackson’s Hobbit (the parts I saw before I gave up in disgust) was awful. I think there’s a reason Tolkien didn’t do any scenes with Radagast, he would have been a low-rent Merlin, like in the Hobbit movie.
As for Jackson’s LOTR, it was largely as good as a movie adaptation could have been. The love scenes were from the appendix of Return of the King and properly belonged in the main text, so I don’t object to incorporating them in the movie. If by “car-chase” you mean racing the Nazgul to Rivendell, that’s just the climax of Stagecoach with undead monsters instead of hostile Indians.
If I were to quarrel with Jackson on his LOTR, it would have been sending Frodo to Osgiliath and having the Nazgul pick up the scent of the Ring but then failing to follow up – a needless departure from the text creating unnecessary continuity problems. Also the dwarf-tossing jokes.
From a movie standpoint, the “Car-Chase” Scene is easily one of the best scenes in The Fellowship. And similarly, Faramir’s attack on Osgiliath at the behest of Denethor whilst Denethor is being serenaded by Pippin is one of my all time favorite scene’s in film.
As for the dwarf jokes, I find they help to lighten the mood for the average movie goer, and being one myself, I quite like tidbits that add some humanity to characters. Tidbits that would otherwise be lost in hours of dialogue were the movies to pay build characters like the books.
Lord of the rings for best movie adaption. There’s a reason every other book to movie adaption since, has tried to emulate it’s success (looking at you harry potter).
Perhaps one where the movie adaption is actually better than the book?
Jaws?
Ready Player One. The book was insufferable and sophomoric. The movie was at least watchable.
Jaws was a good read. The movie was good too, they just left out a bunch of the more adult content to make a PG movie.
My dad took my brother and I to watch “Jaws” at the last drive-in movie theater in Rochester, MN. We had to ride the last mile to the theater under a tarp in the bed of his pickup. This drive-in had 3 screens and one of them had giant boobies on it. I don’t think I’ve ever seen all of the movie “Jaws”.
Years later I took a young lady to see “Good Morning, Vietnam!” at the same drive in. I don’t remember what the movie was about. ;^)
LOL
My brother and I took a transistor radio and a six pack of beer to the drive in, hopped the fence and watched Apocalypse Now. We missed some when we had to “rapidly reposition” a couple of times, but otherwise enjoyed it.
I was 9 y/o when Jaws came out and I lived literally at the edge of the sand about 100 yds from the ocean. We were so scared by this movie that we barely swam for a month or two. After that, it was back to normal. There was people and surfboards with missing chunks from shark bites all over our beach. There was a huge photo of a great white hanging from the hook on the docks at the local market. The surf shop had a bitten board hanging above it’s door.
So, so wrong. The movie sucked balls. The book wasn’t great literature but was a fun ride.
Just saw the 1934 Treasure Island…almost as good as I recall the book being. Better than the Disney thing.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0025907/
The best? Gone With The Wind
I can’t think of a worst.
From that same year, I believe the movie of The Wizard of Oz is considered an improvement over the book. Back when I had delusions of becoming a teacher (I got betta,) I read a book about selecting books to read aloud to kids. Of all the Oz books, the authors recommended Ozma of Oz over TWOO, saying Baum hadn’t hit his stride yet in the original book.
I’ve never seen TWOO in a theater – only on TV. I would like to see it on a big screen someday.
The very best TWOO is shown at Burning Man, with the sound off and Dark Side of the Moon as the soundtrack. Or that could just be the drugs talking.
Didn’t Baum write dozens of Oz books?
I don’t know how many, but yes – there were a bunch. I think my aunt had all of them. The only one I remember my family having was Glinda of Oz.
It shows up pretty frequently at Alamo Drafthouse locations as well as the Fathom Special Event screenings via Fandango, etc.
Wizard was an extremely dark book as part of an extremely dark series. It was shocking to read more of the series after growing up with The Wizard of Oz.
You guys might enjoy this vid too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdNO7rJ9FPE
Think I might have to track down some collected editions to revisit in the future.
oops, wrong link. Apologies: https://youtu.be/dnXjqhzbY1w
So the play Moonlight and Magnolias is about the development of the screenplay; the production we saw (at the Old Globe in San Diego) featured Dan Castellaneta as Selznick. It was brilliant.
I have always been leery of even attempting to watch film adaptations of my favorite books. (As I’ve said before, I blame Michael Landon for the blasphemy he committed with the TV series of Little House on the Prairie. I have yet to watch an entire film or TV version of Little Women. I started watching the PBS version a few years ago and couldn’t bring myself to finish it.
That said, I adored Peter Jackson’s take on Lord of the Rings – we own the whole series in both DVD and Blu-Ray – but that may be because I’ve never been able to slog my way through all the books. I finally managed to finish reading Fellowship of the Ring AFTER seeing the movies.
I was also pleasantly surprised by the Hunger Games films, though they were necessarily missing the heroine’s thought processes, which I thought were the most interesting element of the books.
As I’ve said before, I blame Michael Landon for the blasphemy he committed with the TV series of Little House on the Prairie.
What’s the biggest criticism of the TV series, besides being painfully 70s?
PA INGALLS HAD A BEARD, DAMMIT!!! IF YOU CAN’T GROW A DAMN BEARD, CAST SOMEONE WHO CAN GROW A DAMN BEARD TO PLAY THAT CHARACTER!!!
::takes a deep, cleansing breath:: Sorry – the Little House books are among those I read repeatedly as a kid, so they’re canonical to me. I would have preferred a straight adaptation of the book series. The TV series added an adopted son, IIRC, which is a departure from the books. Admittedly, I didn’t watch a lot of the series.
Yeah, the beard thing is under the “painfully 70s” umbrella for me.
It’s interesting watching my daughter consume both the TV show and the books. The way they play off one another in her mind is awesome. She wears a pigtail braided hat to bed to look like Melissa Gilbert while I read to her from Little House books each night.
I get what you’re saying though. The fidelity to the books is not there. It’s a Little House flavored 70s family show. I think the Little House books would make a better mini-series than a full fledged TV series. 2-3 episodes per book.
The beard becomes a biggish deal in one of the later books during a now “problematic” passage where some of the men in town perform a minstrel number in blackface. (One reason I want to acquire all the books in hardback before they’re canceled/memory-holed.) Laura thinks the man playing the fiddle must be Pa, but he doesn’t seem to have a beard. She fears he may have shaved it, but it turns out he greased it down and tucked it into his collar.
Bet they never put that scene in the TV series.
I’m going to risk Mojeaux’s wrath and say I’m largely persuaded by the arguments that Rose played a large part in making the books what they were. When I came across The First Four Years, which I believe was only found in manuscript after both Laura’s and Rose’s deaths, even as a young reader I found the whole tone jarringly different from the previously-published books.
I have no question she played a large part. The problem is how one defines “large”. Some people say she edited it so heavily she may as well have written it and some people say she DID write it.
Laura intended to write for an adult audience and it was Rose who persuaded her to go for a child audience, so there was that, too.
However, Laura was an accomplished writer of her own so I have no doubt she did a good amount of work.
So what I suspect is that she put down the drafts when she was a novice writer, revised to the best of her ability, fought with Rose on her edits, and eventually they compromised with Rose’s edits winning most of those battles.
Laura and Rose did not get along at all. I also suspect that if they had met as strangers, they would have hated one another.
As for The First Four years, McBride actually has a foreword in that book that says, “The tone of this book is darker.”
I know I mentioned to you the book Libertarians on the Prairie about Laura & Rose, but I don’t recall if we discussed The Ghost in the Little House. It’s more academic than the other book, as I recall. Unfortunately, I lent it to a co-worker and haven’t yet gotten it back. And she’s working from home now.
We were forbidden to watch the TV show in our house. My mother is a purist, you see. They were amongst her favorite books and she didn’t want the canon defiled, and in our modern Glib terms, she felt it was woke. So I have never seen ONE episode of Little House on the Prairie. Her other (later) big complaint, besides being Woke House, was that Michael Landon was a hound dog and she felt he should not have been playing Pa.
Now, as an adult, I read an article about Pa by an adult new to the books, and she cast him as a bit of a ne’er do well, and in reading the history, I kind of agree. But, scoundrel or not, I can hold both versions in my head at the same time.
With the TV show, I feel like they really wasted an opportunity to do some really good historical television. The books were practically made for it. So that’s my personal beef.
Stand by me adaptation of Stephen King’s The Body and Shawshank Redemption, adaptation of Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption. Both from the same book, Different Seasons.
Which also had the short story Apt Pupil, which was a bad movie.
Apt Pupil was pretty good. Not in the same league as Shawshank, but not bad.
Fight Club movie was better than the book.
