Words and Pictures

After finishing Sense and Sensibility a few weeks ago, I decided to re-watch the movie as I could remember very little of it. I started thinking about all of the books that have been made into movies, and how terrible most people say they are. I'm not nearly as picky as some people are, but when movies suck, it's pretty obvious.

My main issue with books made into movies is that the spirit of the movie is completely different. Obviously the movie can't contain every single minute detail of the plot and there are going to be subtractions to the characters. This is a given, after all, who would sit through a nine hour movie? No one. My best example for this is the third Harry Potter movie. I know it's a silly example but the book, while dark, was also very funny. The movie completely missed it. It was all either dark or silly, and much more immature than the book. They added more things to the story than were subtracted (remember the singing toads?) which really is a recipe for disaster.

My biggest annoyance is when a character is completely different. My best example is, again, ridiculous. Oh well. I was a huge fan of the Princess Diary Books. They were quick, fun and hilarious - perfect for summer. The movie was cute. Princess Mia and her best friend Lilly (I'm ashamed to say I had to look this up on imdb) were pitch perfect. The Mother and Grandmother (Queen) however, not so much. I am not knocking Julie Andrews. She is a great actress and a wonderful person - but her character was a complete 180. The Grandmother in the book only speaks French, chain smokes, constantly drinks and has a hairless poodle. The Mother is a feminist that constantly tests boundaries and gets pregnant half way through the first - maybe second - book (with Mia's Algebra teacher's child). This plus the fact that Mia's dad dies in the movie instead of being unable to procreate because of testicular cancer, and that they moved the setting from New York to San Francisco, (random) ruined the movie for me. And don't even get me started on the sequel.

This is to say nothing of all the books I have not read and movies I have not seen that are either atrocious (The DaVinci Code) or amazing (The Godfather).

So. Is there any hope? Should we urge producers and directors to simply forget about all books ever written? No. Some movies make a good effort, and a good movie.

Which brings us back to Sense and Sensibility. This is a great movie, because so many things are right about it. A solid, beautiful and entertaining story is well translated to a very good (academy award winning) screenplay. The cast is amazing, their characters are spot on, and the director understood the story, mood - and luckily didn't need to break from the mold or use every freaking CGI effect EVER. There were discrepancies from the book, namely a missing sister and wife, but they aren't major characters in the book, and it makes basically zero difference to the overall movie.
I say two thumbs up.


I have more favorites (and disasters), but for now, let's just stick with this. Do you have any recommendations? My netflix is looking a little empty these days.....

The Challenge

Earlier this summer I decided that I would try to read a book per week. In theory, I knew I could do it, I could find the time to read and since there are a couple million books in the world that I haven't gotten around to reading yet, I knew I wouldn't run out of material. I also thought I would blog about the books I read to stay accountable or just to amuse myself.

In reality, this has not quite worked that well. I think my main problem is that I am a procrastinator, evidenced by the fact that I haven't gotten around to making a new blog until July 3rd. It also could be because I haven't seen all of the Jon and Kate Plus 8 episodes yet. Pathetic? Maybe. Entertaining? Heck yes.

So I'm making a promise to finish my first book, Sense and Sensibility, this weekend. I only have a little over 100 pages left and since it's a long weekend and I have literally nothing to do but eat watermelon and watch fireworks, I think that there's a good chance I'll be done by Monday.

With any luck I'll keep it up the rest of the summer and read some great books. Any suggestions?