Made into a Movie Message Board

I also like to dream of which books I would love to see made into a movie.

Ender's Game has been so close so many times. Also, I would love to see anything by Gene Wolfe.

"I get some joy either way"

Oh, I agree! I love seeing movies from books - either I love the vision of the director, or, I can thoroughly enjoy myself while nitpicking every little detail...much to the annoyance of my family and friends. :D

I understand the "annoying the family" part. My wife could not understand why I was so upset when Barnes and Noble place a copy of the book The Last Samurai by Helen Dewitt in an area of books with movie tie-ins. If they had read the book, they would know it wasn't the origin of the Tom Cruise movie, but a good book in it's own right.

One of the best books I know. It's a pity Helen Dewitt didn't write more. But at least she seems to be well (after having disappeared for some time).

What's Eating Gilbert Grape was a good movie from a book. Well done, well acted. :)

I haven't read What's Eating Gilbert Grape but I did like the movie.

The Talented Mr. Ripley is an example of a book I read after the seeing the movie. Not nearly as enjoyable. In fact, I liked the movie much better than the book in this case. Matt Damon was so creepy.

Are people tagging books that have been made into movies? I use 'novelization' for books written from movies, but the group of books made into movies is much larger, and you don't always know that it has been filmed at some point, without checking IMDB and even then it may not show if the title was changed, and sometimes the story has changed so much that the link is tenuous anyway (like half of the things based on Phillip K. Dick novels).

What tags do you use for this?

I use the somewhat verbose tag "books made into films", but I don't think I've tagged all of mine yet. Often as I'm browsing my library I come across another book to add the tag to.

Speaking of which... there's no touchstone markup for tags yet, is there?

I would love a standard for this tag. I did a lot of browsing and didn't really see a consensus. I started with "movie", but notices a lot of people were using this tag when they catalogued their dvd's. So now I am doing the dreaded triple tag of "adapted","movie", and "made into movie". I usually tag it with "movie" first. Then go back and power edit later to add the others.

Perhaps "milm" or "boovie" would be concise alternatives to tag these types of books :-P

I use 'famously adapted,' particularly for books lying in the shadow of their film. And never, of course, for classics one expects to have been filmed a great deal. Another is 'used by Hitchcock.'

I use 'made into a movie', because I saw some other people use it. Will go and combine the tag with 'made into movie' etc.

Tag combination seems to be down at the moment, I'll try again later.

I see three people are using 'filmed' which is short and to the point. I might use that when I have time to go back through my library.

And I need to start writing down everything I'm going to combine when it comes back up. Good thing we have groups to play with in the meantime.

I've been using the tag 'made into movie' as my tag. I've got 44 so far and was surprised at the variety of books I have that've been adapted into movies. To be fair I've been using it for the older classics as well as the more recent books. It's been a very useful tag to filter & print before renting a DVD!
I've also been using 'movie novelisation' when a book is written OF a movie such as The Long Kiss Goodnight or Johnny Mnemonic for example.
ryn

Yes, I like 'filmed.' Excellent. That looks particularly good for your standard adaptation - a different shade of meaning from 'famously adapted,' for instance.

Hmm.. "filmed" is okay. I guess I still like "books made into films" because I enjoy the symmetricality(ness?) with its less-used cousin (at least in my library), "films made into books." If I do "filmed", I can't exactly do "booked", now can I? I'd have to go back to "novelizations".

I quite like "milm" or "boovie", but I'm afraid they'd suffer a bit from opacity. We should be able to combine tags into a "tag work," so we can have our cake and eat it, too.

I thought Johnny Mnemonic was based on a short story by William Gibson before the movie.

The title, The Long Kiss Goodnight always reminded me of some hard-boiled titles, The Long Goodbye and Kiss Her Goodbye.

For good movies based on good books I always think of The Name of the Rose, The Princess Bride, High Fidelity.

