I generally love movies of books I've loved - like Gone With the Wind, the Olivier version of Wuthering Heights and his Rebecca too. The Green Mile was probably better than the book, but I wouldn't go that far with Shawshank - loved that 'novella' to bits. Also another Darabont/King collaboration - The Mist - was much better on film than in the book.

The recent Xmas BBC version of Turn of the Screw left me cold though - nowhere near as good as the book.

The Potters have all turned out well, but let's not mention The Golden Compass.

So not book OR film for me - but both, and lots of them please?


Currently loving Tell No One en Francais but am slightly disturbed to hear it's going to get a Hollywood remake - why?

Would also love to see The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo in its original form, but of course, that won't make enough money for the American film industry, so that's getting a remake too.

I saw a poster for that in the cinema at the weekend and got a little excited.

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Current Read(s): Forgetting Zoe, Ray Robinson
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If I find out a film I am interested in is based on a book I will usually find the book and read it first. Depending on the effect the book has had, I will sometimes decide not to watch the film knowing it can never match up in my eyes: The Road by Cormac McCarthy (for example). However, I have enjoyed films after reading the books and happily accepted the changes made.

Unfortunately some film makers seem to change things unnecessarily and end up ruining for me what should have been an amazing film: Queen Of The Damned by Anne Rice & Eragon by Christopher Paolini. Both were films I was particularly looking forward to seeing (being a fan of the books) and both times I was really disappointed.

Yes, influential certainly, but overpwering too with all the Dolby sound gimmicks that shout at you these days. Is there such a thing as a subtle film of a subtle book like there used to be? Atonement certainly wasn't.

I´m usually a book over film any day advocate, however for me the film adaptation of Jonathan Safran Foer´s Everything is Illuminated by Liev Schreiber was incredibly brilliant. For me, it´s an easy decision about whether to read the book or see the film first, book wins every time hands down.

I would agree with some of the contributors here that the book is generally preferable to the film. Sometimes I've avoided a film for years in order to read the book first.

I really hate it when they change the book beyond all recognition. One of my guilty pleasure reads was Bridget Jones, the Edge of Reason. They managed to entirely mangle the book and lost all nuance about the alpha female Rebecca, who they randomly decided was in love with Bridget. The book was a more intelligent comment on women's expectations of themselves and their relationships and the film was just stupid. Confessions of a Shopaholic -though not massively high brow, I interepreted as a funny and wry look at consumer-obsessed Becky. The film, however, was just a vacuous celebration of shopping.

As a child I went to see The Witches (and we were the only ones there and my Dad said the other seats were occupied by invisible witches, but that is another story) and was outraged at the tacked on smaltzy happy ending. In the book, the fact the boy does not get changed back into a boy (from a mouse) is good, because he doesn't want to outlive his Grandma. Honestly, we can take a less than perfect happy ending, Hollywood!

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Currently reading 'An Instance of the Fingerpost' by Iain Pearson

I have to say I prefer reading the book first and then, I will usually end up watching the film as well & grumbling at all the bits they took, what I will inevitably decide is an unnecessary, artistic license with. I think I actually enjoy the grumbling as much as I do watching the film - I swear I am becoming my dad!!! I have been doing this ever since I watched the movie version of "The Phantom Tollbooth" by Norton Juster. I read it when I was about 11 and I loved it, I read it over and over...the film destroyed it for me. It was nothing like the book, total let down

I did enjoy the Harry Potter movies though and Lord of the Rings - I know artistic license was taken but I could see why and I thought they were fantastic movies regardless. Although....I did prefer the books

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All the good things in life are either illegal, immoral or fattening

I prefer books on the whole...I can create everything in my mind and invariably what they put on the screen isn't what I had pictured and then I find it's ruined for me.

I read James Patterson's - Along Came a Spider before I watched the film and in all honesty that was a let down for me...The book was fantastic and the film just didn't match up properly.

So...I'll stick with books...and let my imagination do the work xxxx

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Just Keep Swimming!

I'm currently watching a 10-part dramatization for Russian television of Dostoevsky's, The Idiot, having read translations of the novel several times. First of all, the costumes, architecture and language lend a verisimilitude to the production a translation could never hope to equal. However the subtitles are very fast and hard to follow, as Russian communicates ideas with far fewer words than English does. The casting was brilliant as I could easily see each of the novel's characters in the actors chosen to play their parts. However, Dostoevsky is a writer who--even in his own notes--would scribble, "lots of extraneous detail," so, many of those "extraneous" details were absent.
In a scene where Prince Miushkin is attacked by Rogozhan: in the novel he, the Prince, wanders around almost aimlessly for what--in the book--seems like a long time but which, in the film, is in a sort of expectancy of the coming attack. In the book you feel an uncertainty, a restlessness, but are actually surprized when the attack comes, which from a literary point of view is appropriate and fitting.
The book describes the General as having black teeth, but firmly set. Obviously to a modern audience black teeth would leave the poor general shorn of all our respect.
I found a site online (I'm not sure if I can say where...I'm new here) where there are many Russian films with English subtitles free for any to view. I saw a Russian, Crime and Punishment, and a Russian, Taras Bulba. All three films have been filmed in English, with English-speaking actors and in Western European locales, things English speakers take for granted but which strike me now--having something to compare them to--as painfully inadequate and shallow. Even David Lean's spectacular, Dr. Zhivago, seems paltry next to the actual immensity of the Russian steppe.
The books and films are really to be taken separately, not compared with one another. The book is one thing and the film another. None of their disparate elements can really be equated with one another. But, if you have read the book or seen the movie, the other interpretation is all the more pleasurable if you're lucky enough to enjoy it.
Chris