Top Ten Tuesday: Film Adaptations

This week's Top Ten Tuesday topic is Best/Worst Film Adaptations.

There are a few film adaptations that stick out as ones I really enjoyed, and I decided to focus on the good rather than the bad!

1. Into The Wild - one of my favourite films (and one of my favourite books). I don't watch it very often, because it has the power to make me collapse into a puddle of tears for A LONG TIME. Eddie Vedder's soundtrack plays a big part in this.

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2. High Fidelity - I love this book, and although they moved the film from London to Chicago, in every other sense I think the film stays true to the book, and when I watched it again recently I was reminded how good it was. (And bonus Springsteen.)

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3. The Perks of Being a Wallflower - I watched this recently and was prepared to be underwhelmed, but I actually really enjoyed it, and I thought it captured a certain 'feeling' that came straight from the book.

4. Milk - I watched the film before reading the book, and the film blew me away. The book is excellent, too.

5. Don't Look Now - Perhaps the creepiest, most unsettling film I will willingly sit down and watch. The build up of terror is done incredibly well - another favourite.

6. Matilda / The Witches - two Roald Dahl books-to-films that I think worked really well. Danny DeVito really brought Matilda to life, and The Witches I found suitably terrifying when I was young.

7. Bridget Jones' Diary - I think this is a solid adaptation. The book and the film are quite different in some respects, but again I think the essence of Bridget is there, and the cast do a great job.

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8. The Virgin Suicides - Another favourite book, and another instance of a film really capturing a feeling within that book and running with it. I think Sofia Coppola did a fantastic job.

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9. Harriet the Spy - I remember seeing this film at the cinema, and being obsessed with both the film and the book for ages afterwards. Harriet is one of my favourite characters ever.

And the one I don't like so much:

10. About a Boy - ARGH. I enjoyed the book, but the film doesn't do it for me at all. The whole backstory about Kurt Cobain is removed - it might have dated the film, sure, but it was (for me) an integral part of the book.

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish.

On The Hunger Games

I went to see The Hunger Games last Sunday evening. This was after vowing, in no uncertain terms, that I would not go and see The Hunger Games at the cinema.

This was mostly due to the incessant fan-girling (fan-boying?) and hype that has surrounded its release, the fact that after reading Catching Fire I was very disappointed, and the 2h20m screening time that sends me running for cover however much I want to see a film. (Film studies bias, maybe. I have to watch a lot of films. If you haven't said it in 100 minutes, I start to lose the will.)

In the end, though, I enjoyed the film. I liked that it was still Katniss' story, and it didn't bow to any kind of overt Team Boy #1 / Team Boy #2 ridiculousness. (This is what almost put me off reading THG in the first place: a couple of years ago, I attended my local Nanowrimo meet ups and ended up sitting with a bunch of young teenage girls, who were massive and passionate THG fans, and who had managed to reduce the entire series into one big Peeta-vs.-Gale monstrosity.) I always enjoy seeing Donald Sutherland on screen, and I thought Lenny Kravitz and Jennifer Lawrence were both good, too. I liked seeing the build up in the Capitol, and would have probably liked more of the behind-the-scenes stuff if I'm honest, although in an already-long film that would have been pushing it. Although I'd argue that she isn't always particularly likable, Katniss as a character is compelling, and I thought this translated well to the screen.

This morning, I read this blog post at Body of a Geek Goddess, which sums up a lot of the things that bugged me about the film. Not enough to make me dislike it in any way, but I do think a lot of the more nuanced elements of the book were lost. Perhaps this was inevitable, but in the end it made me appreciate the book more than I did on my original reading. When I first read THG, I enjoyed it as a good, solid, exciting book that was sadly diluted by my reading of Catching Fire, which I felt was distinctly lacking. Having seen the film, I'm tempted by a re-read (and maybe even a library reservation for Mockingjay...)