A couple of good little-known ones are The Day of the Locust and El callejón de los milagros, a Mexican adaptation of Midaq Alley by Naguib Mahfouz.

For good books turned into dreadful movies, look no further than The Beach.

I'm still dying to find a copy of Requiem for a Dream after seeing that amazing movie...

hmm, this type of tagging is an interesting idea (message 8 and following). I might just start tagging books that have been made into movies. Just yesterday, my mom wanted to know all the books about Iowa that have been made into movies - and she wanted to know which of them were filmed in Iowa. (I'm a librarian, so I am her personal researcher. haha!) So, tagging books made into movies, or movies made from books, or where movies were filmed (I have movies in my collection as well), could be quite informative. great idea! :)

Talk about ruining a movie, how about A Prayer for Owen Meany and the movie "Simon Birch".

What a good idea for a group! I just started reading again after a long time of...Not, and one of my first thoughts regarding what books I should read was not "what's on the best-seller list?" but "what has been made into a movie?" (leading me to read The Phantom of the Opera and The Princess Bride, which I both loved).

On the "tag" discussion, I just use the overly-basic "Books That Are Also Movies". I suppose one day I should separate them into what books have been turned into movies, and what movies have been turned into books, but I think most of mine were books to begin with, anyway. My library is also not very large...

I never knew What's Eating Gilbert Grape? was a book, but I think I may have to go read it now...!

Another book that was made into a movie is The Club Dumas by Arturo Perez-Reverte. The movie was The Ninth Gate with Johnny Depp in the lead role.

I saw the movie first. It was okay, but not great. then, I read the book a few months ago. I have to admit that I haven't finished yet. I just began to lose interest. I'm sure I'll pick it up again and finish it. If anything, it is better than the movie.

I'm thinking I should make a 'Made into a book' group as well, since novelizations tend to be their own separate thing.

Whew, I just browsed through all 51 pages of my catalog and added the tag "made into movie" to all the books I know were made into movies. I'm sure I forgot some or got it the wrong way around as some were probably made into a book. But I have 99 so far. I didn't think it would be that many...
Doing that I decided Contact is the worst movie made from a book (but then, I didn't like the book too much either).
Plus, it raised a question. Has anyone here seen The world according to Garp? As it is one of my all-time favorite books, I only want to watch the movie if it's any good. Not crap like "Simon Birch".

I read the book The World According to Garp many years after watching the movie. I liked the movie better. I was a little let down when reading the book, but it did get me started reading John Irving, which has been a great thing.

I guess I will have to fess up to liking Contact, both the movie and the book. It must be the series of nearly plausible occurrences leading us to discover extra-terrestials.

BTW, please don't follow the link to Contact in the post above. That one is a romance novel.

This one leads to the novel by Carl Sagan. Contact

Ugh, where o where is post editing.

Contact

Yes, I'm looking forward to post editing myself...especially all those posts of mine on other groups that have double posted and I can't delete the redundant one! bleh.

Oh, and a nice thread system would be great. :D

Tim? Are you lurking here? Abby? Chris? Anyone? :D

I just added the tag 'filmed' to 172 of my books!
Exhausting.

Did you know Rip Van Winkle has been filmed 22 times? That's more than Little Women.

Can anyone guess which writer has 7 film adaptions of their work currently in Production according to IMDB?

I liked Contact too, though I like the book better. But then I'd been waiting for Jodie Foster to do a science fiction film forever.

It has to be Stephen King...lol...I think every book he's written has become a movie! :)

I'm running over to IMDB to check though! (but, I'm not cheating or anything) ;)

I hope you used Power Edit to do that, or else that really must have been exhausting.

And the 7 adaptations writer... hmm. It isn't Stephen, his current count is six (making for a grand total of 102!).. so anybody else figure it out yet?

Somehow I left "King" off of Stephen King's name. Strange.

No, it's not Stephen King. *g*

The person I'm thinking of has 6 times as many films as Stephen King does.

