Film that TRULY REEKED if you had read the book.

Hannibal.

Thomas Harris turns MARVELOUS phrases, but whoever talked him into letting them BUTCHER the ending of that film should be shot, in the knees first.

Starling has a dark side throughout "Silence" and it is PERFECTED "Hannibal" (The BOOKS, of course). Characters got written out of course, but to completely re-write the ending? MONSTROUS.

Not that it was that great of a movie or book but I was watching it and was amazed at how there was NO divergence from the book. None.

Loved the book. Movie actually made a great (true) story boring.

there was one, but only one...the ending. The book wrapped everything up, the movie left an opening for the possibility of a sequel. I only know this because I have read the book numerous times and have seen the movie no less than 8. Drove my kids nutz :silly:

edited to add this is response to the Dances With Wolves comment.

Hannibal-and-Starling-sitting-in-a-tree? No, thanks. And Foster agrees with me FWIW.

I read Silence and Red Dragon before I saw either film. My overall sense is that Harris lost touch with the characters as they'd evolved once they hit the screen. Perhaps he created them first, but he wasn't their only creator.

He's still free to do as he pleases between the covers of his books, but there are other creative inputs of equal importance when bringing them to film.

My feeling is, if you bring it to the screen, try not to re-write half of it.

Taste is taste, but I have DISSECTED those 3 books, and they seem well-connected to me.


This isn't a Thomas Harris thread: got a film to nominate?

:evilgrin:

And Foster did more to create the onscreen character than Harris did.

My feeling is, if the ending doesn't work or seem believable onscreen, then come-what-may devotion to text-fidelity serves no purpose.

As you say, tastes vary.

Harris was a crime reporter, and I think he did a good job covering his bases, considering the intervals between the books.

Nevertheless, I think that darker depths of Starling's character were glossed over, and that the character was never developed as it should of been.

I do think we can both agree that none of the "Lecter" books could have truly been done justice on the screen in less than 3 hours each, which the film industry consistently refuses to do.

I'd have paid DOUBLE ticket price for each film if they'd done it, though. "Gettysburg" did very well, as did the longer versions of "Das Boot." It's a badly underrated market.

...could make me feel any worse. Red Dragon and The Silence of the Lambs were outstanding. Hannibal just sucked. x(

Film was a travesty.

I thought both were great

Or the other way around?

"One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" is one of the 4 or 5 best and most important novels written during the 20th century. The film is just a cheap, quick ripoff of the book, and it misses both the point of the book and the point of view of the book. Ken Kesey, the author of the book, hated the film. The only good thing about the film is that it may lead people to read the book.

Sheehan's non-fiction Vietnam epic doesn't exactly lend itself to the film medium. They left out tons of details just to keep it a manageable length and not be too confusing.

Paxton was just wrong as John Paul Vann.

I liked it okay, but I'm a huge McCarthy fan, and I was disappointed by the theatrical release. Maybe there's an extended director's cut that I haven't seen, but the story would have been much better if it hadn't been whittled down to about two hours.

And not just because I FLOVED "All the Pretty Horses" as a book.

The studio made him cut everything out. Like almost an hour of the film was taken out. He has been pissed about it for years because he always felt that a person only gets a chance to do something that special maybe once in a lifetime, and he was forced to butcher that story. Billy Bob and Matt Damon were both pretty upset at that. There has been some talk about Thornton putting together a director's cut for a dvd, but it's never came to fruition.

Btw, Ridley Scott is going to do "Blood Meridian." Also the Coen Brothers directed "No Country For Old Men" and that should be out in the states pretty soon.

Ridley Scott might be the worst possible choice to direct Blood Meridian, short of Tim Burton! I'd love to be proven wrong, but Scott's done nothing to impress me in the past quarter century.

I'm surprised that No Country went to film so fast, but I'm eager to see what they've done with it.