Shawshank Redemption
The Godfather
I think in most other cases the movie is worse.
Fight club may be the weirdest movie I have ever seen.
Don’t talk about Fight Club!
Thank you!
That’s the weirdest?
Allow me to find you a copy of a David Lynch film. If you want to stick to the theme, it’ll be Dune.
Dood, I know you. I won’t watch anything you recommend.
You can just start with the trailer.
I have seen dune, decades ago and ya, it is not the mind fuck fight club was to me. Maybe I need to rewatch.
Dune isn’t even the weirdest David Lynch film.
Yeah, but if Fight Club is weird…
It’s not that weird. Look at the John Waters stuff, or some of the Troma movies.
How about The Forbidden Zone?
While this was a good movie, IMO. The Hunt for Red October was very, very different from the book. As a matter of fact, all of the film adaptations of Clancy novels went pretty afield from the novels. The Affleck one was particularly egregious, both in how the film deviated from the source material and the quality of the film.
(When I was a Yute I read everything that he wrote).
(When I was a Yute I read everything that he wrote).
Ya me too. I read The Hunt for Red October on my first sailboat delivery job in which the payment was a plane ticket to Connecticut where the boat was and food while we delivered it to Palm Beach. Reading it at sea where the story unfolded was fun. I remember now after you mention it I was pissed when I first saw the movie but got over it, because Sean Connery and don’t really remember the book now.
Red Storm Rising was his best, IMO. The fact that there were at least five or six different storylines saved it from film adaptation.
I remember loving the book. I may have brain cell failure because I can’t recall the whole thing. Clive Cussler became an often read in later years during long airplane rides. Some would call the books idiotic, I call them escapism. Real life sucks so if you are stuck on a plane for 6 hours I say escape. Sahara was a decent book to film adaption IMHO. All the camps I worked in developed a library of book exchange and all the books where of that sort.
Never read anything by Clive Cussler, but I thought that Sahara was a pretty decent popcorn flick.
CT to FL even on something more than 40 feet would not be my thing.
/s former sailboat owner and racer
It was a 40 something Shannon ketch. Year1986?7 It was a really nice boat.
Being young, stupid and poor I did not have enough cigarettes for the weeks long trip. Luckily the boat owner had a drawer full of cigarillos which I consumed sitting in the dark on watch minding the helm.
And ya, that trip is a good one as the outer banks rock.
I read up to The Sum of All Fears and so detested that book that I never touched another of his.
I started off a Clancy fan, enjoyed Red October and, especially, Red Storm Rising. I felt that they started downhill from there and eventually I got tired of the “Rah-rah, yay Government” tone and gave up on him.
Clive Cussler was similar. Not only do the “Good Guys” always win but there is a certain “just in the nick o’ time” rescue stuff going on and, of course, “government will pay for it all.”
That said, Sahara was a fun excuse to eat some popcorn.
I stopped reading Clancy novels when he started working with a ghostwriter who had less than zero understanding of small arms. Like where a character puts a Smith & Wesson in his waistband and less than two pages later pulls out a Glock.
Tiresome cliches about silencers: a) they go “phut-phut” b) they work with revolvers.
I used to enjoy Clancy’s books specifically because he got the details right about small arms most of the time. Just about all other authors I have read get the details wrong too often – other than actual combat veterans writing about combat and even that’s not guaranteed.
I agree with this OBJ guy. I loved both the book and movie about Red October, but the other movies were shit and the books slowly degraded in time.
But we knew something dumb was up with the producers when they changed Islamic Jihadists in the books for South American Drug lords in the movie in Patriot games.
Wokka, please.
What? Patriot Games was about IRA terrorists.
Clear and Present Danger was about Colombian cartels.
The dumb one was Sum of All Fears where the Jihadis nuking the super bowl with a lost Israeli weapon was turned into white nationalists doing it with a stolen Russian nuke. Only good thing in that movie was the attack on the carrier.
Yeah, the Stephen King book-to-movie pipeline produced some great books *and* movies.
And some indifferent books and truly awful movies.
Well, sometimes the pipeline didn’t work exactly right. But when it did it was great.
Yeah. It’s wildly inconsistent. He’s like the Star Trek of authors – only the even ones are any good. And some of those are very, very good.
Doctor Zhivago starts with the book’s epilogue, and ends on a socialist realism note that I don’t think Pasternak would have appreciated.
THIS! And I still watch the movie.
One thing that I remember, being a teen when i first saw it, was when the beautiful lass played by Julie Christie spat “A girl as beautiful as I have seen everything evil by the time she is seventeen.”
Terrible, but real. And now people whine about safe spaces from hearing dissenting opinions.
David Lean’s adaptations of Great Expectations and Oliver Twist are both good, as is MGM’s mid-1930s adaptation of David Copperfield.
But for Dickens adaptations I don’t know if anything can top The Passions of Carol.
“Das Boot” was a good adaptation of the book.
Bad adaptation? “Amadeus” was a retelling of the Cain and Able story using Mozart and Salieri. It shit all over their relationship. They were rivals but were friendly and the two had a lot of respect for each other.
And I misspelled “Abel”. I also forgot that “Amadeus” was an adaptation of a play. I’ve never seen the play, but from what I understand it is faithful to the play. “Amadeus” is still a retelling of Cain and Abel.
Didn’t realize DB was a book. God is that a good movie.
Yep.
It took a bit of doing to find an English version. That was before I started studying German, but even at my best with German, I doubt I could read the whole thing in German.
I have Das Boot on DVD but it is hard to watch again. Great, but like taking medicine.
Horrible transition from book to film -> All Philip K Dick stories except for Blade Runner / Electric Sheep and Total recall.
Great translation from book to film ->Christine, Misery, 2001, and A Clockwork Orange.
A great adaptation can modify the story to make it more filmable or visual but should have the essence of the story.
The Outsiders was also excellent in both cases.
Is that the one with Pony Boy?
Soda Pop and Pony Boy
Stay golden, man!
I thought 2001 was written in conjunction with the movie.
Yes.
And in the book they went to Saturn, not Jupiter.
Douglas Trumbull was unable to make convincing rings for Saturn so they moved it to Jupiter.
If I recall, and this is my not search engine challenge, but it was a short story called The Sentinel, then the movie, then the novel.
I did movie> short story > novel
and the whole thing finally made sense.
For PKD, have you seen the rotoscoped A Scanner Darkly? I enjoyed that one.
I liked the parts of the movie I saw, but I kept nodding off. I was on a 14hr flight and on melatonin.
PKD: I enjoyed “Man in the High Castle” on Prime. Haven’t read the book. How does it compare?
I attempted to read that book once, but no way was I learning all that damn slang. The movie at least gives it visual context so you can deduce what they’re talking about.
Starship Troopers? Worst? Maybe not, but very, very bad.
More Meat for the Grinder!!
I haven’t read the book.
I just like the campy fun of the movie.
The book’s worth a read. Easily my favorite Heinlein (I haven’t read all his stuff, though).
“I haven’t read the book.”
Would you like to know more?
We had a garage attendant (assistant mechanic) who had a bit part in that movie at work. He was very proud of the scenes he appeared in.
^LA privilege
All he hadda do was act naturally!
My motorcycle appeared in an episode of the Closer. The star lady was a mean assed bitch. Another motorcycle appeared in two separate Smirnoff ice commercials, but neither ever aired. My shop appeared on My Name Is Earl, and I had a minor role in a short by a friend called “Little Girl” about a runaway girl who became a gangster. I just played a guard who pulls his gun when some people approach his door, gets verification and then waves them in. Still not famous.
Oh, and I was supposed to have a minor part in a movie called “Savage Dawn” but my motorcycle blew up about two weeks before it was filmed. Three of my friends were in it, including the guy I worked with repossessing cars. Coulda been my big break, dammit!
Oh, and I appeared in a sizzle reel for a show called “Battling Garages” It was my neighbor the tire guy’s idea. The video seems to have been memory holed off the internet, though.
My roommate in SF made a short immediately after I moved away to NYC. The male lead was smokin’ hot gay dude-bro.
*sigh*
There was another short after he later joined me in NYC that I got to take part in but I don’t think he finished it. I had a line inside one of the 14th Street subway stations that I can’t recall. Fun times.
Funny thing. On one of the Smirnoff shoots, I was looking at the story board and there a frame where the hot chick sits on the bike and her tits jiggle. The artist used ((( and ))) to denote this. Some lady walked up and saw me looking at it. I told her that I’m pretty sure this same pics was on the men’s room wall at the gas station across the street. She laughed uproariously, like too much and then left. The other crew members told me to be careful, she was the exec producer.
Starship Troopers is awesome. Your opinion is bad and you should feel bad.
The Bro is right as rain on this one. Just rewatched it a couple months back and it was still excellent.