Requiem for a Dream is a brilliant book. And it was made into a brilliant movie. The downward spiral is even more visceral in the book, if that's possible.

One thing about it is that it has non-standard punctuation conventions which makes it a little difficult to get into (or it did for me at least) but you quickly become so engrossed in the story that you stop noticing it.

Oh, boy.. Requiem for a Dream was one movie that after I watched it, I thought, "That was a very good movie that I *never* want to watch again."

I'll have to check out the book to see if what you say is true! :)

I also liked Contact in both book and movie form.

The Princess Bride and the LOTR trilogy are other obvious ones where I think the movie-makers vision added to, rather than detracted from, my enjoyment of the books.

Aquila, now I just can't think of the answer to your quiz! LOL...I will be knocking myself in the head when I hear the name, since I'm sure I know who it is. LOL.

I went over to IMDB, but didn't have a lot of time, so I didn't find much. Is there a way to search IMDB in that way? Search for the author of the book the movie is being adapted from? hmmm....

I'll just have to go search some more. :D

I'm not sure that I'm that fond of the movie version of the Name of the Rose - in places it's rather poor, and changing of the ending doesn't quite sit well with me.

I'll agree with that. One can hardly get the Umberto Eco experience in two hours, regardless of the topic! Even though I did struggle through some of the book, I found the movie extremely unsatisfying.

William Shakespeare has 644 listings on IMDB, that must be it.

Indeed it is!

Well, duh.. silly us for not getting that sooner!

Now that everything is illuminated, what do I win? Possibly possession of a sphere of chocolat. Or maybe all the pretty horses in the world according to garp.

Cool message, limerts, I considered trying to talk like that.

Your prize is ... your very own tag!

http://www.librarything.com/tag/limerts

towering inferno was a small book that was made into a Hollywood movie, then, September 11, 2001 made fact more gripping than fiction or film.

Many books presage history revealed.

>I also like to dream of which books I would love to see made into a movie.

Vertical Run - great action novel that would make a terrific movie. I just wish someone would get started on it already.

Captain Alatriste is coming out later this year - in Spanish, so Hollywood won't get a chance to muck it up too much.

Yeah, I'm pretty excited about Captain Alatriste...although - I do like Viggo Mortensen's acting...does he look the part? Guess I'll see the movie and find out. :)

One thing about it is that it has non-standard punctuation conventions which makes it a little difficult to get into

I have a hunch that all of Hubert Selby Jr's books have that quirk and it's part of his style I wouldn't do without. Using slashes as apostrophes is one that stood out for me in Last Exit to Brooklyn—which was also a very good film though it did deviate from the book to be more Hollywoodish, the still very very dark.

Quotato: Actually, Towering Inferno was adapted from not one, but two books; The Glass Inferno and The Tower. I've got the former somewhere but have yet to read it, and haven't managed to find a copy of the latter yet.

Apparently this is all down to Warner Brothers buying the rights to one book and 20th Century Fox buying the rights to the other, then instead of making competing films they made the radical decision to join forces and make one mega film.

If only the same thing had happened with films like Deep Impact and Armageddon, or Dante's Peak and Volcano... :)

Bee Season was made into a movie. The book is great but the movie is mediocre at best, a huge disappointment.

Pride and prejudice was made into Bride & Prejudice, which worked very well, I thought.

Girl with a pearl earring. I didn't read the book, but liked the movie very much.

Holy cow!

The new movie "The Illusionist" is based on the short story "Eisenheim the Illusionist" by Steven Millhauser, one of my favortite authors. The story can be found in The Barnum Museum collection. I am ashamed to say that I have read of few of the stories in this book, but not this one. I am not the biggest fan of short stories. I plan to rectify this problem immediately.

Pride and prejudice was made into Bride & Prejudice, which worked very well, I thought.

