Thursday 24 December 2009 at 12:10 pm
This Activity is completely and totally based on your opinion.
1 - You need to choose the BEST Book-to-Movie Adaptation you've seen and the WORST Book-to-Movie Adaptation you've seen.
2 - Post the pictures of the book cover next to the movie poster for each pair.
There are a ton I could do. There are a million good book-to-movie adaptations and a million bad ones. So I decided to stick with one director, who has made a couple really great book to movie adaptations, and one monumentally bad one. The director's name is
Alfonso Cuaron, and he is one of the most acclaimed directors working today. In 1995 he was tapped to adapt Frances Hodges Burnett's classic,
A Little Princess, the film was beautiful and magical. It absolutely caught me up in it's since of wonder and after I watched it for a film class, I immediately went out and bought it. I got strange looks, because I was a 19 year-old boy buying a children's movie, but it had to be done. It is still one of my favorite book to movie adaptations of all time
A few years ago, he was given the chance to direct a big-time movie, you may have heard of it, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. I was excited. One of my favorite directors directing a film series I thought had potential. The book & movies use of time-travel, however, left me cold as I thought it was a weak storytelling device. But that came directly from the book, what really made it a disappoint for me, was the fact that the Hogwarts' kids seemed to look like they were suddenly in Cold War Russia rather than a slightly altered version of the present that the other movies had given us. It wasn't until after the last book came out that J.K. Rowling told us the kids may have been living in a time closer to Cold War Russia than the slightly altered version of the present had presented. Still, if you watch all the movies together, one stands apart from the rest, and it is this one, because of poor/strange directorial choices.
A couple years after his brief debacle stint as Harry Potter director, Cuaron would again bring his good name back to movie adaptations, with a loose but amazing adaptation of P.D. James's Children of Men.
Wednesday 23 December 2009 at 1:41 pm
Look, look . . . I spent the break to read another book that they made a movie out of. I also couldn't choose which book cover I liked best. The movie tie-in cover is pretty scary, the other is kinda pretty and only hints at what this book is about.
It's also one of those books where I can't give away too much, so I don't ruin (ha!) the fun of it.
So, here goes:
A group of recently graduated college students take a trip to Cancun before they start grad school or "real" jobs. They are a week away from leaving when a German they met while scuba diving asks them to help them find his brother. Jeff, the de facto leader of the group, looking for an adventure, agrees to go. Along with another new acquaintance, a Greek who calls himself Pablo, the four friends, Amy, Jeff, Eric, Stacy, and the German, Mathais, head into the jungle in search of the lost brother. In the jungle they find a beautiful hill covered in flowers, that the Mayans from the area won't let them leave. Over the next few days, they face a plethora of real and psycological terror as they try to escape the hill with their lives.
The Ruins, like Scott Smith's other novel, A Simple Plan, is a character study that puts normal people in an extreme situation and watches them react. It's taut and deliberate, and like many horror novels, bottom heavy, winding it's way to a bloody climax. The flowers and vines on the hill are the partial monster of the novel, as they are omnivores out for human flesh. But the book works better, and is more terrifying in the psychological horror realms. The plants, and the friends, work against each other as the days and the heat weaken them. The mind games, especially as played by the plants, are especially sickening; watching the friends fall apart is fascinating, startling, and disheartening. There's also quite a bit of gore, for fans of that, and its stomach-turning nature prove its effectiveness. Even at a hefty 500+ pages, Smith's adeptness at suspense make this a quick read. Great for, say, a snowstorm.
Wednesday 23 December 2009 at 11:46 am
Logicomix is a graphic novel that mixes biography, philosophy, mathematics, and the search for indisputable truth. It even blends fiction and nonfiction as it tells the story of the early life of Bertrand Russell and his quest to establish a firm, unshakeable foundation for mathematics.
There are huge ideas on display in this book. I mean, math is confusing enough as it is, so someone trying to establish mathematical logic is both confounding and welcome. The artwork is charming, making the reader feel like they are only reading a Sunday comic that is discussing these huge concepts. It's an interesting read for those interested in a different kind of graphic novel. It's also great for all those looking for something a little more challenging. It certainly succeeds at that. A nice challenge though.
