Real OT: Books made into movies

Whistle
1

Would you rather see the movie or read the book first?
Of your favorites (or not favorites) which did you like better, the book or movie?

Here’s only a few of mine:

Hart’s War: Book: Great Movie: Good

A Clockwork Orange: Both are pretty good.

Lord of the Flies. Book: outstanding, original film outstanding
remake: bad

Thin Red Line. Book: Outstanding, Every movie: Horrible.

The Shining: Book: great First movie: bad. Second movie: very good.

Enemy at the Gates.
Book: excellent (see also War of the Rats) Movie: atrocity.

We Were Soldiers: Book and movie excellent.

Wind Talkers: Is there a book? The movie was absolute garbage.

And to show I don’t only read war books:

Accidental tourist: Book very good Movie poor.
Breathing Lessions: book and movie very good.
Riding in Cars with Boys (yes I’m ashamed).
book: Horrible movie: Tolerable
Centennial: Book and mini series very good.
East of Eden: Book and mini series very good. James Dean version tolerable.
Oh. I usually will rather see the movie first since the books are usually better.
Others?

2

Band of Brothers: book fairly run-of-the-mill, TV series outstanding, revealing the depth of underlying research and remarkably truthul

3

Black Hawk Down: Both pretty good
The Green Mile: I liked both
LoTR: Jury still out

4

Lonesome Dove
Book: excellent
Movie: excellent

The World According to Garp
Book: Excellent
Movie: Good

Jurassic Park
Book: OK
Movie: Great

Harry Potter (1st and 2nd)
Books: Excellent
Movies: Fair

Around The World In 80 Days
Book: Great
Movie: Good

Emma/“Clueless”
Book: Great
Movie: Great

Les Miserables
Book: Outstanding
Movies: Not one I can think of (French or American) that does justice to the book.

The Three Musketeers
Book: Great
Movies: ranging from good to awful

About a Boy
Book: Great
Movie: Cute

Striptease
Book: Great
Movie: abysmal

Being there
Book: good
Movie: Excellent

One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest
Book and Movie excellent

The Rules of Attraction
Book and movie sucky

Dracula
Book: great
Movies: take your pick…

The Green Mile
Book: great
Movie: great

And on… and on… :boggle:

5

Here’s one has all elements to cause a stir on the board [Irish Music, whistles and Andrea whatsherface]:

The Great Ceili War by Nicholas Adams.


http://www.thezreview.co.uk/comingsoon/g/greatceiliwarthe.shtm

6

My all time favorite Contact by Carl Sagan. That’s how science fiction should be done. An actual really good thought provoking story for once.

7

Speaking of sci-fi:
Battlefield Earth book: outstanding, movie: heinous
Millenium by John Varley: great, movie (Chris Kristoferson) pitiful
2001 A Space Oddyssy (I can’t make the spelling look right to myself):
book: great, movie: great. (both confused me. I think I was 13 at the time. Glad I read the book first.)
I haven’t seen Solaris with G Clooney. Read the book years ago in an anthology of sci-fi by Russian authors. Really liked it. Not sure if it had the same title.

Movie I’d like to see made from book: Lion of Ireland by Morgan Llewellyn (life of Brian Boru)

Some really good books, I hope they don’t make into movies. There is so much in a book that needs to be read, not looked at. I’ve argued for years that Lord of Rings shouldn’t be made into a movie. At this point, I’m glad to feel I was wrong. Seeing the movies is no excuse for not reading the books, however.
Tony

8

Of course books that deal with action go
well to the screen, as do spy and detective books.
‘The spy who came in from the cold’ became
a better movie.

9

‘Moby Dick’
Book;dunno,tried to read it at least three times,but could never really ‘get into it’

Film;Excellent-Ray Bradbury’s screenplay is superb,Gregory Peck’s ‘Ahab’ a career high,-and of course Richard Basehart went from hunting down great white whales to battling Giant Squid,Dinosaurs,crabmonsters from outerspace,ghostly pirates,LEPRECHAUNS(!)etc etc in ever increasingly sillier episodes of ‘Voyage to the bottom of the sea’ in the 60’s.I used to love the way that the cast would ‘fall’ from one side of the filmset to the other,as the submarine ‘rolled’!

10

These are some of my favorites…I’m sure I’ll be reminded of more as posts go on…

The second movie of “The Shining”- good, closer to the book, the first, with Jack Nicholson was an ok movie- if you hadn’t read the book. (I really felt like it was McMurphy dropped into the shining. This, The Green Mile and Carrie are the only Steven King movies I’ve liked. I love almost all of his books.

