The Egg and I

This week we are talking about movies we have seen because we read the books on which they were based, Next time, we’ll discuss reading books after having seen its movie.
I am not only an avid reader, I love movies! Not all movies, but I do enjoy a good film, or even a passable one.

I saw “The Hobbit” trilogy because I had read the book. Of course, I had seen all of the “LOTR” movies, although I have not read those books. I was afraid Peter Jackson and all were just ‘cashing in’, but I knew the story and was curious. The movies are good, but I preferred the book. (Some people around me are livid over the changes he made, especially in “LOTR”; I may not read those books.)

Often I have seen other movies based on authors whose books I have read because I saw movies based on one or more of their books,(sort of a ‘which came first’ scenario), such as many Agatha Christie mysteries, Jane Austen novels and Harry Potter stories. Most of these are very close to the original works; some I have bones to pick with the screenwriters/directors/producers.

I’ve seen a number of children’s stories based on books, and they are usually a disappointment. However, The Grinch was really brought to life in the classic cartoon.
I watched “Centennial” because I had read excerpts of the book in a magazine; then I read the entire book…chicken and the egg, scrambled!

A few years ago they brought the first of one of my favorites, Janet Evanovich’s “Stephanie Plum” novels to the big screen, with “One For the Money”. They were hoping to make a series, (since she’s up to “Top Secret Twenty-One”), but the movie wasn’t a hit. They watered the story down a bit and although Katherine Heigl as pretty and very good as Stephanie, the rivals for her affection just didn’t have the charisma that the men exude in the books. Still, it was fun.

One of my biggest disappointments was the recent “Deliver Us From Evil”, purported to be based on a former police detective’s involvement with the supernatural. The book is compelling, but all that was kept in the movie were the names. The stories were stripped and changed into one, big, standard horror movie, and not a good one at that.

On the other hand, I read “Heaven Is For Real” and then saw the movie. It was pretty close to the book and I would think, just as compelling to those who had not read it.

I know there are more. But my memory fails me right now. If you take Shakespeare’s work as a ‘book’,(and a [play as a movie, then my sons and I read the stories before going off to see Shakespeare in the Park for years. And then I have seen many movies based on Old Bill’s plays.

And if we stretch a story serialized in a newspaper into a ‘book’, then the only reason I went to see the original  “Star Wars” is because I read the series in the The Evening Star, a former Washington DC newspaper, because of all the touting being done. I still wasn’t all that convinced to go to the theater until I read that Alec Guinness was playing Obi-Wan Kenobi…I waited in line through two showings to see it on the second or third day of release…and had my sister and a friend do it with me.

Can you think of any, or any more, movies or shows that you have seen because of its book?

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