Tuesday 22 December 2009 at 10:04 pm
I know The Road may be a strange pick for some teenagers. I mean, the thing I like best about Cormac McCarthy is his ability to write masculine books with a delicate, literary touch. There may be blood, cannibalism, and/or psychos, but there is always something gentle and heartwarming about his prose or the story in general. And what teenager cares about that type of stuff, right? Well, I have a little more faith in ya'll. When I was a teenager I tended more toward adult books, which is partly why I offer this to you. But I also find my self remembering the more delicate, literary touches from those days. Grapes of Wrath was required reading, and I don't remember much of it, but I do remember a chapter about a turtle crossing the road. It stood as a metaphor for the rest of the book about a family migrating during the Dust Bowl. The turtle chapter is short, especially compared to the rest of the book. And it's about a turtle. Still, it's something less obvious and especially more literary from a book I read 10 years ago that has stuck with me all this time. In fact, I think John Steinbeck and McCarthy share the same skills. While I'm thinking about it, Of Mice and Men would be a great reading double-feature with The Road.
So that's why I think it has cross-over appeal. Now here's what I thought:
see more
Tuesday 22 December 2009 at 6:14 pm
So here were the rules for today's activity:
1 - Pick up the book you are currently reading.
2 - Since it is December 22nd, turn to page 22 in your book.
3 - Count down to the 22nd line on the page. (If there is a partial word on the line you can leave it off.)
4 - Post a picture of your book cover along with the 22nd line from the 22nd page on your blog.
And here is mine!
" . . . with what appeared to be genuine concern."
Tuesday 22 December 2009 at 11:35 am
Let me first start with a caveat, Libba Bray is amazingly talented. It's her skill at witty, clever, almost whimsical prose that makes Going Bovine work, even when it seems like it will fall off the rails, as any book with Viking Yard Gnomes, Punk Rock Angels, Fire Giants, and inter-dimensional portals should do. She, however, wrote my favorite book of the year, writing a funny, believable, heartbreaking, brain-frying gem.
But . . . her strengths are also her biggest weaknesses (I'll get to that in a minute).
Cameron Smith, a sixteen-year-old slacker, is stricken with Creutzfeld Jakob's, the scary word for mad cow disease. Of course, calling it mad cow disease makes it more hilarious than it is, because Cameron finds out it's incurable. Along with bizarre, terrifying hallucinations he also learns he's going to die. There isn't a cure for Creutzfeld Jakob's.
While all of that sounds like a downer, this book is anything but. Cameron grabs his roommate at the hospital, a dwarf named Gonzo, and embarks on a road trip to find a cure. It's a fantastic journey, that will keep readers laughing, cheering, and flipping the page to see what happens next. Bray has made Cameron's terrifying journey very real, and by the end, we want him to find the mysterious Dr. X and close the portal that is releasing dark matter into the world.
Which brings me back to Bray's weakness . . . She creates a very real world, where we can connect with all the craziness that comes from Cameron's illness, because we want Cameron to survive. But, she also places distractions in her "real world" with her cleverness. Every product and band name tries so hard to be a mirror of something in our actual world, but most are just terrible names, and they show Bray straining to impress us with her imagination. It's a tiny quibble, but it took me out of the story, away from the totally fantastic world her imagination had created for Cameron. It also makes a perfect book, only near-perfect. But, hey, near-perfect is a lot better than most.
Monday 21 December 2009 at 11:21 am
I can see where a reader might find When You Reach Me boring. Not much happens. It's about growing up and friendship. There aren't vampires or aliens or werewolves or flaming arrows (read: awesome action sequences).
However, Rebecca Stead captures the ups and downs of friendship and growing up with delicacy and honesty. She doesn't try too hard to get it right, she just gets it right. Sure, not much happens, but why does something have to happen?
Of course, those who've read the book know there is a doozy of a twist. It is just hard to talk about without ruining the book. Something does happen. Something huge and mind-bending. Something that doesn't jive with realism Stead creates through most of the book, and yet it resonates just as well, even better, than the perceived reality. It is that, the fact that Stead takes a giant leap of irreality inside of her pleasant, gentle book and makes it work, that makes When You Reach Me one of the best books I've read in a long time.