He's a great visual director. I think Black Hawk Down is a great film. I liked Gladiator quite a bit. His visual and editing eye is second to none. Scriptwise though, I am not sure how much he cares about a great screenplay. I think that's why he isn't quite in Scorsese's league for example, he seems to take interesting stories with weaker screenplays and makes them look very pretty, but they always seem to lack something.

I am excited to see what he does with "Blood Meridian." I was actually thinking about him as I read it, because visually he'd be amazing. I am skeptical about adapting it though, I just don't think the richness of the Kid could be captured in an adaptation. I say it will be entertaining and great eye candy, but, in the end, will ultimately be missing something. The novel is too rich to translate to the screen in a way that does it justice.

I particularly agree with your comment about Scott's ability to prettify a weak screenplay, even if it "lacks something" when all is said and done.

Gladiator was a solid film, but honestly very little struck me about it as being particularly noteworthy. It seemed rather conventional overall, with nice visuals but otherwise fairly linear.

I guess I'll suspend judgment on Blood Meridian. Do you think they'll go with the NC-17 rating that it'll deserve?

I figure he may try to jump in on a role somewhere, but him as the Judge would be a stretch. That's tough call, I can't picture who would play him.

Oh I hope they give it an NC-17. I just wonder how much they are willing to go with, I know Hannibal was extremely violent, so I don't expect Ridley to back off from anything like that. Tough call on just how they will do it. He'll film all the desert stuff in Morocco, so that might be interesting. It should look great and be pretty well acted, anything else is hit and miss.

and the Southwestern desert-- not alike.

Especially the mountains and grasslands of southern Arizona.

...but, how about casting Vincent D'Onofrio as The Judge?

At first glance it may not seem like he's got the imposing prescence to be The Judge, but D'Onofrio's an excellent physical actor who could probably make himself appear to be taller and larger than he actually is.

I don't have a lot of optimism about translating "Blood" to the screen, there's too much going on in the book. If the screenplay only gives us the character's words it's missing out on the beautiful language of the narration.

I think the closest we'll come to seeing something like "Blood"'s language on the screen is "Deadwood". (and Freaking HBO had to go and truncate it.)
Now you know those "Deadwood" writers have read McCarthy.

I have a lot of respect for D'Onofrio's screen presence, and I wonder if he could pull it off?

I haven't seen Deadwood, but you're right that it would be difficult to portray the narrative language of Blood Meridian on screen. It becomes almost a verbal ballet that wouldn't necessarily translate well into visuals. Better, I guess, to capture the true flavor of it rather than trying to shoehorn it into the cinematography.

I was beyond disappointed when that came out. Not even a tenth of the books magnificence.

because of the mamouth and epic nature of the book. But I have this bad feeling that someday, someone will try again.

but all others sucked

It basically slaughters Kathy Niccolo's character, and consequently, eliminates a key element of the tension that should have existed between Jennifer Connolly and Ben Kingsley. Addiction issues? Hello?

Every version I've ever seen on film pales to the book.

Which hurts me because that's still one of my favorite novels ever.

Oh ick.

Last of the Scarlet Crucible.

I think they used the same set that they used for the good film version of The Crucible for that witch trial of Hester (I mean, what they fuck were they thinking making this about withces--and don't even get me started on the Indians saving the day--what they HELL was Duvall thinking doing this film).

I hate that film with the heat of a thousand suns.

Totally reeked. The book is one of my all time favorites.

It's one of my favorites, too.

But lacking, yes.

I hated that one most.

But to each her own.

The movie is very good, but compared to the book, no way. Could not even do that book justice.

In fact, until about 15 seconds ago, I'd forgotten all about it.

Is the book a good read?

different ending though

They made Homer & Candy's love kinda trashy in the movie

I haven't brought myself to see the movie (after the Prayer for Owen Meany/Simon Birch fiasco)

Have you read the Fourth Hand or Widow for One Year?

And way too much of the book left out.

In the paperback "Cider House Rules" I have, he gives a rather lengthy explanation/apologia of how he came to write the script. He wanted Dr. Larch to be the main figure of the movie; producers wanted Homer (could be they saw their chance to hook on to Tobey Maguire's rising star). I sense Irving did not agree with this change in focus, and therefore did the best he could with adapting a rather long, complex, and complicated story to screen.