I did enjoy Bride and Prejudice, and a few (very few) adaptations, but the newest Pride and Prejudice, with Keira Knightly ... I can't even bring myself to watch. The commercials made it look as if they'd completely thrown Jane Austen out the window, and substituted Janet Dailey (or substitute your own "romance" writer) instead. There's romance in P & P, but it's a comedy of manners, not a love fest.

(all the above my own grumpy opinion, to which I cannot be held as I've eaten no chocolate today ;))

Hello all. I'm new here and sorry to just barge in. I'm curious as to how you'd categorize Graham Greene's The Third Man. Greene wrote the novella, from which he wrote the screenplay, for the movie which came out in 1949. He never intended to publish it, but did in 1950 as The Third Man and The Fallen Idol.

It's a dilemma.

Oh, dream books into movies: Donna Tartt's The Secret History. Someone really should film that.

I've loved the book The Talented Mr Ripley since my teens, and I was afraid they'd ruin it in the film version, or at least mess it around a lot (as in Plein Soleil), but actually I thought it was excellent and really captured the spirit of it while staying true to detail.

I'm new to this thread as well but wanted to mention a really, really good film I saw recently. The film, Red Lights, is based on a novel by George Simenon called L'Ennui. I haven't read the novel but I would be very surprised to learn that it is better than the film. That would be some good book. You can read about Red Lights here: http://www.offoffoff.com/film/2004/redlights.php

The English Patient....the movie was dreadful but suuuuch a good book.

For laugh: I saw a coupon in the paper "Free tix to first 100 responders" for the movie "The Last Samaurai." Since my husband had raved about the book I sent in coupon. . . We were lucky to NOT have been given the tickets since the movie was NOT of the book by that title! Esta1923 (Meant as correction for #63)

Silverfin, have you seen "Ripley's Game"? I liked the first movie, but John Malkovich makes an excellent Ripley.

I loved "The English Patient" - book and movie!

How about Bridges of Madison County
or
I Robot
Which wasn't based on the book of the same name, but on Caves of Steel, instead. That's a little odd, eh?

How about books made into TV shows? I recently read Darkly Dreaming Dexter (which I loved) and the series "Dexter" starts this Sunday on Showtime. Dexter was such a fun character that I can't wait to see it.

If you've checked IMDB lately, Ender's Game now has a release date tentatively scheduled for 2008, and an official director. I'm excited to see that.

I read Big Fish after seeing the movie and liked the movie so much more.

I don't know if V for Vendetta would fall into 'books' because technically it's a graphic novel? But the movie was incredible and I'm ordering the graphic novel which is supposed to be just as good.

Some I enjoyed (recent movies based on books):

The Secret Agent (Patricia Arquette, Bob Hoskins)
Seize the Day (Robin Williams)
Oliver Twist (Ben Kingsley)
A Christmas Carol (Patrick Stewart)
2001 and 2010
Solaris/Sphere (Clooney/Hoffman)
The Snow Walker
The Count of Monte Cristo (Caviezel)
I Am David (Caviezel)
Bright Young Things
Deliverance (Voight)
The Right Stuff
The Natural
Seabiscuit
Gulliver's Travel's (Ted Danson)
Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow (Johnny Depp)
Roughing It (James Garner)
Persuasion
Master and Commander
Lord of the Rings (of course)
Dreamcatcher (forgive me)

Have just seen the film "Rebecca",an old black and white.And now have the book to read ( by Daphne du Maurier ).Will see which is best.

I finally went and saw The Perfume yesterday. It is one of my favorite books of all time so I was very curious and a little concerned that I would hate it. I knew that it is impossible to make the movie as good as the book as it is one of those books that I think are very hard to turn into a movie.
While it definitely isn't as good as the book, I was really surprised about how much I liked it. True, the main actor was way too handsome (something that bothered me), but the whole atmosphere of the movie was great, it really caputured the feeling of the book.
So I think Tykwer did the best he could with the story he had. For once I was pleasantly surprised.

