Best book to movie

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Another little poll here, or rather opinion collection. Not many books are treated gently when trsnsformed to movies but some do get atleast a decent treatment, some gets even better as a movie (so people say have never experienced it my self).
So what is your best book that became a great movie?
Mine must be A Clockwork orange, superb book and equally superb film. Sure there are some things that are missing in the movie but overall Kubrick really managed to capture the strangeness and frenzy and in the book. Ultraviolence for everyone!

The worst book to movie transition I have read/seen must be Starship Troopers, great book and a decent movie. But the movie had nothing to do with the book! The only thing they have in common is the name and the names of the characters. I wonder how Heinlein could approve of scipt that ignored his book so completely

 

I'll tell you immediately of an example of a movie that's better than the book: Shawshank Redemption.

But I think the best movie adaptations are (both from superb books): Godfather and 2001, a space odyssey.

 

Fight Club was much better as a movie.

 

"Gone with the Wind" was decent. From the new ones - "Queen of the Damned". Although in both cases the books were pretty much butchered - but on the other hand, I can understand that one can't pack the entire book in 2-3 hour movie.

 

Stephen Kings "Misery". One of the only movies based on his horror work that actually stayed close to the book.

 

The Godfather was just as good a book as it was a movie.

Sybil was also very good.

[This message has been edited by Xenecor (edited April 11, 2002).]

 

Well, it's not a movie, but "Band of Brothers".

The worst book to movies? How about ANY Clancy novel. Including the new "Sum of All Fears" piece of sh*t that's coming out.

 

The best book-to-movies I've seen are LOTR and We Were Soldiers, but the WWS movie skipped a whole other battle that was in the book, and when Randall Wallace re-wrote it for the screen, he added an annoying bit of melo-drama. The best book-movie transition in my opinion is Braveheart, since the movie was 1000 times better than the book.

 

To Kill a Mockingbird

The only book that was also a movie I have watched, if I remember correctly.

 

LoTR is the more satisfying book to movie that I have seen.

[This message has been edited by Xenomorph (edited April 11, 2002).]

 

Indeed! Lotr!

 

The movie Gettysburg from the book Killer Angels was great, and they're making another from that series which I'm also interested in. Also, I'm suprised that nobody said The Green Mile. They didn't change anything about the book to the movie, and they didn't need to. A great movie, a great book, and an excellent transition.

(edit: My 200th post! Whee! )

[This message has been edited by Damona Silvercloud (edited April 14, 2002).]

 

C'Jakob, u actually seen that movie? wow, i've been dying to see that movie (i think it is a black and white movie, right?). the book was a fovorite of mine. what a damn good book.

the best book to movie that i've read and watched must be "the joy luck club" almost very similar to each other. many of the dialogs where taken right out of the pages.

the worst book to movie, must be disney's versions of the fairy tales. the new ones though (like little mermaid, beauty and the beast, etc.) but then again it's for the children.

 

To Kill A Mockingbird (the movie) was great! My wife & I watched it last weekend.

Another good adapataion was ... "A River Runs Through It".

I just saw Lord ofthe Rings and am impressed by the visuals, but there has been plenty debate on these boards about it, so I won't go into much detail

Here's another good one ... the movie "Jesus" was based on the gospel of Luke. It is very well done. Most of the movies take all 4 gospels and weave them together. This one sticks with Luke, so you don't get some of the familiar scense (The woman at the well, etc) but you get more of a feel of what it was like to learn about Jesus for the fist time.

 

I was forced to read and watch TKAM in English Class. Still, a good book/movie. Heck, I even had to write a paper on the differences between 'em.

[This message has been edited by C'Jakob (edited April 18, 2002).]

 

Same here C'Jakob. I think the most ridiculous book(play)-to-movie, has got to be Macbeth. I don't mean one of the mafia Macbeth movies, I mean the Playboy one, with Executive Producer Hugh Hefner. Try to pictue Macbeth's wife as a hot redhead who sleeps naked, or don't if you don't want to, and you get the general idea of Playboy's version of the 11th century. Not to mention the old witches dancing around naked

 

Lord o' the Rings was an *excellent* adaptation. Shawshank Redemption was very good, as well. Red October did a very good job too, as long as you fast forward through the parts where 'Jonsey' is talking. The only other one that comes to mind is X-men. I never read the comic, just watched the cartoons. But people I know who live/eat/wipe their *yahoo* with it gave it two-thumbs-up.

On a antonymic side: Andromedea Strain and Species blew chunks. Alice (Disney) blew chunks too, unless you factor in the kid-constant (K sub-c), in which case it totally rocked...

 

Dune? It was pretty faithful to the book, though if you hadn't read it before, the movie didn't make much sense.

The worst must be Jurassic Park. Excellent book, one of the best I've ever read, but the movie... *shrug* It wasn't bad (fun action, and those big lizards look cool ), but...

 

heheh..
I agree that Lotr is a very good movie.
Quite like I imagined, but Sam was a bit uh..
nm, what about games to movies?
The most horrible movie I have ever seen that was a game was Tomb Raider.
*shivers*

 

have to agrre with the earlier post that my fav. book to movie is shawshank redemption, and the worst by far, considering i read the book years ago, has to be 'Flovers in the attic' by Virginia Andrews, absolutely gripping book, considering i was 14, but absolutely dibolical low budget film. Leave the books well alone and let us conjure up the pictures in our minds i say. Oh and was very disapointed by the first harry potter movie, too much hype.