Read a Book, then Watch Its Movie!

[andy b]

Hey folks
Thought I would throw in some bits that you may find useful or not? But I was working on so many of the films you are talking about.

Eric
A Bridge Too far was considered a failure by UA for the USA, however the film was in profit for Joe Levine before it even had a frame shown in a cinema in any part of the world. The reason for the 14 stars was to appeal to audiences from different territories and Levine sold it piecemeal around the world with UA picking up all major markets. I did UK, France, Germany and for once I got out of Europe & I got Japan. Connery, Redford were for the Japanese audience and Caine, Hackman & Caan for the Europeans, the rest were bonus additions to help in other countries. Sadly, the film did not do so well in the USA in part because many American audiences could not accept such a tragedy was even allowed to happen & while not being political & history tells us so much it really should not have happened. The film did very well despite it’s running time in just about every market outside the USA.

Andy
Highlander was destroyed by Orion! I was in the cinema the day they declared the film made no sense & the re-edits & arranging began! Your also 100% on the point that while the USA and not surprisingly was lost with that version of the film, it made a huge return in Europe and Southern Hemisphere distribution and that is why the sequels were a given, although I understand Part 2 became a train wreck due to the Argentine economy, but I never worked on it so no actual first hand knowledge, I did do the Entertainment Films VHS release & the film struck me as a bit of a wreck!

MJ
When you talk of cable & video, in Europe, no one foresaw the home entertainment explosion that was about to happen. It caught every studio and production house out. Some companies (I speak again from a European point) were smart and caught on very quick, Alpha (Stanley Long’s company) and Entertainment Films (owned by Nigel Green) utilized their catalogs and got then up and running in the VHS & Beta markets almost from the beginning.
Alas the studios bogged down in red tape and too many or not enough decision makers spent so much time ignoring the market & then jump in when it finally dawned on them. What did not help was the panic that set in through the entire industry. Cinemas held on to product way too long example Crocodile Dundee played in some locations 30 plus weeks! Meanwhile the public wanted “new” so ran to the video store.

The studios poured money into product then not a clue what to do with it, I for my sins worked on The Swarm & Ashanti and no “big names” could save them & so the studios panic and then dumped film after film into the home market, the thought being “no one wants a Michael Caine film, dump what we have, see The Swarm just failed”! All this did was leave minimal product at the cinema and more product on the store shelf, so yet again the studios drove the public to the video store! From my little time in the USA side, I do understand that studios were selling films within a week of any cinema (theater) showing to cable in the fear of recouping their outlay, this of course made films even more costly due to useless publicity campaigns that were up & running & no film! It was sold to cable or tape or both!

I am long out of the industry but in my opinion the studios have never recovered from the video explosion, piracy did not help, but nor did panic & throwing the product against the wall & hope it sticks.

What did come out of it all was more international rights were optioned and in many cases the USA box office reign began to show signs of it’s slow down. But many good films, The Thing is mentioned above were lost due to studios panicking and not trusting their product and not giving it breathing space. I / CIC took The Thing into October & not a summer opening and had an amazingly strong run with it. Which has of course sealed its rightful place as a classic, but for the USA Universal destroyed it in the summer!

Loving this topic as I have ready many books that have become films and some vice versa, so thank you all for your points and comments.

Enjoy your films & books
Andy b

[mkaroly]

FAHRENHEIT 451 by Ray Bradbury (written in 1951). This story is a well known science fiction piece concerning a society in the future where books are burned. Book are illegal, and if one is found to have books one gets arrested (and worse). People get their enjoyment from mindless around the clock state-sponsored entertainment and drugs; it is a society were everyone is made equal, where everyone must be alike. Only then will everyone be happy. One day when returning home from his job, ruminating on how much he loves his job, he runs into a "seventeen" year old girl named Clarisse. She engages Guy in conversation, asks him about the past, and leaves him with a pointed question: "Are you happy?" After finding his wife Mildred unconscious from an overdose (and listening to the radio through her little "seashells" in her ears), an awakening process begins in Montag which leads him to do the unthinkable (and illegal): he steals a book and begins to read.