In 1905 or so, some one wrote a book about a ship called the Titan, which hits an iceberg and sunk, because there weren't enough lifeboats. Also, at least according to Snopes.com. they were playing a 1910 silent film of that book on the Titanic on the night it went down. I kid you not.

Mishelle: The book is best as far as I am concerned. Looking forward to hearing what you think.

Seems to me there are a horde of Shirley Temple movies which were nothing like the books. Heidi and Captain January for starters.

I liked both Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory movies better than the books.

I have always wanted to see some of my favorite mysteries perfectly casted and created for film. Dorothy Sayers and Rex Stout.

There have been two sets of miniseries for Dorothy Sayers' Lord Peter! Ian Carmichael and Edward Petherbridge (my favorite of the two) have played him. Carmichael also read Lord Peter for the BBC radio series. They actually never overlap, as Carmichael was featured in Clouds of Witness, The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, Murder Must Advertise, The Nine Tailors, and The Five Red Herrings and Petherbridge did three of the Harriet Vane books (all but Busman's Honeymoon, alas!) I happen to like Harriet Walter as Harriet Vane, but I know that some others didn't. Perhaps, though, they were jealous :)

Here's a website about the various productions: http://www.geocities.com/gregorym101/bbcwimsey.html

I would honestly love a feature film though - perhaps with Paul Betany as Lord Peter? I had a friend suggest Colin Firth for Bunter...

O.K. parelle, are you in the Lord Peter group :) We just had this discussion, and I love the idea of Paul Betany and Colin Firth. I'm somewhat afraid to see the productions which have been made from the comments I've heard, as soon as I sign up for online video rentals though, I will probably get them just to see. I did like the Cadfael mysteries, they started me reading the books by Ellis Peters. I also enjoyed the Sherlock Holmes productions on PBS and the Nero Wolfe episodes on A&E (I just want the perfect Archie and Wolfe :).

Talking Piffle? Yup, I'm there too. I've heard that at least the Edward Petherbridge set is available on Netflicks, though I don't have it myself.

Not exactly movies, but I really love the early episodes of Jeeves & Wooster (based on many Wodehouse stories) starring a bit of Fry and Laurie. Great interpretations of the characters. Although I have always pictures Jeeves differently, Fry really captured the essence of Jeeves.

Also, I've watched a few of the movies made from various Adam Dalgliesh stores by P.D. James. Roy Marsden did a terrific job with it and as I recall, they were fairly faithful to the novels.

I just finished reading Miracle on 34th Street. That was a book made from a movie. It was sweet too, somehow I never liked the movie.

I just watched a fine movie, "Invincible" about Vince Papaloni. I may have to start watching football again! It reminded me of my childhood watching with my dad and uncle. A great story. The special feature was fine too. The real Papaloni was even more handsome than the actor. You don't see that every day in a biographical movie. Sorry, I know it isn't from a book. But it's still nice.

Simon Birch was terrible. One of my favorite novels. Even though Irvin made them change the name, they shouldn't have even tried to make that movie.

Juniper by Monica Furlong is one of my favorite books from my childhood. I've been waiting so long for a movie adaptation of it. I kept imagining it as a Hallmark/BBC miniseries.

And what about The Catcher in the Rye? I'd love to see a movie adaptation, but only if it's done perfectly.

>1 limerts: Wondering if you went to see Ender's Game and what you thought? I loved the book, am too afraid to go see the movie.

>82 MrsLee: I liked both, but it had been several years since I had read the book, and I'd forgotten much. Still, I am not much of a movie person, so "liking" a movie is high praise, coming from me. :)

Since we are now officially encouraged to add our film and music collections on LT, I went looking for a group for movie discussions before creating one from scratch and having to build membership from zero; and I found this group.

I got permission from the group's creator and administrator, @limerts, to broaden the use of the group beyond talking about movies made from books. I hope some of the older members come back and help to re-vitalize the discussions.