When is the movie better than the book?

[Strelnikov]

Quoting Phatteus yet again:
"Romeo and Juliet was not a book, it was a play, never meant to be read, always meant to be SEEN, therefore not a good candidate for this list"

English teachers mistakenly group Shakespeare with great authors and poets. He doesen't belong there - he was an entertainer first and foremost. His plays survived because they're GOOD - he was the Steven Spielberg of his time.

Everybody in this country is forced to read Shakespeare in High School, and everybody hates it. The language has changed enough that it's a difficult read for most. OTOH, nearly everyone can understand and enjoy a PERFORMANCE of a Shakespeare play.

Other movies- The one that springs to minds is "Cross of Iron", a German WW-2 novel. My German isn't quite good enough to read it in the original language. The English translation sucks - the translators were professors who know nothing about the subject, and whose prose style is about as engaging as the average text book, i. e., dry as a popcorn fart. The movie (starring James Coburn, James Mason and Maximilian Schell) was well done and much closer to the original than the translation.

Strelnikov

 

[phatteus]

Thank you, Strelnikov for seconding my point. Oddjob, I am not arguing that Romeo and Juliet is an excellent read. In fact, I read it quite frequently. It is quite refreshing and pleasing to hear the English language used as it is supposed to be used. Shakespeare (Or Sir Francis Bacon, if you believe the theories, which I do not) was a master of the language of his time, and used it as a sigil with which to slice his way into his audience's minds. It is true, that reading these plays is a waste of time. This is especially so in the schools in which these works are so often read. High Schools. HS students rarely care for anything that they are "forced" to read. It is a true shame that so many people "hate" Shakespeare, and Dickens, and Steinbeck, and Shelly, and countless other great authors, simply because they didn't understand the language in High School. If someone were to read these books at an older age, they might find that they are quite enjoyable, now that their minds can comprehend the twisted wordplay. However, to say that the "movie" was better than the "book" is still difficult. To say that about a Shakespearean play is like saying the movie "Carmen - a Hip Hopera" was better than reading the libretto of Carmen... the real opera.
Romeo and Juliet has been put on film so many times, more recently by Baz Luhrman (sp) and convolutedly as "West Side Story." But it is not a book. It never was a book. It is a script. Simply numbering the pages of a script does not make it a "book" as far as this thread is concerned.

As an aside, BigJim, you have again succeeded in offending me. Congratulations. Bollocks on you for implying that "America" as a whole is responsible for fouling up HG Wells' "War of the Worlds".
Blame Hollywood, but not America.

-fin-

 

[BigJim]

As an aside, BigJim, you have again succeeded in offending me. Congratulations. Bollocks on you for implying that "America" as a whole is responsible for fouling up HG Wells' "War of the Worlds".
Blame Hollywood, but not America.

-fin-

BLARGH!!!!!!!
Arse, smeg, bugger, shite, double-arse and triple bugger!!!

I do beg your pardon phat old bean, sincere apologies and all that bollocks.

P.S. Wasn't most film-making done in New york in thos days? (1953)

 

[Strelnikov]

Nope - the Big Apple lost out to California in the 1920's and never caught back up. The weather's better, you see...

Strelnikov

 

[cincinnatusc]

only two i can think of

1 fight club
the plot in the movie had couple major differences from the book, but the camera work, soundtrack, and norton and pitt just nailing their respective roles puts the movie above the book, in my opinion.

2 requiem for a dream
darren aronskofsky (sp?) is such a brilliant director. i agree that in most cases, nothing compares to your imagination when you read the book, but in this case, i think his vision for the story was better than mine.

ok, i have to edit this post after reading some of the previous replies. i can't believe that so many people think that 'one flew over the cuckoo's nest' was better as a movie. the great thing about that book was the 'big chief's' narration. the way he sees the world, how he floats around in the fog, how there are wires going into everyone..i could go on and on. it was such an amazing description of the whole 60's 'damn the man' perspective on the world, and the movie took all of that away. you still get the basic plot in the film, and it's a great little story, but the story only serves to convey the message of the book (in this case), and i just don't see how the two really are even comparable.

also, i just got done reading interview with a vampire. in the movie, i thought pitt's character "louis" was cool and poetic and depressed. but in the book, he's just a whiny baby. he never stops bitching about how bad he's got it. his sadness is way over done. i'd say that the movie is better than the book, even though the movie misses some pretty good plot points and depth. but neither one is really anything fantastic.

 

[BigNorm]

well the movie Holes and the book Holes by Louis Sachar, are both THE SAME BELIEVE IT OR NOT. i've never seen a movie from a book that were exactly the same. i liked them both very much. no other movie from a book i have ever seen has ever been as good as the book. the closest was Phantoms by Dean Koontz (which is the best book i have ever read.)

i advise everyone to get the horror book Phantoms by Dean Koontz.

 

[Oddjob0226]

Lots of nails being hit on lots of heads! (Wat the helll kind f phrase is that???) R & J was the 1st Shakespeare play I read in English class, as a high school freshman, and it was a great experience; then tey started taking him seriously. By the time I had gotten out of my senior year in high school I HATED Shakespeare (in a six week period we had to read Macbeth as a clss, then we were also broken down into 4 groups and each one read a play and did a report in class in groups, so that we got hit with 5 plays all in a short period). I sufferd through college somehow, doing some study of Shakespeare, but also being shown that there was a much greater variety of English lit. than just HIM. It was only sometime later that I started reading his works by myself, as a challenge to myself, for my own enjoyment, and I'm still not as well read as I want to be. It's clear to me that in public schools, they just don't know how to teach the works properly.