One Flew Over the Cookoo’s Nest- GREAT book, almost as great movie

The Lord’s of Disipline- Great book, not great movie
Prince of Tides- another Great book, not so great movie
The Great Santini- movie was by another title,I can’t remember- great book, pretty good movie too. It seems that Pat Conroy’s fantastic writing is not always carried over to the big screen so well.

Of course, since we’re listing favorites here, I’ve gotta add Seabiscuit. Great book, great movie.

LOTR- great books, ok movie

Angela’s Ashes- GREAT GREAT book, good movie- but dwelt too much on his Dad IMHO.

I agree that Lonesome Dove was great on all counts. Of course, as a mini-series it had the advantage of more time than the theatre movie.
And in that vein- Sho-Gun- great and great.

And, although not a favorite, I must include The Color Purple since it is the ONLY movie I’ve ever seen that I thought was about a thousand times better than the book(which I really, really, did not like).

11

I never knew that Ray Bradbury wrote any screenplays.
One of my lasting regrets is that The Martian Chronicles
was never made into a real movie–there was a made for
TV thing with Rock Hudson.

The problems I had with the Movie of One Flew Over
the Cuckoo’s Nest was that the Jack Nicholson character
was, in the movie, behaving irresponsibly in ways
that were getting people killed, and also that
nobody changed–they were stock crazies who
stayed stock crazies–while in the book
the crazies do change and start getting
better.

Oh yes, the wonderful book Seven Years in Tibet
was made into a ghastly movie–the screenplay
written by the lady wrote the screenplay
for The Prince Of Tides. She made the Dalai
Lama out to be Barbara Streisand.
The only movie about Eastern religion
that wasn’t an embarassment was
Kundun–no book, however.

12

Pride and Prejudice
Book: Great
Movie: The old one with Greer Garson is ok, the A&E mini-series, excellent!

Sense and Sensibility
Book: Great
Movie: BBC - ok, Ang Lee’s version with Emma Thompson- outstanding!

Emma
Book: Great
Movie: Gweneth Paltrow: pretty good, BBC: fair

Obviously I’m a fan of Jane Austen. The books are better than the movies, but the movies are good, too. I watch them over and over.

LOTR
Books: Fantastic
Movies: Enjoyed the movies after I read the books. I saw Fellowship before reading the book and couldn’t really understand some of what was going on there. There is no way to really translate Tolkien into a screen play, but I thought Peter Jackson did a decent job, probably as good as it could have been done.

13

The one movie I’ve ever seen that was miles better than the book (which was itself pretty darned good) was Sophie’s Choice.

Redwolf

14

The Body ( Stephen King short novel or long short story)-- one of the best, most sensitive things King ever wrote was made into an equally great movie by Rob Reiner-- Stand By Me. Both excellent.
The same collection of novellas also included the Shawshank Redemption, which was an equally terrific movie.
In general, I think Stephen King is a LOT better when he’s not writing like he gets paid by the pound…

15

hooray for jane austen

16

Book: Flowers for Algernon (fair)
Movie: Charly (for which Cliff Robertson won an Oscar in the 60s)
Interesting story about a mentally retarded man who is given an experimental operation and becomes a genius. The movie was very good (if you ignore the silly but obligatory 60s “psychedelic” camera work in a couple of places). Read the book after seeing the movie; it couldn’t live up to Robertson’s portrayal of Charly.
Susan

17

Read the book, didn’t see the movie because
I thought it would break my heart.

Just saw a film ‘The Truce’ from a book
byan Italian Jewish chemist. Tells
the story of how he is liberated from
Auschwitz and makes his way back
to Italy. Italian film but John Turturro
stars–very much like life. Didn’t
read the book.
Also a wonderfully ribald italian film
version of the Decameron.

18

It would have, Jim. Charly was a definite tear-jerker.

19

One not mentioned yet is Gone With The Wind - both are excellent. I honestly don’t know which is better, the book or the movie.

Usually I do prefer the book to the movie. I find in general my imagination is so much better than any film could possibly do. But there are some movies that do the book justice, like LOTR, Gettysburg, GWTW.

Beth

20

The old man and the Sea book: great movie: lower than terrible. In fact all of Hemingways books that were made into movies were terrible.

Ron