Most people have read this book in high school or college; this is the first time I have ever read it, and I was not disappointed. This book is a profound reflection on so many issues that continues to resonate in today's culture. The themes of mind-control, censorship, the corrupting effects of mass media, and illiteracy (among many others) are all there. Bradbury's writing is very descriptive (almost too much at times) but extremely "honest," as if he is sharing something of his innermost thoughts. The book has only three chapters: the first chapter is all about his awakening. The second chapter finds Captain Betty discovering his secret; chapter three is about Montag's attempt to escape. Montag is a sympathetic character, and his journey seems very real and believable. The character of Clarisse is extremely well written - she is breath of fresh air in a society that is so numbed on the inside. She is the free thinker; when Clarisse "disappears" from his neighborhood, as a reader you feel the pang of anger and outrage. Clarisse is the exact opposite of Mildred, Guy's wife, who does nothing but sit in front of her "three wall" TV screen to engage with her "family" (read 'state sponsored entertainment' there). She is forgetful to a fault; she cannot keep her focus, and is perhaps the most irritating character in the novel - a perfect representation of what could happen in a deadened society like the one described in the book. Captain Betty (Montag's boss at the Fire Station) is intimidating and represents the majority/state. Professor Faber is Montag's ally and "mentor," somewhat scared but willing to do something and help Montag despite the risk.

What appealed to me most in the book is its reflection on book themselves. I love books; always have ever since I was old enough to read or open a book and look at the pictures. Books require a reader to focus and exercise his or her imagination in a way that other entertainment outlets do not. I cannot imagine having them taken away and burned - it is such a disturbing image to me. The idea of censorship is also repulsive to me, even for those pieces or works I do not agree with. There is something so profane about the destruction of books. And I know others have spoken about this before, but I look around often and see people completely absorbed in their Smart Phones; it is almost as if they cannot put them down for five or ten minutes to focus on something else. Even in movie theaters I see people from time to time checking their phone, playing a game, etc. Hell, sometimes I even spend too much time ogling my smart phone! Lol...Bradbury was on to something way back in the 1950s. This is a great book and one that I can see myself reading over and over again.

Francois Truffaut's 1966 film is generally faithful to the novel, but in all honesty I find it to be more of a "re-imagining" or supplement to the novel. There are some big changes between the book and the movie that lead me to look at the film as I do. First, the novel contains a Mechanical Hound which helps the firemen/policemen to hunt down fugitives and criminals. It is a terrifying metal beast that instills fear in the book's participants (as well as the reader). For budgetary and practical reasons I understand why this figure was not included in the film, but it takes away some of the menace from the film. Second, Clarisse "disappears" in the first chapter of the novel whereas in the film she survives. This was not a bad decision by Truffaut; after all, as I read the book I wanted her to somehow come back in the story. But the book as a whole works well with her "disappearance;" it adds to Montag's awakening and desire for freedom. In the movie it is more like seeing the love interests in the story find a way to be together in the end (though not quite), so hero and heroine survive (since Truffaut jettisoned Professor Faber, she kind of acts as his guide through it all). Julie Christie plays Clarisse (and Montag's wife, named Linda in the film), and she does a decent job. However, her portrayal of Linda/Mildred is much less annoying than Mildred comes off in the book. Mildred is sympathetic to a point in the book; after all, she is a product of a repressive society and cannot even begin to grasp the "freedom" Montag offers her with books. But she is a lost cause in the novel; the film seems to me to have more of a sympathetic edge. It is harder to dislike her, especially with some of the dialogue which Montag speaks in the movie.