It’s not a bad flick but it’s an abysmal adaptation.
Because it wasn’t going to be an adaptation. The story that’s floating around was that the movie was in production, and someone noticed that it had some similarities (space marines, fighting bugs) as some book by Heinlein. So they got the rights to make the book into a movie, and used the title, and some of the dialog for the classroom scenes.
I can enjoy the movie for a dumb popcorn film, but the book is one of my favorites (the whole argument about juvenile delinquents and punishment stand out to me.
Yeah, I agree with all these comments from Brochettaward on down. The question SP posed was as an adaptation. And, IMHO, in that vein it’s terrible. As a movie, for me it’s a B+ popcorn movie.
Did the book have coed showers with Dina Meyer? No? Then the movie was better.
Honestly…been a long time since I read an abridged version but I think Ben Hur was a pretty good adaptation.
Ben-Hur, abridged
Never read the novel, but the 1959 adaptation seemed long enough for a novel – it also kept up the excitement.
I’ll nominate The Lathe of Heaven for both categories – the most bang-for-the-buck on zero budget first movie and the dreadfully awful second movie.
Choke by Chuck Palahniuk was a good book but crappy movie.
I couldn’t make it through that book. I was hoping for some of his earlier options (like “Invisible Monsters”) to happen but they never did. Maybe we’re better off for that.
I liked Lullaby a lot, but my wife really liked Invisible Monsters. I would like to see a comedy made based on Lullaby.
Invisible Monsters would be a bitch to film.
Lullaby has been in production hell for quite a while now. Last update was in the beginning of February.
Someone should threaten to sing the culling song until they get the money they need.
They’ve had the money for years now. I’m one of the backers, the expected release was originally September of 2018.
That sucks. What is their reason for the delays?
Timeloose:
Per the updates, most of it was trying to line up some big name talent (which wound up being Kristen Stewart).
They announced entering pre-production back in 2016 (a couple months after the project funded). They’ve said they’re planning on shooting film this year, and are casting again.
I tried to read The Name of the Rose after seeing the film. I did not succeed in completing the book.
That’s purposeful.
The first 100 pages are intentionally ultra-dense. He wanted to forge the reader he wanted.
I asked to leave the forge.
I liked both, but the book more.
I have not read that. I have read Foucault’s Pendulum and The Island of the Day Before. Name of the Rose isn’t on my TBR because I saw the film (great film) and I know who and howdunnit.
Foucaults Pendulum would be a good miniseries.
Of course…I read the book of ITNOTR first and haven’t seen the whole movie yet…should add to my netflix queue.
Island of the Day Before is fantastic.
Still worth a read.
The immense connections he makes via literature through time is incredible.
The Martian is one of the best combinations of being faithful to the book and also being a good movie in its own right.
Also, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Then Disney got involved in the next two movies and messed them up.
Funny you mention the Narnia series. I just finished watching The Journey of the Dawn Treader 5 minutes ago with the kiddo.
The second and third weren’t bad, but the first definitely shines in comparison. I’d say, in defense of those movies, that the Caspian and Dawn Treader books are less adaptable to film than TLTW&TW. There are simply too many interlaced storylines that collapse without one another.
They weren’t bad, no, but they were much less faithful adaptations, and many of the changes seemed unnecessary. Dawn Treader was always going to be very hard to adapt, though, because it’s so episodic. I’m mostly still bummed that the underperformance of Caspian and Dawn Treader meant the other four movies never got made.
There is the BBC edition of “The Silver Chair” starring Tom Baker as Puddleglum, but probably no chance at all of the other titles getting adapted. Esp not with Disney.
I agree. Dawn Treader was my favorite of the series for the longest time, but it was a hard one to adapt. I wish they had done the other ones. The Horse and His Boy would have been fun.
The original actors are the right age to do Horse and His Boy now, and maybe Last Battle too, but everyone’s moved on to other things.
Netflix is supposed to have some Narnia content in the works, but I’m very sceptical of them doing faithful adaptations.
People rave about the technical accuracy of The Martian
I have two major beefs:
Saran Wrap will not withstand a delta-P of 10psi
A human cannot live on a diet of potatoes.
MATT DAMON!!
In the book’s defense, Watney did have vitamins, so it wasn’t solely potatoes. And there was ketchup and salt at first, til he ran out, iirc.
Dune is awful.
Shawshank is pretty good.
The SciFi miniseries they released around 2000 or so wasn’t bad. The 84 movie though, I agree.
I still like the beauty of the set on the Kyle Maclachlan Dune guy. Jurgen Prochnow as the dying duke, so many other greats.
I hated their treatment (movie) of the Harkonnens. Fat oozy guys you’d never believe could command authority.
And of course, Gordon Sumner’s worst ever acting contribution: “i WILL kill him!”
I still watch it though.
Princess Bride?
As you wish.
How much and I need pics.
good movie i know. haven’t read the book.
Book is awesome and vastly different other than a few parts – from the movie. Even more meta too.
Recommended.
Never seen it.
It’s got everything –
OK, I’ll give it a shot.
A friend of mine had someone read the “Mawwiage” homiwy….uh, homily…at her wedding – in character. It was glorious.
I was pleasantly surprised to see how closely the film followed the book.
“The Princess Bride” might be my favorite movie.
And I’m not a fan of Meathead.
Princess Bride crosses so many cultures as a favorite. My crusty Army dad loved it, my husband loves it as do his kids, my coworkers from age 30-55 love it.
It’s just so damned fun.
Never get involved in a land war in asia.
“What you do not smell is called iocane powder. It is odorless, tasteless, dissolves instantly in liquid and it is among the more deadly poisons known to man.”
/later
* Humperdinck sniffs vial *
“Iocane, I bet my life on it.”
One of the great, subtle jokes in the movie.
That kinda bothered me, as did Westley’s handing of the vial pre-wine challenge in which he said “inhale but do not touch” to Vizzeni before their battle of wits.
Inhale explicitly means to touch, to take the damned stuff in.
Honestly, Westley could have handed him a hankie and said “does this smell like chloroform to you?” but it would have been simpler and less funny.
The Exorcist was excellent in both cases, but the writer was very involved in the movie.
I kind of need him to call me up about my husband, whose ICU psychosis makes him think he’s in Hell and fighting demons.
I’m learning from this thread that there is a whole lot of movies that I didn’t know were books.
Great Book / Great Movie – The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976)
Great Book / Shitty Movie – The Getaway (1994)
Shitty Book/ Great Movie – Moby Dick (1956)
Shitty Book/ Shitty Movie – American Psycho (2000)
Great Book / Great Movie – The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976)
Didn’t read the book, but one of the best movies ever made.
Pull, Lemuel! Pull!
The original 1972 version of The Getaway, though, was a near-perfect crime movie. I honestly don’t think that adding the denouement of Lost Horizons would have made the movie any better.
Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels is the best crime movie.
Heat is the best crime movie.
Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels isn’t even the best Guy Ritchie crime movie, although it’s a fine comedy in it’s own right.
Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels isn’t even the best Guy Ritchie crime movie, although it’s a fine comedy in it’s own right.
Correct. I’ll accept Snatch or RocknRolla (that has got a murder’s row of British actors in it)
RocknRolla was the one I was thinking of. Great flick.
Snatch is basically Lock, Stock remade with more money (and Brad Pitt doing a ridiculous accent).
RocknRolla had more depth while still staying funny.
“There’s no school like the ol’ school, and I’m the ‘eadmaster!”
Lock Stock is better than Snatch because in LS all of the various plotlines revolve around the core group of protagonists (even if they don’t know it), while in Snatch there’s two entirely different plotlines that barely intersect, and the diamond plotline only involves the protagonists at the very end and completely by accident.
The Friends of Eddie Coyle disagree.
And on topic it’s another pretty good faithful adaptation of a novel.
The Long Good Friday is the best crime movie.
Also, The Warriors is a wonderful film and a terrible book; the Deborah Van Valkenberg character who joins the gang on their trek to Coney Island in the film, get gang raped on top of a pile of corpses (the remnants of The Orphans) and left broken and bloodied in the book.
Stadium video used to play this clip on the big screen before Kansas played Missouri at home: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWtUL5Rx364
I actually like American Psycho as a book I would never read again, and as a movie that I thought did a great job of boiling down the book without the graphic rat in the habitrail scenes, I’d watch the movie again. The book is still seared in my memory, so no need.
my favorite story from the making of American Psycho is that the shower scene was apparently EXTREMELY popular with both the (female) director and some of the crew. Definitely not how how your general straight male director would’ve filmed it.
American Psycho is both shitty and spectacular simultaneously.
