Book adaptation – Page 2

Book vs Movie: Fight Club – What’s the Difference?

Another great installment from the Cinefix team.

A point I’d make about the final chapter of the novel is that I thought the implication was that the narrator was so drugged up in the mental hospital that he wasn’t sure what was going on. And I also thought that the people with the tell-tale bruising were the Project Mayhem members implying they were waiting for him to escape so they could try again.

Also one plot point I really liked in the book was the bit about the type of explosive used, the Narrator preferring one, Tyler the other. This explained why the explosives failed and also implied that the Narrator had been able to sabotage the plan.

Update: Wisecrack discussed the differences as well. Worth a watch.

Reading, Reblogged, Video

Book vs Movie: Jurassic Park – What’s the Difference?

This is the third* video in the CineFix series of Book vs. Movie differences. Well worth a watch.

* Yes, I’m skipping the second video because I haven’t read The Walking Dead comics and gave up on the TV show after spending half-a-boring season on that f@#$ing farm.

Reading, Reblogged, Video

Book vs Movie: Rambo – What’s the Difference?

Did you know the Rambo franchise started with a novel about a man bringing the war back home with him? Let’s watch What’s the Difference and Lost in Adaptation.

Video: Rambo – What’s the Difference? David Morell told me he liked this video.

Video: Rambo – Lost in Adaptation

David Morell’s career was really kicked off with Stallone wanting to make his first book into a movie. It wasn’t just that the franchise allowed him to become a full-time author, it was that he’d been rather savvy in retaining a few of the rights to the character and spinoffs.

Essentially, despite the fact that very little of his character remains in the sequels, Morell wrote the novelisations of the films, keeping his piece of the franchise $$. He has said that those sorts of IP negotiations can make a huge difference to a writer’s career.

Having read several of Morell’s books, I think most thriller fans would enjoy his work. And if you like the entire third act of a film being a buff guy shooting a large calibre machine gun at people, you’ll probably enjoy the Rambo films.

Book review, Reading

Book review: Guardians of the Galaxy by Dan Abnett

Guardians Of The Galaxy, Vol. 1: Legacy by Dan Abnett
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

My name is Tyson and I am one of those people.

You know, the people who only read the book after they’ve made a movie of it. I’m not quite as bad as the people who only read the book after they have seen the movie: those people are just pure evil.

I’ve had Guardians of The Galaxy Volumes 1 and 2 sitting on my TBR list since I heard something about a movie with a talking racoon in it. Any movie that has a talking animal in it falls into only a few categories: kids film, lame comedy film, or worst movie ever. What piqued my interest was the movie hadn’t trodden down the Jar-Jar Binks route and had instead turned in solid gold awesome. To the bookshelf!

Guardians is a very entertaining read. It is action packed, has plenty of humour and has a cast of interesting characters who are meant to be a team, but are always in a state of social flux. They are also fighting against many foes as they try to keep the universe from falling apart or being invaded from other dimensions. They even find time to make jokes about how lame it would be to have an altered timeline plot as they kick off an altered timeline plot.

The thing that held Guardians back from being a four star read for me was the intercut frames. During most action sequences the writers/artists interspersed post-action debriefing scenes. Whilst this did give the humour a place to really dig in, it did also detract from the tension of the action scenes to an extent. Several times I noticed myself rapt with the life-or-death struggle only to have one of the characters talk about it post tense: “That was pretty close.” Now this isn’t that big a deal, since heroes don’t die. Ever. Not permanently at least. So it could be argued that they’ve instead decided to parody or make some jokes about, or around, action scenes. Thus, even my opinion could be swayed up if I were to read this on a different day.

In other words, worth a read, preferably before you see the movie.

View all my reviews

Fun Articles, Humor, Reading

Book to movie

If there is any one thing that Hollywood does well, it is taking terrific books and turning them into terrible movies. When was the last time someone said “Well the movie was better than the book”?

I’ve opined on this issue before: Tom Cruise as Jack Reacher; why movie studios bother with buying a book when they make a movie that doesn’t resemble the book in any way.

And here it is happening again:

Any movie starring Katherine Heigl is always doomed. She ranked in my article on actresses you don’t want in you book adaptation. Clearly Janet Evanovich signed the movie rights before she read my article. So you have to ask what is happening in Hollywood, aside from the hookers and blow?

