What is the best movie adaptation of a book you've ever seen? What is the worst.

[bablawyer]

A friend of mine, a burgeoning screenwriter (she's been burgeoning for 23 years now--I personally think you ony get to burgeon for five years, max.), and I had a spirited debate about best movie adaptation of a book. I voted for To Kill a Mockingbird for best, and Catch 22 for worst, but then my exposure is limited.

Your thoughts?

Becky

[bleachededen]

I'll agree that Catch 22 is one of the worst, if not THE worst. Can't say as to To Kill a Mockingbird, though, too long since I last saw it.

[bablawyer]

Well, I just showed my age. Can we say I just saw a re-run of To Kill a Mockingbird on the Turner channel? Yeah. That's it; a re-run.

[bleachededen]

Also, I just now realized, this thread probably belongs in the General Discussion Forum and not in the Introduce Yourself forum it is in now. Hopefully a mod or Chris will move it.

[Chris OConnor]

I'll move it.

[meliamom]

I agree. To Kill a Mockingbird was almost frame for frame true to the novel. I can because I teach the novel and watch the movie every year. Also BBC does awesome interpretations of novels - A Tale of Two Cities and Jane Eyre were excellent. One of the worst was the recent Pride and Prejudice with Keira Knightly. Somewhere in the middle is The Namesake. Just watched the movie after reading the novel. The cinematography was great, but they left out huge chunks of plot. Oh and The Time Traveller's Wife was pretty bad, but I didn't like the book anyway.

[bablawyer]

New input: Dune is the worst adaptation? I've never seen the movie, although I have read Dune (the book).

[bleachededen]

I loved Dune, actually. Watching the movie made me want to read the book, and after reading the book, I have to say that I like the movie better. I wanted Dune as a standalone story, and the book sets itself up for the series, and I have absolutely no intention of reading any more books in the Dune series.

Reading Dune was really painful (in a good way), very intense, and made me think differently about the world around me, which is the mark of a good book, but it was still uncomfortable. I looked at my bathroom and all the water I wasted and thought of all the water in the gulf destroyed by the oil spill, and wondered what a Fremen would think if they could see our world? But it was so excruciating it consumed me and I was only interested because I wanted to see what the movie left out, so it was a bit too much for me. I'm glad I read it, but I won't be reading any other Frank Herbert books anytime soon.

I may watch and enjoy the movie Dune again frequently, however.

[bablawyer]

What an amazing, well thought out reponse. Of course now I have to watch Dune. Admittedly. I found the book tortuous, and I am not an avid fan of the science fiction genre. (Okay. One exception: I love Douglas Adams, and I'm still miffed that he died so young.) However, I am amazed at the ability of sci-fi writers to extrapolate future possibilities from present circumstances and sensibilities. Unfortunately, a lot of their predictions have gone from "what might be" to "damn; what do we do now?"

[bleachededen]

Unfortunately, a lot of their predictions have gone from "what might be" to "damn; what do we do now?"

This is only too true.

What an amazing, well thought out reponse.

Thanks. I'd had those thoughts running around my head for the past week, so it was easy to conjure them up again. I didn't really even say half of the stuff that I was thinking while I was reading it. Every action I took in my own life was paralleled by something in the book, and it took two days after reading it for the last residuals of intense questioning of Muad'Dib and Bene Gesserits and Fremen and Harkonnens and worms and spice and water...it even went beyond my usual intense obsession with books/movies and their characters, and almost felt like a disease. This sounds silly, probably, but it really was that intensely harsh.

I think I'm mostly cured of it, but I'm sure I'll replace the Dune obsession with some other science fiction obsession, as I always do, but I can pretty much guarantee no book experience will ever be as painful as that was. I just can't imagine it happening again. Ugh.

So yeah, anyway, thanks for the compliment, sorry to go on and on. But the movie is definitely worth looking into, especially if you're already familiar with the characters. It's the least disturbing and most coherent David Lynch film of all time.