The unquestionably worst adaptation of a book to a movie, due in no small part to the abysmal casting…
The Bonfire of the Vanities
there is simply no debate about this, and if you disagree you are wrong… terribly, terribly wrong.
Goodness yes. Plus they PC’d the movie even back then.
This 100%.
Nep!!
I don’t know if you saw my update on the outdoor concert.
We found a venue and booked it. We have 4 bands with the headliner still being lined up. There will be a beer truck from SBC brewery.
August 7th is the date. It was hell finding a venue that had what we needed when we needed it.
I was at this brewery in NJ on Sat. Lots of good stuff on tap and great names for each beer.
http://www.fourcitybrewing.com/about-us/
Close to me!
Yep saw the update, and I’ve updated my calendar. Looking forward to it.
I’ll be dropping info as soon as possible. The size of the event is still dependent on Gov Wolf Pussy.
Fuck Wolf.
figuratively, not literally.
STEVE SMITH NO UNDERSTAND METAPHOR
The John Hurt 1984 was a good one but mostly as an adjunct to the book. It captured the world well but if you haven’t read the book then good luck.
Good choice. A very good movie.
Lots of good samples for industrial music in that one.
As in potential, or actual?
I love watching, say, an old Twilight Zone episode and hearing a line I just heard in a Skinny Puppy song that I know backwards and forwards the day before. Jumps out at you.
Faith Collapsing Ministry
“You… are the dead. Remain exactly where you are. Make no move until you are ordered. [glass breaking]”
“Big Brother said!”
“Brother said!”
“There have been spontaneous demonstrations by party workers, voicing gratitude and joy.”
– 1984
Ha you’re right. I rarely listen to that track.
100% agree. On-topic, very faithful representation of the book.
So I can’t believe I’m going to be the first to say this, but Goodfellas (based on Wiseguy) is a great film, I’ve never read the book though. Two other really good adaptations would be The Thing and Trainspotting.
The ones that I’m really hoping for a movie adaptation that sticks close to the books and can get a series going someday would be the Richard Stark Parker series of books (adapted twice already, once as Payback with Gibson and as Parker with Jason Stathem).
As for the least known adaptation of a book to a movie, I think that may be What Dreams May Come.
You are dead to me.
Not sure how “The Thing” is a great adaptation. IIRC, the original “Thing from Another World” or whatever it was called based on “Who Goes There” was a closer adaptation…but it’s been a long time since I read the story.
Payback was a pretty good adaptation of The Hunter. It was much better than the 70’s flick with Lee Marvin (which I think was also called The Hunter.) The Jason Statham adaptation of Flashfire was fucking awful.
I would love to see some movie adaptations of the Dortmunder series.
Lee Marvin’s version was “Point Blank” – tight flick but different than Payback (which of course is vastly different if you watch the “Straight Up” cut too).
That’s the one. And yeah, good flick but it shared nothing with The Hunter save the basic concept.
I’d watch Lee Marvin eat a sandwich, though.
much better than the 70’s flick with Lee Marvin
you can also die in a fire.
See above. It was a good movie but not a good adaptation of the source book.
Maybe I misremember but I thought it was fairly true to the novel, plot-wise anyway. Maybe it missed the ‘tone’ but that’s pretty subjective. Also sorry about the DIAF thing, I got carried away.
No worries.
My biggest complaint about Point Blank was that I don’t think Marvin really nailed the Parker character. Marvin seemed more zoned out than anything else, whereas Parker was pretty much a sociopathic ball of rage kept in line by iron self-discipline. But it’s been a while since I’ve seen it, so I too could be misremembering.
“The Thing”
Which one? There were three of them.
There is only one – and it is John Carpenter’s phenomenal, ultimately rewatchabe, version.
No offense to the fun Howard Hawks production. But, it doesn’t hold a candle to Carpenter’s version (adapted by Bill Lancaster – son of Burt).
The less said about the 2011 version, the better.
The book was enjoyable. Generally the same story, but with lots more (mostly unrelated) anecdotes about Henry’s mafia life plus more detail about how the FBI built their case and got him to flip in the end.
I can watch Payback or Point Blank and come away thinking they were both great movies. Having never read the source material, in Point Blank, Lee Marvin did what Lee Marvin does best, cool, collected and takes no shit. Payback was the first movie that Gibson had to act, without overacting (OK, there was a scene or two, but it wasn’t the norm for the movie). Also, I am not gay, but if I had to blow a guy and it was Mel Gibson, I’d imagine it was Lee Marvin and vice versa. If I’m drunk, either is Clint Eastwood.
Also, I am not gay, but if I had to blow a guy and it was Mel Gibson, I’d imagine it was Lee Marvin and vice versa. If I’m drunk, either is Clint Eastwood.
That’s just… wow.
Is there are gay-Glib version of that?
“I am not straight, but if I had to go down on a chick and it was Salma Hayek, I’d imagine it was Penélope Cruz and vice versa. If I’m drunk, either is Angelina Jolie.”
I’m guessing “no”.
Also, my reference may be a tad dated.
No.
A straight man knows at least one guy who is supposed to be sexually attractive–himself. A gay man doesn’t necessarily have such a counterfactual.
To clarify: I have no problem identifying beautiful women. Like at all. Beauty in general goes beyond sexual attraction. And for most of the human history (the entire human history minus 5 years or 15 years for Americans?) there was no stigma discussing who an attractive woman is.
If I had to blow a guy, I’d try to get Salma Hayek to identify as male.
I enjoy a lot of Lee Marvin’s roles specifically because he was, IRL, a combat-hardened Marine who survived his company being all but wiped out in one incident.
Acting is one thing but knowing that the actor truly knows what it like to kill people almost casually – to me that just adds a level to the character that actor plays.
It’s always interesting when the actor has really gone through the shit they’re portraying.
There was an actor in the ’30s named George Raft who was a driver for a well-known gangster (Owney Madden) and portrayed them very authentically.
Also, Tony Sirico (Paulie Walnuts from the Sopranos) was literally in the Mafia in the ’70s. Wiki sez: “Sirico has stated that he was visited by an acting troupe composed of ex-convicts during his imprisonment, which inspired him to give acting a try.”
Around the World in Eighty Days (1972) cartoon.
So much more interesting than Jules Verne’s book. I watched the 16-episode series first. The book was completely different.
Good choice. I also thought that the book was pretty lame.
For a guy who was so meticulous with time and schedules the loss of the day was a massive plot hole in the book. Fogg should have known better.
How about Fahrenheit 451? I love the quirkiness of the film.
The first one? Because the recent one is crap.
I’m only aware of one adaptation. And it wasn’t recent.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit_451_(2018_film)
This crap https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0360556/
Gone with the Wind.
I’ll have to second Gunslinger’s picks of Shawshank Redemption and Stand by Me, both were great as books (novellas) and movies. For foreign language I would say Cidade de Deus (City of God).
You guys did your mid week zoom a day too early.
Sorry, I was needy yesterday.
Beowulf and Grendel is a fantastic rendering of Beowulf, so long as you understand that it’s a re-telling. I’d say the film uses Beowulf as a source is a more apt description than calling it an adaptation.
I’m not sure about the best book-to-movie adaptation, but Out of Sight and Get Shorty should be in the running. Elmore Leonard has never written anything less than great. I loved Jackie Brown too, but it diverged a little too much from the source to be the best.
The worst book-to-movie? No contest, any of the Matt Helm ‘adaptations’ with Dean Martin. Execrably unfaithful to the source material, and shitty movies on their own merits besides.
Best: A Midnight Clear, I saw the movie before reading the book. As a kid when home from school I stumbled across it. The movie bombed at the box office which is a shame with such a great cast. Ethan Hawke, Gary Senise, John C Mcginley, Peter Berg. Inspired me to read the book which was just as good. To this day I credit that combo with sparking my love for history, particularly WWII & WWI
Worst: The Shining. It left out very important parts of the book.
Speaking of adaptations…not sure how it’ll compare to The Boys, but I’ve got all the collected editions of “Jupiter’s Legacy” (and “Jupiter’s Circle” which is being included in this adaptation) and this could be a pretty tight story. Would be nice if they can do it all in a single season though – no need to drag things out more than necessary.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdNO7rJ9FPE
Have you watched Invincible yet? Lots and lots of content warnings, as it’s an animated superhero show that is not for children.
Comic book adaptations is a whole other ball of wax. You’ve got the ones that are basically “inspired by” (looks at Preacher and Lucifer), ones no one realizes were a comic (Road to Perdition), all of the superhero adaptations (personal favorites so far are Stargirl, Justice League – animated, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Daredevil (Netflix), and Legends of Tomorrow from season 2 on), and the ones that are in production that I’m worried about (Y: The Last Man, Sandman).
Saw some clips on twitter – is that prime or netflix? Been meaning to add it.
