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An off-topic discussion about movies got me thinking about movies based on books. Usually after seeing a movie that was adapted from a book I think "it was good, but the book was better", or "I loved the book, but this movies sucked" but occasionally a movie comes along that stays true to the source material and equals or even surpasses it.
Here are a few examples:
LOTR: The Fellowship of the Ring - I loved Two Towers & Return of the King, but thought Fellowship was the best of the three and most faithful to the Tolkein book.
The Stand (mini-series) - My favorite Stephen King book, thankfully they didn't even try to cut this down to a 2 or 3 hour movie.
The Green Mile - Although this one could have easily been made into a mini-series, it's an excellent adaptation of the original 6 novellas.
The Shawshank Redemption - Based on the King novella 'Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption', the movie is damn near perfect.
The Shining - Guess you can tell I like Stephen King, I thought this movie was even more frightening than the book. This was later re-made into a mini-series, I still can't figure out why they bothered, the movie is one of Kubrick's best ever.
2001: A Space Odyssey - Speaking of Kubrick, this film was ground breaking on so many levels way back in '68, and still stands up today as the greatest sci-fi / horror film ever made.
Altered States - I saw this when it was released in 1980 because I was out-of town and bored. It impressed me so much that I bought the book and read it the next night, then took the wife to see it when I got back home. Perhaps the most faithful adaptation of a book I've ever seen, (except for some of the weird hallucination imagery where Ken Russell went a little overboard) every word of dialogue is there. The thing that I'll never understand is that the author/screenwriter, Paddy Chayefsky, disavowed the film so they had to change his name in the credits (Sidney Aaron).
The Exorcist - Similar to "The Shining", in that experiencing the film was probably even more horrifying than reading the book, some of the images remained burned into my mind for weeks afterwards.
What are your favorites?
Here are a few examples:
LOTR: The Fellowship of the Ring - I loved Two Towers & Return of the King, but thought Fellowship was the best of the three and most faithful to the Tolkein book.
The Stand (mini-series) - My favorite Stephen King book, thankfully they didn't even try to cut this down to a 2 or 3 hour movie.
The Green Mile - Although this one could have easily been made into a mini-series, it's an excellent adaptation of the original 6 novellas.
The Shawshank Redemption - Based on the King novella 'Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption', the movie is damn near perfect.
The Shining - Guess you can tell I like Stephen King, I thought this movie was even more frightening than the book. This was later re-made into a mini-series, I still can't figure out why they bothered, the movie is one of Kubrick's best ever.
2001: A Space Odyssey - Speaking of Kubrick, this film was ground breaking on so many levels way back in '68, and still stands up today as the greatest sci-fi / horror film ever made.
Altered States - I saw this when it was released in 1980 because I was out-of town and bored. It impressed me so much that I bought the book and read it the next night, then took the wife to see it when I got back home. Perhaps the most faithful adaptation of a book I've ever seen, (except for some of the weird hallucination imagery where Ken Russell went a little overboard) every word of dialogue is there. The thing that I'll never understand is that the author/screenwriter, Paddy Chayefsky, disavowed the film so they had to change his name in the credits (Sidney Aaron).
The Exorcist - Similar to "The Shining", in that experiencing the film was probably even more horrifying than reading the book, some of the images remained burned into my mind for weeks afterwards.
What are your favorites?
i would like to see the others but when they are on tv i refuse to watch stuff with commercials and swearing cut out. i will just have to rent them one day!
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