Clearly the first thing that is happening is the movie rights. Author agents are clearly trying to make some money for their authors so that the author can give up the day job and write more. Sorry, that should read, they want a commission. The movie studio hands over some spare change they have lying around and grab the book. Then they ask a script writer to give them a script, usually in the same amount of time it would take the script writer to actually read the book. So the script writer hands over a script they already have lying around, after changing a few of the character names to match. The studio then ~~launders~~ finds some money from “business associates” to start casting and shooting. The casting agent looks at the budget and sorts through the least desperate actors in the appropriate pay scale, to find the person who least embodies the main characters.

By the time the movie hits cinemas there have only been two people in the entire process who realise the movie is based upon a book, one of whom may have read it. This, of course, doesn’t really matter because the ten people who have read the book that go to see the movie are sitting in a packed cinema with people who don’t read and are generally confused by plots that can’t be explained in a one-to-two sentence monologue from a minor character.

Clearly Hollywood knows what it is doing, I mean, they cast Tom Cruise as Lestat. And authors love getting money from Hollywood, they can actually afford to pay the rent that month. So maybe it is time writers started writing for Hollywood. Oh wait, they already do that….

Fun Articles, Humor

Actresses you don’t want in your book adaptation

I previously posted about some of the actors who were most likely to ruin a perfectly good book adaptation. The movie of a book is always going to be hard. You take an intricate plot, interesting characters, and throw them out to make room for 90 minutes of mindless violence and teen appeal: not an easy task. So, as to not be labelled a sexist by men pointing out that there are heaps of untalented female actors, I’m presenting the follow-up list of actresses whom you don’t want in a book adaptation.

Former models, singers or “celebrities”

Was she even a singer?

Yes this is a generic category rather than a specific actress, but we see it all of the time. Is it too much to ask for there to be more to an actress than looking good? Remember that this is a red-blooded male asking this question, if I’m complaining about these clothes horses in films it must be bad. Even worse is the Elvis road that singers want to take. To quote Eddie Murphy “Elvis was so good they put him in movies. Mother@#$%er couldn’t act.” Unfortunately the modern day singers aren’t Elvis and their acting is worse.

Jessica Alba

All acting sins forgiven!

There is a common marital clause, the freebie. Basically if you ever happen to be in the position to have sex with someone completely unobtainable, then it is okay. For me it is Jessica Alba, for my wife it is Ryan Reynolds. No offense to this hottie, but she has been acting since she was a child and yet she still manages to only bring her hottness to the screen.

Katie Holmes-Cruise-Xenu

Pre-midget.

I don’t know what’s worse, her acting or her choice in husbands.

Lindsay Lohan

Underwear not included.

Lindsay almost fits under the category of “celebrities” rather than actresses. I am struggling to name a film she has been in, let alone one that she acted in. On the plus side I’m struggling to name a film she has been in.

Jennifer Aniston

Hairstyle, no acting included.

Has she done anything other than Friends that was decent? Yes she was in the movie gem Office Space, but you could have replaced her with just about any other actress, she did so little with the role.

Katherine Heigl

At least she isn’t Helen Hunt.

There are two things you can count on with a Katherine Heigl romantic comedy: it won’t be funny and no one will have seen it. Heigl has the honor of staring in a $2 million film that only grossed $20 bucks, one of the biggest flops in film history.

Heather Graham

Her talents are showing.

Who needs talent when you’ve got big boobs and you’re willing to show them? Graham has made a career out displaying her, um, talents on screen. Wide eyed and bland, watching Graham on screen is like watching adorable paint dry.

Jennifer Love Hewitt

She sees dead people.

According to a study of ratings at Rotten Tomatoes, Jennifer is the worst actress of all time. Now this seems a bit hard to swallow given her successful TV career, but you can’t argue with science, even when arbitrarily applied with no proper standardisation of data. Also, at least Bill Murray apologised for making Garfield and has made some good films to make up for his appalling mistake.

Megan Fox

She’ll have diva with that.

Washed up at 24 is not exactly something you expect in Hollywood, well, not in the movies that include clothes at least. But when all you have going for you is your looks and you manage to annoy everyone you have worked with and then badmouth everyone, your career tends to be over.

Kristen Stewart

The one on the right.

A proud graduate of the Steven Segal School of Acting. She has one facial expression for every occasion. I know she was hired to be boring and insipid in Twilight, but that doesn’t mean you get to play Joan Jett that way too.