Invincible is on Prime. Four episodes out so far, with new ones dropping on Fridays.
Prime.
For comic book (*ahem* graphic novel) adaptations, I’m surprised no one has brought up The Crow.
“The Falcon and the Winter Soldier”
Is that any good?
I haven’t even read the Falcon comics but I have been enjoying the Falcon series so far. It’s a bit too much Falcon angst, but it has some good Falcon action scenes.
Huh-huh, Falcon.
Generally speaking, I do not read books whose movies I have watched first and I don’t watch movies whose books I have read. Bonfire of the Vanities sticks out.
Worst ever:
Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins
Especially problematic because they have a white dude playing a Korean.
Racist!
Seriously, though, I found Remo to be a fun two hours to consume popcorn.
Same – I quite enjoyed the movie.
I just started reading the books this year. Ward had the smart-assery down pat.
But, yeah, I expect Joel Grey to be retroactively cancelled.
Keep up these are Biden Times. Koreans are white if they have guns.
Or Ivy League applicants.
Disney’s “Black Cauldron”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Cauldron_(film)
Killed Lloyd Alexander adaptations I think. Too bad, the Kestrel series could be an awesome miniseries.
It took this long to get to a shitty adaptation of Atlas Shrugged?
Also, decent book but shitty film – The Firm. Casting director should have never again worked in Hollywood since they miscast every.single.character.
THANK YOU!!!!
My husband took me to see that for my birthday and I cried at the end because it was so bad.
The book is awful as well.
Nuh uh is not.
Fountainhead is better.
I’ve never read any fiction of hers that wasn’t clunky crap.
She gets points for seeing where we were headed very early on. That said, I got sick of Atlas before I finished it.
Well, she wasn’t foresightful so much as very acutely aware of her history. She’d already been there.
Yes.
Did you see the movie?
Yes. It’s kind of a blip on my memory, though.
Folks have been suggesting for, like, forever, that this would make a much better mini-series than a movie. I went to the first two movies, mostly for moral support, but, agreed, they are mostly awful.
During my last re-read of The Fountainhead every time Roarke spoke I heard it in Gary Cooper’s voice.
You read Fountainhead? More than once?
Twice here, and I rarely re-read books.
East of Eden, Great Expectations, and PG Wodehouse are regular rereads. Pretty much everything else is one time only too.
There are dozens of books that I have read dozens of times and many, many more that n>1. A favorite book is like is like a succulent dinner, can be enjoyed more than once.
I look forward to a re-read in the same way that I like to re-watch a movie. Knowing how it ends you can understand the characters better and can appreciate the plot.
I’m trying to talk myself into a fourth reading of Scheherazade in order to collect reference material for a long-promised post to this site, for example.
Still looking forward to third (and probably last) time through Ben-Hur.
No, not dinner; a favorite book is like a piece of music that you can never grow tired of.
I am at the opposite end of the spectrum with regards to rereads and rewatches.
It is a rare thing for me to want to read/hear/see the same media again. There has to be enough time in between that I forget as much of it as possible.
The Keep was a perfectly dreadful movie and worse yet it was so bad that ‘Hollywood’ wont touch F Paul Wilson’s ‘Repairman Jack’ series, which until he lost the plot around about book 8 were just screaming to be made into schlocky action movies.
Also if we’re talking books that should be made into movies but haven’t been “Shibumi” by Trevanian tops the list.
How can you be so wrong about so much, but so right about this?
Aside – F. Paul Wilson is distantly related to me by marriage. One of my cousins married one of his nieces (I think, it’s been a while.)
It’s a gift.
The Keep had a great soundtrack.
Tangerine Dream – I mean, come on.
But yeah, the movie is… something to behold.
I for one loved the whole series. Y’all are crazy.
PS. He wrote a bunch of TV stuff too. Including Tales from the Darkside IIRC.
PPS. I agree that Repairman Jack needs to have something filmed. One of the most glibertarians characters I’ve ever seen committed to paper.
Wilson’s obsession with making all his novels not only exist in one “world” but also intertwined plot-wise really hurt the series. It had good stories and characters but as he had to mold them more and more to fit the “adversary cycle” thing they became less interesting as “stand alone” books and too dependent on the multi-book-series storyline.
As a example of how to do it. Pelecanos, who I mentioned above(below)? has all his novels set in DC and the characters from one novel are mentioned or even encountered in others but the stories from one to the next aren’t dependent on each other. It’s one thing to do a six or seven part series where everything ends tied up in a pretty bow but over thirty plus books it starts to seem unnecessarily forced.
Agree to disagree. *shrugs*
My only criterion is did I enjoy the series? Yes.
I agreed – shoe-horning Repairman Jack into the “adversary cycle” – I hit the last book and was just “fuck, no, I’m not starting your other, semi-related series to see what happened to this character”. He set up Jack to flat-out fail over the last few books. It irked me.
until he lost the plot around about book 8
A series I started out excited to read the next book and finished utterly hating.
Another possibility for best – The two-part BBC adaptation of Sir Terry Pratchett’s Hogfather. Greatest Christmas movie ever made, Die Hard can eat a dick.
Found it a little dull, but I haven’t read a lot of Pratchett’s stuff.
The girlfriend was reluctant to watch it, she became a fan. Still not as good as the book, but probably the best of the Discworld adaptations.
Hitchhiker’s Guide
We’ve got an original radio series, the TV series, the book and a movie.
For me the TV series is campy enough to give the book a run for the money.
And, of course, the text based Infocom computer game…
I take comfort knowing none of you have listed Twilight.
I’ve heard it described as “a young woman’s choice between bestiality and necrophilia.”
Have not read. Have no plans to read.
Nor to see any of the movies.
I saw the movies. They were bad. Although not the worst movies Kristen Stewart ever did.
I read Twilight. It was popcorn fun on a long drive.
“Marathon Man” is another great movie better book. Written by William Goldman, who wrote The Princess bride, but I imagine most of you nerds know that.
Not a clue.
Dustin Hoffman, Lawrence Olivier, “Is it safe?” “Szell!! Szell!!”
Must have come out when you were doing wet work in Cameroon.
?
Forrest Gump the movie was quite different, and way better than the book.
Interesting! almost makes me want to read the book.
One thing the movie showed well is changing attitudes of the whole culture. It was as if the movie could acknowledge that society’s attitudes can change but we are all basically people who care.
Now that “look at the changing point of view” is CANCELLED.
I’ll second Juris Imprudent’s nomination of Bonfire. That film was likely the reason that no other Tom Wolfe novels became movies. The Right Stuff was a terrific book that became a quite good (if a bit long) piece of cinema.
Being a Florida Man, I’ve always found the novels of Carl Hiaasen to be wickedly funny, and Strip Tease was no exception. The movie, though, was the type of excrement that if you accidentally stepped in it, you wouldn’t try to scrape it off your shoes, you’d just take your shoes off and burn them.
North And South, the 1985 ABC mini series is much better than the book.
Lots of eye Candy too, especially if you’re in to southern belles or a very young Patrick Swayze.
I read The North and South in 8th or 9th grade.
Elizabeth Gaskell version, I would hope.
Uhhhh, no… John Jakes.
*calculates*
33 years old.
Yes, please.
What about books that were never made into movies such as Snowcrash and Stranger in a Strange Land?
The Mongo series by Chesbro.
and any Pelecanos novel, the lack of movie adaptations surprise me since he’s in “the business” writing televisions scripts for highly successful shows and what not.
There are a few John Fante novels that weren’t movies, even though he was a screenwriter.
Never heard of him but form wiki – building a lucrative career writing mostly unproduced screenplays. ???
The thing with Pelecanos is that his novels are just begging to be made in to movies, He (IMHO) writes for the screen, like Alistair MacClean, but even with all his of Hollywood connections he hasn’t gotten one of them filmed.
Options.
I think Snow Crash is actually under development by Joe ….. (the guy who directed Attack the Block).
Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker was better than the Strugatsky brothers’ novel, Roadside Picnic.
The Thin Red Line was a pretty awful adaptation as I recall.
I seriously think Jaws is overlooked as a literary work of art. Although the movie has widely been acknowledged as the best of all time, few such accolades surround the book that spawned it all. The movie is a suspense and action masterpiece. In the book, the Sheriffs wife bangs Richard Dreyfuss. I mean, it’s a debate for the ages.
The book was a huge bestseller.
I’m trolling here, go away.
It’s potato v. potato action!
Hah! Which one will get mashed!
Hot!
It never would have made it had they had a bigger boat.
Although let’s not forget The Deep which had like twenty minutes of Jacqueline Basset’s nipples.
Fair point.
Favorite Florida Man novel to film adaptation: The Hawk is Dying, a 2006 film adapted from the novel of the same name by Harry Crews.
