as I’ve remarked before, adaptations of the works of H.G. Wells are usually pretty bad, and generally seem to miss the point of the work. Even Wells himself made a mess out of his own Things to Come.
But there’s one adaptation of a Wells story that is as good as, or maybe even better than the original story – The Man who could Work Miracles. It uses state-of-the-art 1930s special effects, including stop-motion animation and rear projection to bring the story to life.
TV series make for good adaptations moreso than movies these days. Recent ones I have enjoyed:
The Expanse;
Hap and Leonard (only seen the first series); and
The Last Kingdom
… all adaptations from book series I enjoy.
OOoh, I agree wholeheartedly with this - the series has been fantastic so far (minor nitpicks that Claire should have been rounder and Brianna not as tall or strapping as I pictured).
I also agree with The Color Purple and To Kill a Mockingbird, both are beautiful and perfect. I will add “In the Heat of the Night”
I recently obtained and watched the entire series Hornblower (I’d previously only seen certain episodes). I’m not completely pleased with the way that did it, but overall it was a creditable and generally faithful adaptation.
Speaking of things that ran on the A&E network, I have to add their Nero Wolfe adaptations, which were far more faithful to the books and the characters than previous attempts have been. (I’ve heard that the one pilot made with Thayer David was good, but I’ve never seen it).
Yes, both were very good. I just wished they’d have continued both.
Many people criticized Alatriste because the movie goes through the highlights of the main character’s life in a single movie; those people would rather have seen one movie per book. I think it did a good job of what it set out to do, and that the authorial decision to make a movie of the series rather than of each of the nine books makes sense both from a financial and logistic point of view.
I kind of liked the CGI of the Langoliers… they were very reminiscent of the visual effect of an ocular migraine.
I had one of those once, two or three years ago. Scared the crap out of me–I thought I was having a stroke or something, especially since I had a hard time concentrating while it was going on. Doctor said I was fine and I never had another one, thank goodness.
Didn’t see any Langoliers, though. 