Fun Articles, Humor

Actors you don’t want in your book adaptation

In a previous post I raised the fact that Tom Cruise would be bringing Jack Reacher to the big screen. Now fans of the Lee Child books will be familiar with the 6’5″ Jack Reacher and the general differences he has from Tom Cruise, the most noticeable being that Reacher isn’t crazy. Of course Lee Child isn’t particularly worried because “the movie isn’t for the fans of the book, it is for movie goers.”

This all got me to thinking, I could really do with a nap. When I woke up I was thinking, “which actors would I hate to see playing the lead role in a book adaptation?” I present my list, do you have any others?

11) Nicolas Cage

Cage wasn’t always a horrible actor, he has an Oscar to prove it. But after he started buying castles and octopuses, his work got weirder and weirder, just watch The Wicker Man. He seems determined do his unique combination of drug-fueled mania and totally inappropriate character choices in most every movie.
Update: Conan O’Brian has got in on the joke.

10) David Caruso

David Caruso will be forever remembered as Lt. Horatio Caine on CSI: Miami. It isn’t because of his superb acting, no, rather it is his stunning array of bizarre tics and horrible one-liners he crams into 42 minutes of television every week. Caine is just pure corniness, and Caruso’s just getting worse. Whether he’s doing it on purpose or he’s just given up, this is some spectacularly horrible acting.

9) Jean-Claude Van Damme

I have seen Van Damme act just the once, playing himself, in JCVD. The rest of the time he is in films because he can kick high and do the splits. In fairness most of his movie roles have only required him to kick high and do the splits, but bringing a book to life takes a bit more than that. In JCVD’s favour is the fact that he doesn’t take himself too seriously, having had guest star roles taking the piss out of himself on various TV shows.

8) Hugh Grant

We have a TV channel in Australia called SBS. They show movies from around the world, rather than just Hollywood. They have a great advert that sums up Hugh Grant. They show the same bumbling, um er, insipid, um er, acting he does in every, um er, that is to say, role. I am simply baffled by his popularity. He is a weak, dull, uninteresting man.

7) Ben Affleck

Lets face it, any book adaptation that stars Ben Affleck will be fraught with budgetary over-runs due to acting class costs, hair product and dead hooker disposal.

6) Steven Seagal

He’s played one role – the wise, astute, noble, ass kicker, who only resorts to violence when necessary – for his entire career (except in Machete). He also founded the Steven Segal School of Acting, which prides itself on producing one facial expression for every occasion. As Sean Connery will attest, you shouldn’t try to piss Steven off by suggesting he learn to act.

5) Orlando Bloom

Orlando “one look” Bloom has managed to make a career out of the same facial expression. “Orcs are killing everyone” is the same as his “I’m in love with you Elizabeth Swan” look. He and Kirsten Stewart clearly went to the Steven Segal School of Acting. The only reason he brings characters to life is that he has a heartbeat and can walk, as proven by his work on the LOTR book adaptations.

Update: Orlando Bloom has apparently had the same look since he was a child.

4) Paul Walker

I actually like Paul Walker, he comes across as a friendly, cool guy. Pity that is all he brings to a role. He does have the ability to do many things that Orlando Bloom can’t, but it is still hard to take him seriously in anything dramatic. Maybe it would be cool to hire him for the book adaptation just to hang out with him, but that’s the stalker in me talking.

3) Hayden Christensen

He ruined Star Wars with JarJar Binks, enough said.

2) Tom Cruise

I’ve mentioned before that Tom Cruise has a habit of shouting instead of acting. I’ve also mentioned before that Tom has appeared in a number of good films, but he wasn’t the reason they were good. I’ve also mentioned that Tom will be doing his best to ruin Jack Reacher for Lee Child fans. Short nut-case closed.

1) Keanu Reeves

Is this really a surprise? Did anyone watch The Day The Earth Stood Still and not think a block of wood could have contributed a better acting performance? Actually, aside from Bill & Ted, do you think there is any role he has ever had that couldn’t be improved upon by replacing Keanu with a block of wood? It was a tough decision picking the right photo for this one – on the one hand I had a photo of paint drying, and on the other hand I had a photo of Keanu. While the paint photo was a lot more interesting, I thought I ought to go with this one.