Straight art-house stuff, but very faithful to the book. Usually Crews steamrolls right past “dark” and straight into “grotesque” and “macabre” territory, but this shows a bit of the author’s sentimentality (I knew Harry for years — he definitely had this side).
Crews had lost a son to an accidental drowning a few years before he wrote this, and it shows up on the pages.
Paul Giamotti and Michelle Williams star. Low budget, hard to find these days (Amazon Prime streams it for $3.99 I think).
For an excerpt of the novel, check out Crews’ Florida Frenzy from your local library.
I don’t know about Florida Man film adaptions, but I was a big Randy Wayne Wright reader back in the day as far as Florida man writers go. He had the best columns in Outside magazine and then they went all freaking non conservationist and He was no longer there. His books I loved. I stopped reading him awhile back for no reason.
Randy Wayne is a hoot. He’s still writing, too, though he probably makes as much money off his restaurant chain as he does from his novels these days.
All three of his outdoor column collections are on my bookshelf. Now if I could only find that first edition, first printing of Sanibel Flats.
I thought both movie & book versions of “No Country for Old Men” were pretty good. I’ve read most of McCarthy’s work and enjoyed others more – his border trilogy in particular – but the screen adaptations of these books were pale in comparison to the books.
Some people tell me they thought NCfOM was dark – Child of God was much more so. Of course The Road was pretty bleak as well.
NCFOM I only saw the movie, and ya, that is some dark shit so I will sit the book out.
I liked the movie Mary Poppins, but not the book.
Now there’s a making-of movie about the making of Mary Poppins into a movie – if I cared about the movie *and* the book I’d be more interested in the meta-movie.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2140373/
I enjoyed the “making of” movie. It includes numerous flashbacks to P.L. Travers’s backstory, which does a lot to explain the “making of” movie’s title.
https://archive.li/uuSYs/31a8a0d7d4efbde0855617c81098d52034832b36.jpg
NSFW.
https://archive.li/xCR0x/e83c93af63349194563c15033e63997162a51389.png
NSFW.
https://archive.li/hnuHq/85040836eeccad6c6f7e4e24a438d3c4ad7c964f.jpg
NSFW.
https://archive.li/Y2NmV/57da1808c6603b79b90d5f1132e700ed4f8705be.jpg
NSFW.
Did you choose the Pac-Man ghost avatar because the eyes look like…you know?
I’d read her book.
The 10 Commandments is based on a book (Exodus), so I’m going to run with that with this anecdote.
I read a historian who said that DeMille was so clever for using Bible pictures as a way to get his orgy scenes past the censors (since they were Biblical orgies, I suppose). Maybe the censors were clever for using the promise of orgy scenes as a way to get directors to make Biblical movies.
Contemplating an avatar change. I’m no Jordan Peterson fanboy, but he’s dealing with Ta-nehishi Coates’ libelous bullshit in a graceful manner.
The Comic book thing? basing a fictional villain on someone is now libelous?
Fair – “libelous” is overstating it. “Bitchy”, then.
Go for it – if you get bored you can just go back to…hmm, I forgot what you were before.
Anyway, I’m only aware of Jordan Peterson because of the absolute freak-outs he induces in people who hate truth, justice and the American (or Canadian) way.
Of course, if it were possible to mock the woke to death they’d already be crushed.
I forgot what you were before.
The man, the myth, Brock Samson
lol HAIL LOBSTER!
some of the Red Skull memes JP was retweeting were pretty funny, too.
Hail Lobster!
Yeah, JP is dealing with the slight in the proper way – with mockery.
His 12 Rules for Life was an interesting book and legit helped me with some things I was dealing with in life.
He does inspire “fanboyism” though – people who religiously cling to his every word. I guess it IS pretty remarkable that a college professor has young people going out of their way to hear what he has to say. Most professors probably can’t even get kids to show up to class, much less engage with the material.
Not a movie but both the book and the miniseries of Lonesome Dove are great.
If you’ve seen Duvall’s Gus McCrae, you’ve nearly met Pater Dean.
❤️ Tommy Lee Jones ❤️
Did you watch The Client with Tommy Lee Jones and Susan Sarandon? In the closing scenes, the two rivals meet on an airport tarmac to resolve the legal stuff, and there was this moment when the sexual tension was so great that I expected them to kiss,
it was so palpable that people asked the director of how he got this brilliant scene written and acted and he was basically ” I dunno. It just happened.”
Here;s the trailer. Doesn’t show the HOLY MACKEREL THEY WANT TO KISS moment at the end.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6Ru1zDsws0
As a middle aged dude….I agree. Man can act.
Can’t stand rude behavior in a man! Won’t tolerate it!
Off topic, just here to get my score up on The Hyperbole’s spreadsheet.
I don’t have time. My mental health is out the window this past year because of everything so I don’t think my blood pressure can physically take the punishment of reading links but I do it anyways when I do have time. I wandered over to Glenn Greenwald’s Substack and read stuff there too because it really is outside of the echo chamber but tolerable enough that I don’t want to set my computer on fire.
Long story short: holy fuck I’m exhausted.
I feel you Mustang. But I just can’t quit this group.
Hey Mustang! If you’re still in Japan and would like to get out for an evening we should get together with Straff and sample a few cold beverages.
I am. My time here is almost up so we should do it soon. Email is mustang dot three one 4 at protonmail.
Message out
Johnny Mnemonic was a terrible adaptation of a great short story.
Watchmen was a good adaptation of a graphic novel.
Yeah, but who watches the Watchmen?
I have to admit that I had been a little worried that sleepy Joe would be announcing a raft of anti-gun EO’s today but after scanning the outcome from his declaration it sounds like his “bold, decisive action” is to assign somebody at DOJ to look into it. Yeah, not relieved yet but hopefully he’s just kicked the can down the road a little more.
Particularly as recently NRA seems to mean “Not Relevant Anymore” I was expecting bad things to materialize. So I suspect it will be a few weeks (months?) before his underlings at DOJ announce their recommendations. Hopefully by then it will have been watered down to something like “You states had better do something about this!”.
It is funny to watch most of his base just clap and cheer his “we’re gonna look into this!” empty announcement as if he really did something concrete because their party told them to.
It did accomplish something – it pushed me to buy an 80% lower, just because they want to restrict them.
wooooooo, ggggg-ghost gun!
(that should really be a ‘Yoinks!’ instead of a ‘wooo’)
Jinkies!
Yeah, if I can schedule a trip back to the US before something real happens there I will most probably get a poly AR lower and a stainless 1911 frame. Just cause.
You know, I should have gotten a pistol frame while I was at it.
Oh well. If I spend all my money I won’t be able to afford to flee New York.
Not too late yet…
https://www.urbansurvivalarms.com/80-1911-FRAMES_c_9.html
If I could find a place within reasonable driving distance where I could buy those with cash, I’d load up.
Heck, it might take a while to arrange but I could order a couple extra for you and ship them to you when I’m back in the US. We could figure out payment later. It’s no issue for me to ship them from New Mexico.
Fwiw – my poly lower was an FFL item already.
Biden’s bucking to take away Obama’s “Gun Salesman of the Year” award.
IIRC Obama never sold as many guns in a month as Biden has every month so far. I’m pretty sure Biden outsold Obama on a monthly basis just in the build up after the election and before his inauguration.
Some people may or may not have purchased 3D printers and done research into which materials are best for theoretically making something that might possibly serve as a firearm receiver.
I don’t have anywhere to put a 3D printer, and they’re kinda pricey.
I saw that you mentioned in an earlier post that you enjoy early recorded music. Don’t know if that is solely an American music interest or you dig stuff from around the world. For a while I researched Brazilian music and ended up finding out a lot about the roots of samba, forró, and other stuff from the northeast of the country. This guy recorded lots of stuff that would have been lost to time from 1930’s Brasil. You many find something interesting in these discs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvnxXDb0zzs
Oh VERY cool – I love it! Thanks so much. It sounds almost like Pixinguinha, another old-school Brazilian recording artist I like.
I especially like international stuff. Some American record companies made recordings of very authentic Polish and Ukrainian music because immigrant communities liked to listen to their own music.
Appreciate it!
Wow, that is some good knowledge of old time Brazilian music. That’s a name that almost no one outside Brazil would come up with. I’m a big fan of this guy that you likely may know. I love the 1950’s and 60’s stuff.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHdnvmU0pEE
The test will be how the DOJ presents their “legislation” blueprint to the States and what happens to the States that do not adopt them.
And how states roll over and immediately implement the proposals because Joe sez.
First movie I remember being horribly disappointed by an adaptation was The Black Cauldron. I loved those books, and I walked out of the movie infuriated. it was a useful lesson in how adaptation is not always something you want, though.
