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| gromit |
 Posted: Tue Jun 10, 2014 2:01 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9010
Location: Shanghai
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Marc wrote: EDGE OF TOMORROW did not live up TO the critical hype. Same ol', same ol'. It's been a long time since a Summer blockbuster got my rocks off. Same deal with GODZILLA. Ho hum.
James Grays' THE IMMIGRANT didn't gutpunch me in the way I think the director intended but it is one of the better films I've seen this year.
So far these are my favorites of 2014:
THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL
JODOROWSKY'S DUNE
BLUE RUIN
IN FEAR
THE RAID 2
ENEMY
Well, at least I've heard of the first two on your list, and plan to see them.
Will look up Blue Ruin and The Immigrants.
The others don't sound like my type of films.
I don't really do blockbusters or horror films. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Tue Jun 10, 2014 4:27 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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| The Fault in Our Stars is burning up the box office, and for once a smash hit deserves to be one. This popular young adult novel has become a lovely movie. It's a tear-jefker for sure, with two tennage cancer patients falling in love, but it's done with humor and style. Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort are wonderful in the leading roles and Josh Boone's direction is graceful and well-paced. There are minor glitches and it's not a "great" film, but it's about a million light years better than Love Story, the smarmy, kitschy "young girl who died" romance it most resembles. |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Tue Jun 10, 2014 9:07 am |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
Posts: 6958
Location: Black Hills
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It looked like a competent film, but maybe sort of boring if you aren't into the chemogenre.
Omar sounds great and will make it to the local arthouse....after I've left town.
Fading Gigolo sounds like suspension of disbelief requires some kind of mental truss or prosthetic to achieve. |
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| jeremy |
| Posted: Tue Jun 10, 2014 3:13 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 6794
Location: Derby, England and Hamilton, New Zealand (yes they are about 12,000 miles apart)
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| I enjoyed reading "The Fault in Our Stars" but was a little underwhelmed and bored by the film. it wasn't bad, but I feel that in trying to squeeze most of the book into less than two hours of screen time, it lost some of its essence. I think this a problem with any adaptation of a well-loved book - the filmmakers feel obliged to cater for the fanbase (the built-in core audience) by including everything at the expense of making a good film more true to the medium. |
Last edited by jeremy on Wed Jun 11, 2014 3:21 am; edited 1 time in total
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I know the meaning of life, it doesn't help me a bit.
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| Joe Vitus |
| Posted: Tue Jun 10, 2014 9:17 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 14498
Location: Houston
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| Plus a movie loses the interiority of a novel, and often becomes, at best, a set of illustrations for the book, all surface. At least, that's how I felt about The Perks of Being a Wallflower and I suspect why the movie of The Spectacular Now underwhelmed me. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Wed Jun 11, 2014 6:44 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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Joe--Those three movies make an interesting trio. IMO by far the best of the is The Spectacular Now, which I did not compare with a book (didn't even know there was a book) but which I loved as a movie. Shailene Woodley was wonderful, but so were Miles Teller and Kyle Chandler, and the picture of teenage alcoholism was original and striking.
The Fault in Our Stars succeeded by not losing the humor and by expertly balancing the romantic elements of the plot with the "cancer" elements. It was unabashedly commercial but on those terms worked remarkably well.
The Perks of Being a Wallflower was just (IMO) too twee and self-satisfied for words. I was shocked when it became a hit. If I were a teenager I think I would have been annoyed by the too-intellectual treatment of my age group. Plus the story was hard to believe from beginning to end. |
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| carrobin |
| Posted: Wed Jun 11, 2014 9:58 am |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 7795
Location: NYC
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But some movies are better than the book. My first Favorite Movie (when I was 14) was "The Vikings," and aside from collecting everything I could find about it (and reading up on Vikings), I read the Edison Marshall novel. It was extremely disappointing--though all I can remember about it was that the main character was named Hasting, not Einar. It had very little in common with the film, which was exciting, romantic, and full of action.
I think the film of "To Kill a Mockingbird" stands up well to the book (partly because my mother insists that her father, who died in 1933, was exactly like Peck's Atticus Finch).
And I liked the film of "Women in Love" better than the book, too, but that could be because of the star. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Wed Jun 11, 2014 10:44 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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| The prime example of "better than the book" is The Godfather, but Peyton Place stands out too. |
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| marantzo |
| Posted: Wed Jun 11, 2014 1:47 pm |
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billyweeds wrote: The prime example of "better than the book" is The Godfather, but Peyton Place stands out too.
Correct.  I read Peyton Place and it was crap. I don't think I finished it. The movie was alright.
It should be a good idea to write about movies that are better than the book.
East of Eden was much better than the book. I started reading the book on a the Paris Metro. Quit after around 35 pages. Didn't like it. Then 40 years later on the book forum, EoE was the book one month. I didn't want to read but , (Marj I think) told me to read it, because it was good and gets better. I read 100 pages or so and was going to quit, but Marj, (I think), told me to keep reading again because it does get better. I did finish it and it didn't get any better, except for the piece with the mother. A waste of time and Steinbeck was a favourite author of mine. I remember when it was released and the book reviews were not good. The movie was. |
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| carrobin |
| Posted: Wed Jun 11, 2014 1:55 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 7795
Location: NYC
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| Not being a big fan of Dickens, I always like the movies based on his novels better than the books. They have good characters and interesting plots, so the movie versions cut to the chase and shed all that filler. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Wed Jun 11, 2014 3:25 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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| The movie version of Peyton Place turned the bucket of swill that was the novel into a glossy, well-acted soap opera with a starry cast, lovely photography of New England, and a fantastic Franz Waxman musical score with echoes of Aaron Copland. It was nicely directed by Mark Robson, who later turned the equally trashy novel Valley of the Dolls into one of the most unintentionally hilarious films of all time. It too was better than the book, but for all the wrong reasons. |
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| marantzo |
| Posted: Wed Jun 11, 2014 4:59 pm |
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carrobin wrote: Not being a big fan of Dickens, I always like the movies based on his novels better than the books. They have good characters and interesting plots, so the movie versions cut to the chase and shed all that filler.
Car, Dickens wrote novels for a weekly or monthly paper (I think) so he wrote his novels as a series and wrote and wrote and wrote for the money I imagine. I'm pretty sure his books would have been shorter if he wasn't writing one series after another for the paper. |
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| carrobin |
| Posted: Wed Jun 11, 2014 5:03 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 7795
Location: NYC
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| Yes, I know--my mother (who has a complete set of Dickens, inherited from her father) told me that Dickens got paid by the word, which explains a lot. |
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| marantzo |
| Posted: Wed Jun 11, 2014 5:07 pm |
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| The movie, Rebel Without A Cause, wasn't better or worse than the book, because the title Rebel Without A Cause was the only thing the same as the book. The book had nothing to do with the movie. |
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| whiskeypriest |
| Posted: Wed Jun 11, 2014 5:42 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 6916
Location: "It's a Dry Heat."
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| I am hard pressed to think of many .ovies where I liked the book but preferred the movie. Bad book, prefer the movle, sure. But a good book? Hard to think of ome. Well, my favorite movle.was also a good book, bit the book and the movoe were both based on Greene's treatmemt. And I prefer Pasolini's Gospeal According to Matthew, which is not so much A good book as THE good book. |
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