Speaking of Montag, he is played by Oskar Werner in the film. I have mixed feelings about his performance. I felt Montag's awakening more in the book than I did in the film; at times Werner's acting is very "stiff." But I will give him credit - he knocks it out of the park a few of times. When he comes home to find his wife has OD'd and has to leave the medics to do their job, the look of helplessness and awareness of his unhappiness is truly felt. When he is surrounded by the Library Lady's books and sees her dying in the fire, the look on his face says it all. And the moment when he reads David Copperfield to Linda and her friends is sublime. Truffaut's film ends differently than the book; again, due to budgetary and practical reasons I understand why the book ending is not filmed. Between the two endings though, I feel like the ending of the book has more hope in it. The ending of the film is much more poetic and moving (thanks in large part to Bernard Herrmann's score...which I will save for last). Truffaut's film is full of memorable images (the Library Lady sequence is fantastic) and is vibrant with color; he even uses some slow-motion technique that is very effective. But the biggest asset the film has (aside from the source novel) is Bernard Herrmann's score, probably my second favorite score of his all-time. Herrmann's score is transcendent and adds emotion, poetry, and humanity to the film. If you take the score out of the film, despite its strengths the film is probably no more than a 4/10. Put the score in and you have elevated it to an 8.5/10 or so. His score leaves an indelible mark on the visuals and weaves a reflective beauty on the Book People. I am a big fan of the film, but I do like the book more. Still, I think both are worth your time.

[Eric Paddon]

Event 1000 (1971) by David Lavallee. This novel became the basis, sort-of, for the 1978 movie "Gray Lady Down" starring Charlton Heston, David Carradine and Stacy Keach. But it is a case of what happens when a studio realizes that they've got a property with an interesting premise and a totally unfilmable storyline. A nuclear submarine riding on the surface collides with a ship, sinks and is trapped on the ocean floor and the Navy has to come up with a rescue plan to get the trapped survivors up.

The author, David Lavallee, had served in the Navy so he was giving us his idea of what a scenario/rescue might be like but unfortunately what he gave us is an agonizingly slow, tedious bore of a throughline. The novel is basically 250 pages of a scenario in which the sub is trapped on the ocean floor for several WEEKS because the Navy over and over on the surface keeps running into problems with their Deep Sea Recovery vehicle, whether too short cables, snapped cables, "technical problems" etc. After a while the reader can be forgiven for getting more than fed up with this non-stop slow moving agony and tedium. Meanwhile, we have to depressingly get crewman dying due to malfunctioning systems and other things. In the end, only 15 survivors get out when the Navy finally agrees to make use of a Russian device. The character in the story are not very compelling and Lavallee, like so many authors has to give us the endlessly annoying cliche of the Religious fanatic type crewman who is always coming off unhinged. In the end, this is simply not an entertaining novel unless you're more into learning more about how people die when sub life support systems break down.

-Walter Mirisch who purchased the screen rights to this novel had to realize this kind of depressing tedium with no strong central character wouldn't work at all. Other than the basic premise, NONE of the novel appears in "Gray Lady Down", no characters, no plot devices, nada. There was more of the "Swarm" novel that ended up in the film (and that wasn't much) than there was in this case. But what we did get at least was a compelling through-line in which instead of depressingly stretching things out for weeks, and endless technical delays, we get a race against the clock because the trapped sub is perched precariously on the Continental shelf and can slide off toward the two mile bottom depth at any time. Charlton Heston, in his last major studio film role as a lead is effective as the sub captain trying to maintain calm while David Carradine pilots the submersible that tries to locate the sub and clear away debris so the rescue bell can be hooked up. The end result was a nice underrated gem at the tail-end of the disaster cycle, but one that didn't do well (it had been shelved for release for more than a year as its sea based rescue scenes were shot simultaneous with those for "Airport '77"). The Navy had also forced removal from the script of a bit of Cold War tension involving the Soviets stalking the rescue attempts perhaps with an eye to get their hands on valuable sunken sub technology. That might have made a more dramatic film (certainly more so than the boring tedium of the novel), but the end result, while not very great was still good and not embarrassing like "The Swarm" or other lesser disaster efforts.