As a Sherlock Holmes nerd-level fan going back to 10-12 yrs old, I have to say that all film/ TV adaptations of Sherlock Holmes were utter shit and departures from the books and short stories.
Movies had crazy cocaine addicted Holmes always wearing his deerstalker hat and being a nut. And they had Dr watson as stupid, bumbling, and happy to administer cocaine to his friend Holmes.
The books and stories showed that Dr Watson was smart as a whip, a good observer of crime scene corpses, etc, and as a useful helper to Holmes.
The books mention Holmes’ cocaine addiction as something he did only when bored. When he had a case to work, he put it away. Watson never administered coke to holmes; “Watson, grasp the nettle!” was translated into American as “Watson, grab the needle!” and the portrait of Watson the stupid drug dude for holmes took over the movies to this very day.
The only good Sherlock Holmes adaptation is British Grenada’s Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, with Jeremy Brett.
The pastiche movie “The Seven Percent Solution” by Nicholas Meyer also kicks ass. Worth watching.
I tried to like Holmes, but those I read (except two stories) all got resolved by Holmes pulling evidence out of his ass that was not presented to the reader at the time it would otherwise have been discovered. After flipping back to the scene where it was “seen” a few times and yelling “That wasn’t there!” it sapped all previous enjoyment. Those two that did not do that were much more enjoyable. And one I even solved early on (which is probably why Doyle hid evidence from the reader). The other, I admitted I had all the evidence and didn’t make the connection, so I wasn’t resentful.
The main clue you want to watch for is: Does one of the characters have some foreign or exotic connection? Did that character spend time in Europe, America, India or Australia? Then you know that when he came back to dear old England he brought something sinister with him, and we only have to figure out what that sinister foreign thing was.
As best I recall, the foreign connection is never a false clue, it always puts you on the trail to the solution of the mystery. The question is which foreign-connected person is the villain and which is the victim.
I’m not going to search right now, but I expect papers have been written on this “xenopbobia and otherization in Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes,” etc.
I read them as a story about Watson and not Holmes, and it becomes more intriguing.
Like Garfield without Garfield?
Not at all. The stories are written as an account by Watson. It is his view of Holmes we are experiencing.
Ah. Very good.
+ everything.
And I agree. Watson is smart, grounded yet shell-shocked from his time in Afghanistan (who would have thought). What a twisted fate to be paired with someone who’s view of the world is not rooted in any sort of realism.
I generally dissociate books from movie adaptation so I do not have anything clear in my head about it. But I do find it annoying when a movie just uses a book title to get interest when it has little to do with the book. Then again if the movie is good, meh. Then again there are cases like I, Robot where the book is mediocre, the movie has nothing to do with the book, the movie sucks ass.
Did you see the spoof Cold War series set in 1980s Romania? “Comrade Detective” with Romanian actors dubbed by US actors. I thought it was hilarious.
People keep mentioning that I did not see and don’t really plan to.
I know logically that I can go to sleep, get up for work and get through the work day physically.
But a lot of me wants to call in tomorrow for a mental health day. Only I’m not sure it would work since I’d feel guilty about a zero warning day off without physical symptoms.
“zero warning day off without physical symptoms.”
I guess you’ve never had food poisoning. It hits you out of the blue and generally clears up in a day or so.
Food poisoning is a physical symptom.
If I’m actually sick, that’s different.
If I’m just stressed to hell, I feel like I’m cheating.
After your hearth attack, you’ll look back on being stressed to hell and consider it a symptom.
Take a day to chillax.
Dood, I am up for another Zoom tonight for mental health if you are.
Not really. I’m too introverted and social interaction takes a lot of effort.
My favorite movie of all time is the original unedited version of “Once Upon a Time in America” – I know, a weird choice. I think it’s important to know that it’s a damaged work (the studio execs wouldn’t let Leone make it the way he wanted to, so they fucked around with the runtimes a lot). But it’s like an old painting that is damaged with years – if you can look past the damage, you can still appreciate what a great work it is.
Anyway, it’s based on The Hoods by Harry Grey, which was a total stinker. Very little character or plot development. And the parts of the movie that really make it into a great story (the ’60s sequence and the big reveal about Secretary Bailey) aren’t even in the book. Leone made them up for the movie. The book version ends when Noodles narcs on the gang and skips town.
The only reason it would ever be worth reading is if you were curious about some loose ends left in the movie.
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Once Upon a Time in the West, and Fistful of Dollars are in a three way tie for my favorite Leone film, and among my top twenty of all time. I’ve seen OUATIA, but it’s been some time. I have a clear recollection of some scenes p, but forget most of it.
Here’s a fun one for your Glib lawyers out there.
I tried calling the ICU where my hubby three times today. Each time the operator connected me to the ICU floor/nurses station, the phone rang out and gave up after 10 minutes of ringing.
Finally a nurse called randomly at about 7 PM tonight. She said that his ICU delirium is still there (Duh) but that she has decided not to press charges. I swear, I heard the sound of a record needle scraping on the vinyl at that. Press charges? How is that possible with a guy who is clearly in delirium? Well, it turns out that even through they tied down his legs and hands, he fights with what he has left (like when he bit me yesterday) but the real problem is that he hurled racial epithets at the black nurses, including her.
I am going to take video of him tomorrow to help show that he is not to be held legally responsible for ICU psychosis. I cannot believe this nurse actually brought up a legal threat to me.
How can I get him transferred to somewhere else?
Have they been helping themselves to the Oxycontin or something? Because that’s a fucking joke.
That’s unfortunately a common issue after hours at medical facilities. Part of my job involves calling these places a lot…
The nurse shift changes at 7 am and 7 Pm. So I call within 2 hours of those key times. Still no answer.
I am going to show up tomorrow whether they like it or not. He needs a calendar to mark off days, and they won’t give him one. So he thinks time has stopped because he’s dead and won’t ever come home. i want him to see the days counting off and getting closer to coming home.
I am so sorry for what you are going through. When my dad was in the ICU we couldn’t get anyone to answer questions for us, except for a night nurse who had compassion — which resulted in 2am phone calls to get updates. I wish I had answers for you.
Thanks, Pray. Even if you don’t believe in God, it won’t hurt.
Dear Lord, please bring peace to Michael’s troubled mind and spare him from the nightmares. Bring his mind back to us who love him. He will continue to be a testament to your power and love. Amen.
Amen.
Amen.
Amen.
And I’ll pray for you, that you stop going through this Job-like stuff. In any event, I hope you find us to be better comforters than what Job had.
Yeah, Job comforters were a great psychology studies in how not to comfort a guy.
Michael is most definitely being tested though.
My God, I am sorry. That is horrible. What an utterly unprofessional thing. That is a nightmare and you most certainly would be within your right to get him out of there. I’m not going to pretend to know an answer, but if you can move him safely it sounds advisable. Sorry you’re both going through this.
Thank you. As soon as they take the last chest drain tubes out, I want him moved out. He is strong as an ox despite the fact that they sawed through his sternum almost exactly a week ago, and his heart and lungs are great.
So to me, they are sedating him until they get the rest of the tubes out. But if more of the tubes are to get him Rhino-tranqed, I want him out and recovering elsewhere.
BTW, I was there when he gave a “racial epithet” on Wednesday. He asked the nurse her name, which was Meeontay or some such, and he said with sarcasm because he thinks he’s in hell anyway, “Oh, is that your stripper name?”
I guess she’s the one who needs psych help now. not him.
That micro aggression may have stung her a bit, but come on, you have a patient on heavy drugs, deal with your job. You have the right idea. Hope he can get into a better spot so he can recover.
There are staff whose job it is to facilitate the transfer of patients from hospital to other facilities. I think these are the same as the patient advocates/social workers, but that might not be true everywhere. There might be someone already assigned to him – that’s who you’ll interface with for moving him. You may also want to speak to the RN or head of Nursing about what that nurse said to you – how can you trust that person will give Michael the care he should have if she can’t handle what he says when he’s afflicted?
The one thing I noticed about care when my dad was in and out of hospitals and nursing homes the last two years of his life , was there are some wonderful nurses and there are also some who are there to collect a check and do not give af about their patients at all. And it was always a battle to get the terrible ones assigned somewhere else, or get Dad away from them. I can’t even imagine how much worse it is for families when they can’t even visit their loved ones enough to know who the bad ones are.
oh, and I meant to add – get a list of what they’re giving him and have his surgeon or his regular doctor check his meds. I’m not a doctor, but I’m suspicious of drug interactions when there are a lot of drugs being given and strange psychoses pop up. They should be able to change what he’s taking. And sometimes they’re duplicating meds to ill-effect, because something was changed, but the older one didn’t stop.