I prefer the book to the movie, although I do like the movie a lot. The book is more thought-provoking with richer characters and story line. But I think it was a Herculean task to expect Irving to faithfully bring the book to the screen. I'm giving him, and the movie, a break here.

The book was so much better than the movie. The movie lacked a lot of explanation that the book provided.

UGH, one of the WORST films of all times.

I think it's a ton of fun, and a biting satire of fascism.

but when you see where it "came" from, you weep. Long live RAH!!!!!!

more like horrible on the level of seeing a bus wreck that had nuns and ophans in it that just ran over a new litter of puppies.

The ending of the movie was a MOCKERY of what it should have been.
Duckie

A truly great escapist fiction book made into an unbelievably bad Chevy Chase movie.

Could not put it down. The movie sucked.

It's hard to take an 800 page book and make a decent 1 1/2 hour movie out of it, but I don't think they even tried. It was just a vehicle for Chevy Chase to act stupid. Not at all like the character in the bok.

Mz Pip
:dem:

My one criticism was that the female characters were terrible. But that hardly mattered: "Memoirs" was not a character-driven, inner-lives kind of book.

I've been waiting all these years for Saint to write another book. Apparently, so have a lot of other people, and there is much speculation that Saint is a pseudonym for some well known writer. "Memoirs" was Saint's only book, and it's too good to be a fluke.

Actually, I couldn't bring myself to see the movie, as who could ever improve upon the book? Besides, E.B. White would be spinning in his grave to see his little mouse gentleman riding on a skateboard and wearing sneakers. My God.

& Actually, I couldn't bring myself to see the movie, either, I don't have to to know they violated Stuart

Much better than Signs, at any rate.

Very good graphic novel, very bad film.

Gorgeous, haunting book about (among other things) the obsessive nature of erotic bibliophilia.

Flat, pointless, pretentious movie that's not really about anything except Neil LaBute's tedious Manly Angst. With one of the main characters changed to an American for no valid reason. Jeremy Northam and Jennifer Ehrle are good in it but that's not enough to redeem it.

I think that Irving one was well done. Very hard though to capture Irving on the screen.

I was really disappointed, it lacked any emotional depth. It was like a cartoon based on the book.

Asimov's ghost is not amused.

besides the title? I just saw the previews to that and wondered 'where the fu$% did this come from?'

First time I've seen a movie that was "loosely adapted" from a book's title and not the book itself.

I refuse to see it; I've seen enough that I don't want to have to kill myself

If so, I also nominate the animated versions of The Lord of the Rings. Ralph Bakshi's version of roughly the first half (very roughly) and Rankin-Bass's version of The Return of the King.

Both :scared: and :rofl: at once. Diapers recommended if you're prone to bladder control issues during helpless giggle fits.

Me too! :(

That's the best song in the movie!

"Where there's a whip..."

Oh man, it's stuck in my head now.

Sorry about the earworm.

The book, yes was overhyped, but it DID have an interesting moral about sex being sacred and sweet romantic ending. The movie was garbled and confusing if you did not read the book. IF you did read the book, it was disappointing because it left out the sacred sexuality bit and there was NO romantic spark. I love Tom Hanks and Audrey Tautou (sp?), but they were hopelessly misscast.

Sagan's book is my #1 favorite book of all time--what they did to the film made me cry x(

I think I gave up on the movie after about fifteen minutes, but book and movie were about ten years or maybe 20 years apart for me.

You have no idea how similar me and Elle are...

oh fwiw, Sagan was a huuge stoner :smoke:

A travesty compared to the gospels. eom.

It was bad, but even worse if one had read the book. Whole scenes made no sense if you hadn't read the book, and were maddening if you had.

Jeebus it was bad.

The book is really, really good. :D

Good try, but it really didn't work.

Although both were short stories. Neither one was apparently read by the guy who wrote the script. Not just bad, but not even close to the same story!