[mkaroly]

THE WAR OF THE WORLDS by H.G. Wells. Wells' turn of the century science fiction story about a Martian invasion is an absolute classic that continues to inspire the imagination. The story follows the scientist narrator's first-person account of what he saw and what he was told when Martians decided to set up shop in the English countryside in an attempt to overtake the Earth. The story has, relatively speaking, little dialogue in comparison to a great deal of descriptive prose (without a knowledge of the geography of England it gets quite difficult to follow). It celebrates science, warns against human complacency, and invites engagement with the imagination. There is not much character development since the novel is a first-person account, but there is much to enjoy about the book. One can imagine and "hear" the silences of the English countryside and a "dead London" at times following their devastations. One can feel the terror that comes from the Martian presence, unstoppable behemoths that they are (or so appear to be). There is the sense of claustrophobia and fear tangibly felt during the mob scenes while a sense of revulsion comes with a description of the aliens and their feeding ritual. The intelligence of the Martians along with their weaponry (the Heat-Ray and Black Smoke) are intimidating. The narrator's interaction with the curate (who becomes unhinged even though he is supposed to have Faith) and the artilleryman are chilling and disturbing. In the end, I love Wells' reasonable and logical resolution as to how the Martians ended up being defeated: not by weapons of warfare but by the smallest organism, the bacteria, "which God, in his wisdom, has put upon the earth." It is one of the smartest endings I have ever read - that man over the course of his existence has developed immunity to bacteria and won his right to be here through "the toll of a billion deaths" in the process. Great book!

In 1953 George Pal produced a film adaptation of the novel, THE WAR OF THE WORLDS, starring Gene Barry and Ann Robinson. The book is not easily adapted into a film since there is very little dialogue and it is a first-person account. So the filmmakers chose instead to use the framework of the book to support a story that reflected the Cold War/atomic bomb fears of the time. Although narrated by Sir Cedric Hardwick, the story follows the crashing of a meteorite in California. There, scientist Dr. Forrester (Gene Barry, who seems to me is trying to look Cary Grant-ish) meets Sylvia Van Buren (Ann Robinson) and a host of townsfolk who are intrigued about the meteorite, some wanting to make a profit off of it. Not long after its crash several alien spaceships rise up and begin to destroy everything in their path. The army is called in but are unable to take the Martians out (even the atomic bomb fails); Dr. Forrester and Ann get separated and have their own little adventure before reconvening with a group of scientists to try to figure out how to defeat the Martian threat. Eventually against an apocalyptic background (in which standing churches amidst the city's rubble play a prominent role), the Martians succumb to the Earth's bacteria. The film won an Academy Award for its groundbreaking special effects, and while the acting gets too over-the-top at times (Ann Robinson left everything out there on the acting stage with her screams and horrified looks), the film is great B-movie fun. It generally represents the book and the book's set-pieces (albeit transferred to a more contemporary location), though the aliens are not "tri-pedal" (I imagine that had more to do with the inability of the filmmakers to make that happen from a special effects standpoint).

