WHY READ THE BOOK BEFORE THE MOVIE VERSION?
Source: Peter Martin at cinematical.com
As a kid, I was a book lover before I was a movie lover, so my natural approach over the years has always been to read the source material first. In other words, as soon as I heard that a film version of a book that I hadn’t read before was in production, I’d read the book. Of course, time and finances are limited. And lately I’ve been finding that reading a book shortly before seeing the movie version is more distracting than illuminating.
The latest example is The Losers. The movie is based on a comic book series, written by Andy Diggle and illustrated by Jock*, that ran for 32 issues. The first 12 issues were recently republished in a single volume at a good price, so I picked that up and read it about a month ago. I enjoyed it immensely and could readily see it as an 80s-style action movie, which seemed to be the aim of the filmmakers, according to a report by our own Elisabeth Rappe. But as I watched the finished product on screen, I kept getting tripped up. The script cherry-picks scenes from the series and places them in a different sequence, certain characters are dramatically different than the printed predecessor, and so forth. What remains is the audience-pleasing, comedic chemistry on display from Chris Evans, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Idris Elba, Zoe Saldana, Columbus Short, and Oscar Jaenada.
A movie is, after all, a different beast than a novel or a comic book series or a TV series or a graphic novel or a non-fiction book. Within a shortened running time, events and characters inevitably change. Yet the question is, inevitably: how was it, compared to the book?
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THE SKIN TRADE- GEORGE RR MARTIN NOVELLA ADAPTED
Source: Christopher Monfette at UGO.COM
There are few things I’m more excited about than HBO’s eventual adaptation of George R. R. Martin’s massive fantasy series, A Game of Thrones. I say this not only because the material is both epic and Shakespearean; I say this not only because of the substantial talent involved both behind and in front of the camera; I say this not only because the storytelling is first-rate….I say it because the damn books are long and it’s taking me forever to actually read them.
Easier to read, however, is Martin’s werewolf novella, The Skin Trade, the rights to which, according to Variety, have been picked up by Spoke Lane Entertainment and Mike the Pike Productions. The novella first appeared in the short story collection Dark Visions, grouped with six short stories from horror masterminds Stephen King and Dan Simmons. The same seven tales have been paired together in a number of collections released under the titles, Dark Love, The Skin Trade, and Night Visions 5.
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Ah, the age old battle of book v movie. I don’t know how I feel about just separating a movie experience from a book, especially when it’s a much loved book. I can do it in some instances, ie, with Neil Gaiman’s ‘Stardust’ – the movie was quite different from the novel, but still highly entertaining and lovely – and then there are movies that vastly disappoint me, or I refuse to see (ie The Picture of Dorian Gray) because it looks worlds away from the book.
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