GOod advice on the drug list. I will press my Durable Power of Attorney rights (thank God we wrote those up with a lawyer years ago) and get access to that whole list.
I know I had to advocate for myself in jan 2018 when i was hospitalized for “the flu” until I started taking my own peak lung flow measurements in my room and charting them in Excel. When a doctor finally showed up, I grabbed her sleeve, forced her to look at the chart, and told her “This is NOT how I am going out.” She hesitated 5 seconds, said “You ARE an engineer, arent you?”. sent me for a chest xray and found bad pneumonia.
A day or two more on IV antibiotics, and i was outta there. But they had been perfectly willing to put me in the “Bad flu season” statistics if I hadn’t advocated for myself.
Thank you, Athena.
I do want to find an advocate for him that the hospital will acknowledge.
I totally agree with you; some nurses / orderlies can be saints and angels who make all the difference and obviously have compassion as a key part of their job motivation. Others unfortunately want the “I’M A NURSE! IM A SAINT! WORSHIP ME” badge but don’t give a damn about individual patients.
I swear I can do everything they are doing for him if I had access to a pharmacy. They are not that fucking special. I have had to point out many flaws like an uncapped drip that was going all over the floor, the fact his CPAP mask was on UPSIDE DOWN for heaven’s sake, the fact his wrist bands were cutting into his flesh because they scooted them up when they put the Oven Mitt restraints on his hands.
So You can bet your sweet bippy I am going in tomorrow, possibly with a war footing.
Unfortunately, i have to go to a 9:30 appointment myself to make sure my lip bite is OK before i go in to visit him.
I hear that scalps are making a come back as a trophy…
Sorry all this is happening. I hope your husband gets better very soon.
Picnic at Hanging Rock, the 1975 Australian film based on the 1967 book of the same title. Both were terrible, so I guess the film was a faithful adaptation of the book.
But the sex after I watched the movie was great, so there’s that.
Tough question, because books and movies – and graphic novels, for that matter – are different media and need be judged by different standards. What works in a movie doesn’t necessarily work in a book, and vice versa.
I like David Lynch’s Dune much more than the early 2000s miniseries, even though the miniseries is much closer to the book; Lynch’s version is just a much better visual experience.
A Clockwork Orange is famously different from the book, since it leaves out the last chapter and maybe misses the point of the book, but fuckin Kubrick is brilliant and the movie is fantastic.
OTOH, there’s Ready Player One and Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter. Both of these make a huge number of changes, and for perfectly reasonable reasons – a move needs to condense everything into about 2 hours and be exciting and visually appealing – and both of them fail as movies, even though they are decent books. (Although RP1 is just nostalgic 80s nerd fan service, but whatever).
OTGH, the Harry Potter and Hunter Games movies are pretty faithful to the books, and pretty decent as both books and movies according to their fans. I’m not a big fan of either, but I’ve seen the movies and read the books and they’re all fine I guess.
Yup. I love the look.
I dialed up my BritBox subscription and am watching the “Adventures of Sherlock Holmes” season 1, episode 3 “The Naval Treaty”
Dayum, that was a good show. Jeremy Brett and David Burke. THe best Holmes and Watson duo ever.
I think you can find a bootleg on Youtube if you don’t have BritBox subscription.
Another favorite of mine is The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle. Every Christmas I watch it. Just like Die Hard.
Another day, another Anniversary,33 years ago I was putting on a White Tuxedo, marrying my Sweetheart, now I’m Fucking Alone, Black Friday indeed,
I’m sorry, Yu! 🙁
Back in the substrate, better known as Shit, but in a much better mood after a nice chat with a good friend, she needs our prayers,
Strip Tease was a great adaptation of the Karl Hiassen novel.
Dammit! Time to hunt down a good Indiana getaway. Years ago, the Rev. GT & I stayed at a nice B&B in Corydon, the original state capitol. It was a historic inn. They served cheese grits for breakfast, and I just found the recipe on their website (this time, made with sausage!)
I may have to see what they and/or their county is doing vis-a-vis masks…
I do love some cheese grits; sausage can only make it more delicious. The worst cheese grits I’ve ever had was at Tom’s Diner, a semi-famous Brooklyn breakfast place. It was on the menu as “cheese grits” but what arrived at the table was whole-kernel hominy corn (cooked with water, not cream) topped with a handful shredded mozzarella. The only flavor came from the copious amounts of salt and pepper I put atop to choke it down.
Congrats, Yusef, for hanging in there , tough circumstances
Hayek, You’re doing a great service and you’re mostly alone and right about the nurses.
.Strangely, I was biting my upper lip in the hospital but gone now that I’m home
I was grateful for the little things the nurses provided, like emptying out the personal equipment, adding extra blankets, etc. The small things were welcomed.
I asked the therapists to do me a personal favor, they bought an anniversary card (#47) and a Dove Bar for me to give to Mrs Fourscore on that special day in the hospital.
My wife was so surprised! I didn’t pay for it since I was penniless in the hospital, now I’m on the drunken sailor routine af home
Hello Festus, take the week end off.
Can’t do. New trainee needs me for the sketchy site. Thanks all the same and I hope everything is knitting together as God intended!
I can’t be bothered to pick up any 80% pieces. Just doesn’t interest me.
I still HATE that they’re going after them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSb9YSr38u8
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Yay, Friday.
Good morning y’all.
Good morning, Sean! 🙂
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Good Morning! Good Friday morning!
Mornin’ fellow nerds! I was actually pretty tickled to be included on the The Hype’s homepage list, even though I am about as diametrically opposed to what a “nerd” is as can possibly be. Judi says I’m pretty cool…
I’m saving the comment section above for a slow day. Work was a bear last night and I hadn’t time to peruse and discuss.
It’s all a bunch of movie nerd and book nerd ramblings. Go out and chop down a tree instead.
*cue lumberjack song*
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FshU58nI0Ts
But those are my favorite nerd ramblings…
“Oh Sean! I used to think you were so Butch!” Good God she was as cute as a button.
The Gunslinger/Dark Tower movie was garbage.
Harry Potter did an amazing job, especially considering how much material they put out in books and film
I think I’m the first to mention it… Dare I?
Fucking Game of Thrones…. What a betrayal.
But boooobs….
Game of Thrones started out as the best adaption and ended as the worst. I blame the fat lazy fuck who couldn’t be bothered to finish the books.
Silence of the Lambs is a spot on perfect adaptation of the book.
Great film from books:
The Bridge of the River Kwai (David Lean)
Lawrence of Arabia (David Lean)
Last of the Mohicans (Michael Mann)
Charley Varrickn (Don Siegel)
High and Low (Akira Kurosawa)
Goldfinger (Guy Hamilton)
L.A. Confidential (Curtis Hanson)
Jaws (Steven Spielberg)
The Shawshank Redemption (Frank Darabont)
The Sweet Hereafter (Atom Egoyan)
Gods and Monsters (Bill Condon)
A Simple Plan (Sam Raimi)
All the President’s Men (Alan J. Pakula)
Marathon Man (John Schlesinger)
Wag the Dog (Barry Levinson)
No Country for Old Men (Joel and Ethan Coen)
Deliverance (John Boorman)
Lord of the Rings (Peter Jackson)
The Thin Man (W.S. Van Dyke)
Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder)
The Lost Weekend (Billy Wilder)
The 39 Steps (Alfred Hitchcock)
The Verdict (Sidney Lumet)
Serpico (Sidney Lumet)
Prince of the City (Sidney Lumet)
Who Framed Roger Rabbit (Robert Zemeckis)
Forrest Gump (Robert Zemeckis)
Strangers on a Train (Alfred Hitchcock)
Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock)
The Best Years of Our Lives (William Wyler)
The Maltese Falcon (John Huston)
The Treasure of Sierra Madre (John Huston)
The African Queen (John Huston)
The Asphalt Jungle (John Huston)
Shane (George Stevens)
About a Boy (Chris and Paul Weitz)
Sideways (Alexander Payne)
Children of Men (Alfonso Cuaron)
True Grit (Joel and Ethan Coen)
Elmer Gantry (Richard Brooks)
To Kill a Mockingbird (Robert Mullingan)
Dr. Strangelove (Stanley Kubrick)
Full Metal Jacket (Stanley Kubrick)
The French Connection (William Friedkin)
Field of Dreams (Phil Alden Robinson)
JFK (Oliver Stone)
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (Tomas Alfredson)
The Wolf of Wall Street (Martin Scorsese)
Cape Fear (Martin Scorsese)
The Player (Robert Altman)
Scent of a Woman (Martin Brest)
Manhunter (Michael Mann)
Thief (Michael Mann)
Out of Sight (Steven Soderbergh)
Wonder Boys (Curtis Hanson)