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Post by Username Too Long on Jul 15, 2015 4:10:25 GMT -6
At the suggestion of theysayboourns, what are your favourite movies adapted from books.
My favourite movie is Pierrot le Fou, and it's apparently very loosely adapted from a crime novel. But considering Godard once said you can only make great movies from mediocre books (Moravia, author of Contempt wasn't amused), I haven't been curious to check it out.
More in line with the spirit, having recently seen and read (in that order) Inherent Vice, that would be my first answer. Seeing it, I was very happy to see a movie that had managed to grasp the spirit of a Pynchon novel, and reading it soon after, it truly felt like I was just rewatching the movie. It still being minor Pynchon made it more easy to adapt than another of his books, and I'm happy to say both are equally great.
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Post by theysayboourns on Jul 15, 2015 6:21:02 GMT -6
Even though Stephen King infamously hates ist, I'd go with The Shining. I'm a fan of adaptations that take a book and make it their own and at the same time retain the book's spirit. King's main complaint with the film was that Kubrick telegraphed the main character's insanity way too much by casting Jack Nicholson as him. It's true that it changes the character, but I feel it fits to the overall tone of the film, that is very unforgiven and bleak. Also, Torrance is clearly King's author avatar, so he probably was pissed that he was portrayed so negatively in a way. However, I'd argue that despite some major changes Kubrick keeps the book's spirit intact by making the film as incredibly scary as he can. In the end they're two distinct works, that both work tremendously good.
@usernametoolong I just ordered Inherent Vice from Amazon and I'm looking very much forward to it.
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Post by Username Too Long on Jul 15, 2015 6:59:36 GMT -6
@usernametoolong I just ordered Inherent Vice from Amazon and I'm looking very much forward to it. Have you read other Pynchon before? It was the last one I had to read by him, it's very good and probably a good place to start, but he's written some that I liked so much more.
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Post by artdork on Jul 16, 2015 19:20:19 GMT -6
I kind of mentioned this when the Dissolved talked about Sofia Coppola's films, but I read the Antonia Fraser book on Marie Antoinette and I love how Coppola incorporated passages of the book in an otherwise sort of impressionistic and (to my eye) gorgeous film. I'm thinking particularly of her interactions upon arriving in France and with her husband. But (and I admit I haven't read the book since the movie came out) there was quite a bit that jived with that book.
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Post by cstower on Jul 17, 2015 20:11:05 GMT -6
Speaking of the Coppola family, Francis' first two GODFATHER films are a marvelous example of reshaping and deepening a pulpy potboiler into something more multilayered and personal; they give credence to Godard's claim that mediocre books make great movies. (I say "first two" not out of gratuitous GODFATHER 3 bashing, but because the flashback sequences in GODFATHER 2 are derived from material in the novel.)
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