In the trailers before Walk the Line there was one for Tristan and Isolde. As I was with my family I leaned over and asked “Should I ask Dad if the book will be better than the movie?” Anyway, his comment was that the story had survived everyone from a name I didn’t catch to Wagner so it could probably stand Hollywood. So what are the chances for this movie? Is the story itself any good?
Well, I don’t think there’s any one book, but it’s an old myth that’s sort of connected to the Arthurian legends.
Isolde was married to King Mark of Ireland, and Tristan was her lover (and in some versions, Mark’s nephew). She and Tristan accidentally drank a love potion and thus could love no one but one another.
That’s all I can remember of the legend off hand though. At one point, someone linked the tale to King Arthur and made Tristan a Knight of the Round Table.
Tristan and Iseult appear mostly in Breton folktales–notably in “Chevrefoil”, one of the lais of Marie de France–so you can’t really go to one source and get a complete story.
It should be a good film, though. I’ve been waiting ages for it to come out. 
10-to-1 odds that at least some of Wagner’s music is going to be in the sound track.
Dear Lord, I hope so! Someone described it as “two lions making love”.
Wagner’s opera is the perfect German love story-everyone who counts dies. 
That’s a lousy description. Lions get it over with in a few seconds. Wagner’s operas drag on for hours.
But both are loud as all get-out.