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30 Day Book Meme (2014 version) - Day 19
May. 25th, 2014 07:29 pmDay 19 – Favorite book turned into a movie
2010 Answer: Pride and Prejudice by BBC (1980 and 1995)
Books into movies are always a delicate issue. The reason the P&Ps are both so good is that they went the miniseries route and did six hour long works, which let them really capture the books. They don't cut a lot of stuff out, or add a lot of stuff in (okay, yes, they did add the swimming in the lake scene in 1995's P&P but I thought it was a worthy addition - the icon is in honor of that scene). They preserve context for people who didn't read the book, and they pay attention to characters. I stopped watching the 2005 P&P with Keira Knightley the moment they showed PIGS in the house, demonstrating that they didn't understand one of the primary issues of P&P's plot - not that the family doesn't have money and a reasonable house, but that they stand to lose all of it with Mr. Bennet's death due to entail.
There are several good Agatha Christie adaptations - Murder on the Orient Express is very well done with an all-star cast, including Sean Connery as Colonel Arbuthnot for some enjoyable eye candy. Death on the Nile features Peter Ustinov, who proves that acting a character properly is not all about the physical, as well as David Niven, Bette Davis, and Angela Lansbury. The David Suchet Poirot series features some good ones - and Suchet is Poirot to the life. That being said, there's also some bad ones, notably the 1989 update of And Then There Were None that takes place on an African safari under the title Ten Little Indians.
There's also a lot of good movies that aren't necessarily good adaptations of their book - Gone With The Wind falls under this category for me, because there's simply so much they leave out due to time and sensitive subjects (for one, notice that all of the black characters who appear in the movie - Mammy, Prissy, and Pork from the Tara crowd - are "house Negroes", leaving out one of the more interesting characters in the book, Pork's wife Dilcey who is a field hand) I would be completely on board with a GWTW miniseries.
So, I would have to go with a few suggestions.
The first Harry Potter movie did an excellent job, in my opinion, of translating the descriptions of Harry's world into reality. It has a good cast and they put some effort into creating the world without slavishly including everything.
A Night to Remember, based on Walter Lord's book, is also very good. It's a thousand times better than the Cameron movie, and the book is an excellent read.
And, the best adaptation of And Then There Were None (Ten Little Indians) is a Russian-language one. It's the only one I've seen based on the book, rather than the play, which means everyone dies. (It is a Russian movie.) It's very well done. The 1945 adaptation is based on the play, and takes what I consider to be too many liberties.
DV
( The Rest of the Meme )
2010 Answer: Pride and Prejudice by BBC (1980 and 1995)
Books into movies are always a delicate issue. The reason the P&Ps are both so good is that they went the miniseries route and did six hour long works, which let them really capture the books. They don't cut a lot of stuff out, or add a lot of stuff in (okay, yes, they did add the swimming in the lake scene in 1995's P&P but I thought it was a worthy addition - the icon is in honor of that scene). They preserve context for people who didn't read the book, and they pay attention to characters. I stopped watching the 2005 P&P with Keira Knightley the moment they showed PIGS in the house, demonstrating that they didn't understand one of the primary issues of P&P's plot - not that the family doesn't have money and a reasonable house, but that they stand to lose all of it with Mr. Bennet's death due to entail.
There are several good Agatha Christie adaptations - Murder on the Orient Express is very well done with an all-star cast, including Sean Connery as Colonel Arbuthnot for some enjoyable eye candy. Death on the Nile features Peter Ustinov, who proves that acting a character properly is not all about the physical, as well as David Niven, Bette Davis, and Angela Lansbury. The David Suchet Poirot series features some good ones - and Suchet is Poirot to the life. That being said, there's also some bad ones, notably the 1989 update of And Then There Were None that takes place on an African safari under the title Ten Little Indians.
There's also a lot of good movies that aren't necessarily good adaptations of their book - Gone With The Wind falls under this category for me, because there's simply so much they leave out due to time and sensitive subjects (for one, notice that all of the black characters who appear in the movie - Mammy, Prissy, and Pork from the Tara crowd - are "house Negroes", leaving out one of the more interesting characters in the book, Pork's wife Dilcey who is a field hand) I would be completely on board with a GWTW miniseries.
So, I would have to go with a few suggestions.
The first Harry Potter movie did an excellent job, in my opinion, of translating the descriptions of Harry's world into reality. It has a good cast and they put some effort into creating the world without slavishly including everything.
A Night to Remember, based on Walter Lord's book, is also very good. It's a thousand times better than the Cameron movie, and the book is an excellent read.
And, the best adaptation of And Then There Were None (Ten Little Indians) is a Russian-language one. It's the only one I've seen based on the book, rather than the play, which means everyone dies. (It is a Russian movie.) It's very well done. The 1945 adaptation is based on the play, and takes what I consider to be too many liberties.
DV
( The Rest of the Meme )
