First, I recall a cartoon with a director pointing at a couple in the middle of filming a scene. Someone said, “Boy, this movie follows the book extremely closely.” The director had a book in his other hand.
That was probably from Playboy in the early '70’s.
To answer the question I recall that a bit that time I read the novel Rosemary’s Baby was based on. It struck me that the film was amazingly close to the details as well as the spirit [Hmmm… unintentional pun!] of the film.
Radagast was fine, I liked the whole White Council side story. But the combat was overmuch and yes, the “love story”…:eek:
That really depends on the book though; sometimes he was nearly 20 stone, others he wasn’t nearly so big.
But yeah; great adaptation, and good casting, I thought. I didn’t have high hopes for Paul Bettany, being blonde, tall and reasonably good looking, but he did a pretty good job of getting Maturin’s personality down.
About the only complaint about the movie I had is that we didn’t get to see enough of Jack’s non-nautical side- the whole thing was almost completely naval warfare, with the exception of the dinner and the music playing.
I think Holden’s fine, but the actor is a bit too young. That’s really the gripe about the casting that I have- everyone’s about 5-10 years too young, otherwise they’re spot on, with the exception of Cas Anwar; he’s the right age to be Alex.
And I particularly like the way his Mariner Valley drawl wanes and waxes depending on how much stress he’s under. Very much the way quite a few Texans I know work- normally very faintly accented, but get them angry or stressed, and it comes right out.
I think aside from all that, I hated the CGI orcs most of all. CGI and motion capture was used very effectively for Gollum in LOTR, but the Uruk Hai were a real physical threat in LOTR. There’s something about the reality of an actor in good makeup and costuming that CGI can’t match.
The book and movie of Cold Comfort Farm were lovely. I think they only nitpick I had was that the actress playing Elfine, while pretty enough, is not a world-class beauty as described in the book. (I’d quote the description, but my library is currently a shambles.)
I loved that Peter Jackson pulled in material from the appendices to include in the Hobbit movies, given that at least some of the action was contemporaneous. I could have done entirely without the elf/dwarf attraction and the bloody chase scenes, one per movie. You know it was only there to give the 3D watchers a thrill. Other than that, they were absolutely pointless. And what was with the gigantic melting gold dwarf king statue? Who thought *that *was a good idea?
One that totally exceeded my expectations was The Color Purple. A very hard book to film, with a cast of then unknowns, yet Steven Spielberg it did! (11 Oscar nominations yet not for Best Director? And no wins? Stupid Academy).
I’ve never enjoyed a film AFTER I’ve read the book. I’ll still enjoy the book if I’ve seen the movie first.
I thought The Dogs of War was a good, maybe superior adaptation of the source novel. Christopher Walken was not who I imagined as the hardcore ex-Royal Marine of the novel, but with his ethereal presence, he made it interesting and the film’s complex plot was very tightened up into a documentary-type feel.
I saw the movie well before I read the book, which screws up my biases; but I would say that this adaptation of Graham Greene’s Monsignor Quixote, with Alec Guinness and Leo McKern, is so faithful to the book that one can almost swap the experience of watching the movie with that of reading the book. Almost. (Given my fondness for Leo McKern, I might consider the book disappointing by comparison because he obviously is not on the page.)
So, perhaps the answer to faithful adaptations is to look for something small and modest done for UK television or the like, rather than a big-budget extravaganza with lots of Hollywood dorks giving notes.
Of relatively “big” movies, I remember being sort of annoyed and confused by the attempt to compress Akira into a movie, but the early acts have some cool special effects and the soundtrack album is pretty cool.
And that’s how awful feature film adaptations generally are. The soundtrack is cool, so that makes it better than most. Except not really, because the music is better served by the soundtrack album than by the hot mess of a movie.
There are feature films I quite like based on books I have not read. Michael Cimino’s The Sicilian (with Christopher Lambert as Giuliano!) and Alfonso Cuarón’s modernized Great Expectations are both beautifully shot and, well, passably acted movies. But I can’t say I had any expectations based on the books, or that fans of the books wouldn’t hate them.
I disagree with 1408 - I liked the story more than the movie, and found it far creepier.
Agree with Poysyn, although Cusack did give it the old college try.
To Live and Die in L.A. was both a good novel and an excellent movie.
Speaking of King adaptations, the TV series “Mr. Mercedes” was an outstanding adaptation that absolutely nailed the book. If anything it improved on it.
I went backwards on this one. Field of Dreams had already been one of my favorite movies for years before I got around to reading Shoeless Joe.
I was somewhat surprised at how different the two are, but I think the film works better as a film, while the book works better as a book. (If that makes any sense.)
Side note: For an even more bizarre and fantastical baseball yarn, check out Kinsella’s The Iowa Baseball Confederacy.
They’re not movies, but the Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes adaptations definitely lived up to the promise of the original stories, at least until Brett himself starting falling ill and they had to effectively write him out of them. The two TV “movies” of The Sign of Four and The hound of the Baskervilles were two of the best and most faithful long Holmes adaptations made. Hound is especially notable in that regard, because it’s been done so many times – usually badly.
I agree completely. Brett is the ONLY Sherlock Holmes. Watching the shows now all together, it’s sad to see him deteriorating.
I thought Kubrick’s adaptation of The Shining was awful…as an adaptation. It was an okay movie, but it wasn’t a fateful adaptation by any means. I like the mini-series much better, as far as adaptations go.
I also liked the adaptations of:
[ul]
[li]Night of the Twisters[/li][li]Phantoms[/li][li]One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest[/li][li]the Harry Potter series[/li][li]Cool Hand Luke[/li][li]Jurassic Park[/li][/ul]
Good choice - my favorite as well; both faithful to the source and damn good.
I’ve just started watching the TV series Outlander, on DVD, and at the “four disks into season 1” point I’m astonished at how perfectly they nailed the book.