We've all been there - excited about the movie that's about to come out, that we've waited months or years for. Then, we see it, and it falls flat for the book readers out there.

For me, The Golden Compass was one of thos books turned movies. However, Coraline worked.

What do you think of books and their movies?

I'm waiting on the new Dorian Gray coming out this month, just because I loved the book, but I've seen some trailers and I don't think it will be a great movie.
Personally, I have nothing against Ben Barnes, but why he should be cast as Dorian (blond-haired, blue-eyed) is a bit of a riddle to me... Well, we'll see how it does.
I still have to watch the Time Traveler's Wife movie. Has anyone watched it yet? Is it good?

Blood and Chocolate was a disappointment, to say the least. My reaction was this:

They didn't even have the same plot. Not even close. Had I not known that the movie was based on the book, I would not have come to that conclusion on my own. It was quite possibly the worst movie based on a book that I have ever seen. There were not even any real redeeming qualities to it.

I do not know that I have ever seen a movie that was better than the book. For some reason, Hollywood cannot capture books that well. I remember seeing Where the Heart Is based on the book by Billie Letts. It was such a disappointment. It was the same when I saw the music version of Wicked by Gregory Maguire. I loved that book. The play was good in it's own right. But it was a completely different story.

The Princess Bride is one of my favorite movies as well as one of my favorite books.

Ella Enchanted disappointed me to no end.

I agree about The Princess Bride. I've seen this at least 8 times.

I try to avoid movies that originate from works of fiction. Once I have read something, and it has moved me, something that I enjoy thinking about, oftentimes the movie will ruin my experience of the writing.

"Brokeback Mountain" is one of my favorite works of fiction. I read it while the movie was being advertised. After reading the short story, I was reluctant to see the movie, the story is so powerful. I waited at least a year to see it. The power of the story was lost in the movie, the power of the characters were lost by the horendous casting.

Another disapointment was the movie "Doubt". The movie was OK, but again, it did not deliver the impact of the writen play. A few lines of great dialogue, or discription from a great writer is worth more than a thousand moving picture frames. I think oftentimes, when reading fiction, our own imaginations are better than what they come up with in Hollywood. We tend to identify with characters, and many times those characters disapoint in the movie theatre.

BTW, must ask Chris, why did you watch "The Princess Bride" eight times?

Generally speaking, I think that movies usually do not compare well with the books they are taken from.

An exception that comes to mind for me is the “Sherlock Holmes” series produced for British television some years back, during the ‘80s I believe. It stared Jeremy Brett in the title role, and I think he did a marvelous job with it. Sadly, he passed away recently. I believe some feature length movies were produced as well. We still see reruns of the series on the public TV channel here in BC.

Almost every movie based on a book is like a Readers Digest condensed version, stripped down due the need to make something that will take two hours to watch vs. a day or two to read. For that reason, the best fiction-to-film conversions for me have been based on a short story, or have been put out in serial episodes and so are much longer overall. I remember the British production of Brideshead Revisited shown here on PBS as being very faithful to the book and an excellent film.

There are exceptions. I thought the film of Michael Chabon's Wonder Boys was at least as good as the book.

DWill wrote:I remember the British production of Brideshead Revisited shown here on PBS as being very faithful to the book and an excellent film.

Did you know, the young actor that played Sebastian Flyte, Ben Whishaw, in Brideshead Revisited 2008 version is the actor playing John Keats in the new film about him.