I was at Barnes & Noble today renewing my membership and grabbing a cup of coffee. As I waited for my latte a woman came up to the Starbucks counter and asked to pay for her book and magazine. I noticed she was purchasing The Perks of Being A Wallflower. I told her how much I love the book and she told me that she had just watched the movie and loved it so much she decided to buy the book. I mentioned that I loved the book so much that I planned to never watch the movie. She told me that was crazy! The movie was so great! I told her she was crazy! There's no way the movie will ever compete with the book! She told me the music was wonderful! I told her I know!! One of the characters in the book makes a playlist so I already know the music! In fact the friend who recommended I read the book made CDs of the playlist for all of us who were interested! And this was back in 2004!
Personally I have a love/hate relationship with movies based on books. Nine times out of ten I have no problem with it. But then there are those books I absolutely love that when I find out they're being made into a movie I start plotting ways to sabotage production. Like The Time Traveler's Wife. When I learned it was being made into a movie I felt such rage. How??? How could such an intricate story translate to film? It couldn't. I went to great lengths avoiding any glimpse of the movie with great success until one afternoon when I was confined to the couch, mindlessly flipping through t.v. channels. And there it was. The film version of The Time Traveler's Wife. I watched 10 minutes of it. Ten terrible minutes watching Rachel McAdams butcher the role. Rachel McAdams whose best scene ever in a film was when she died in the second Sherlock Holmes film. Augh!!!
I read a lot. And usually if I know I'm going to see a movie that's based on a book I'll read the book first. Like Cloud Atlas. Charlie and I are planning to see it and both have read it, so it will be interesting to see how it translates to screen. Same goes with television series. The HBO series Game of Thrones is based on George R.R. Martin's book series A Song of Ice and Fire. There are SIX BOOKS in that series. SIX! And dear old George always looks pretty close to death so it's a good thing he's told HBO how he's planned for the book series to end since he probably won't be around to finish out the books. I mean there were six years between the publications of books five and six.
And then there are the really, really popular books/series that I read just to find out what all the fuss is about. The Twilight series. The Hunger Games series. The 50 Shades series. I make fun of them all but I can! I can because I actually read them! Look, I view them the same way I view voting. If you don't vote then really? You don't get to complain for the next four years. So if you didn't read the books the same rules apply. Do the grunt work people, no matter how painful and I.Q. dimming it is.
1 comment:
I prefer to see the movie first if i hadnt read the book already. Its a good primer and gives me a chance to actually enjoy the movie having no reference to have it fall short of. Because the books I read are perfectly cast, the lines are delivered flawlessly and sets are breathtaking. Even with all this so many books fall short of awesome. So I cant expect a prodution with hundreds of people competing and working to all get THEIR vision into the film that it HAS to suck. Except Robert Rodregez who WANTS to stay 100 percent faithful and does everything himself.... and comic books.
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