Steven Spielberg decided to revisit the book and make his own version of WAR OF THE WORLDS with a post-09/11 subtext. The framework of the book served to support another story, this time of Ray Ferrier (a typical Spielberg male protagonist) who journeys from immaturity and selfishness to the father figure and selfless hero that he should have always been. Spielberg's film is much more authentic to the book's set-pieces; it includes the red weed, the Martian baskets, the Martian tripod design, more accurate Heat-Ray effects, and shows something of the Martian feeding ritual. But Spielberg's film is also a homage to the 1953 film. Ray has to get his kids safely from New York to Boston back home to their mom (Miranda Otto); in the process he becomes unselfish and learns the values of fatherhood and what being a real man is all about (just like Indiana Jones, Alan Grant, and John Banning, among others). Viewed though this lens, I feel like WOTW works best. Cruise is good at playing a cocky jerk-wad; by the end of the film I feel the intensity of the journey he and his kids have been through, and credit to Cruise for showing in facial expressions and movements how much he has matured. The ending is a typical feel-good Spielberg ending that I feel is sincere at its core - the family reunited, father and son understanding each other. Although Tim Robbins plays a hybrid character from the book (part artilleryman and part curate), and although I did not like this character when I first saw the film, I have to admit that Robbins was true to the spirit of the book in his character's loss of sanity. Dakota Fanning did a great job in the film as Rachel, Ray's daughter. Williams' score is more propulsive (per the documentary) and attempts to drive the story forward; it is one of the harder scores of his to listen to and digest, though it does have its moving moments. At times I felt it sounded like it was a more sinister elongation and variation on the JAWS theme. The film is far from perfect, but when viewed as another variation on the typical Spielberg male protagonist theme in his films, I feel it is a compelling film despite its flaws.

[Eric Paddon]

War Of The Worlds is one of those stories we feel like we know so well but it's really only through the adaptations and not because we've gone through the original book. It's interesting to note the differences.

It's also worth adding of course the Orson Welles radio version only because it is so iconic into this discussion. We are familiar with the whole original fake newscast aspect of it, but less remembered is how the post-station break portion of the drama is remarkably faithful to Wells novel (with just the change in setting). The confrontation with the artilleryman for instance makes it intact and it is mostly the protagonist doing his silent musing as he goes through the abandoned cities until discovering the dead Martians.

Of course in terms of radio adaptations, the WKBW-Buffalo version from 1968 remains the best and the best "fake newscast" drama ever produced since they used real newsman and just had them wing it from an outline instead of a script to give a sense of what a real news team would have done. They also eerily end it at the point where the last man on the air is overcome from the poison gas and it's only in a brief postscript we are told the Martians eventually died.

There was also a radio version based on the Wells novel in its period setting put out by the Colonial Radio Theater Players a few years ago.

[mkaroly]

THE BIG SLEEP (1939) by Raymond Chandler. Chandler's novel was the first in a series of novels he wrote in which private detective Philip Marlowe played the starring role. Marlowe is a street-wise, world-wise, smart-ass shamus who earns twenty-five dollars a day plus expenses (at least in this book) and lives in California. He is hired by General Sternwood, a paralytic whose two daughters Carmen and Vivian cause him a lot of trouble. It seems he is being blackmailed by a man named Geiger because Carmen owes him some money. Marlowe sets out to get to the bottom of it all only to find out at things are much more complex than he realizes. Carmen and Geiger are a part of illegal activities; Joe Brody and Owen Taylor are mixed up in it too. Vivian has a mysterious relationship with gangster Eddie Mars who is connected to Vivian through her run-away husband, Rusty Regan who seemed to have run off with his own wife. It is up to Marlowe to untangle the twisted web of relationships in the story to close the case. The novel is very adult for its time; Chandler writes from a first person point of view so the reader gets to see things through Marlowe's eyes. The one death in the book that is not solved is the death of the Sternwood chauffer Owen Taylor (either Joe Brody did it, or it was a suicide, or Carol Lundgren did it). The novel is full of gangster slang of the time; at times I had no clue what the heck anyone was talking about! But the novel is very compelling with a twist ending that you might not see coming. It is easy to see why the character of Philip Marlowe became so popular in literature and film; this is a very entertaining novel and a quick read. You will feel like you are back in the late 30s/early 40s in the midst of it all, making shocking discoveries and trying to unravel the mystery right alongside Marlowe himself!

Howard Hawkes made a movie of the novel in 1945 starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. This early version was put on the shelf for a year before Hawkes made extensive reshoots in order to bolster Lauren Bacall's role in it and save her career. The 1946 version of THE BIG SLEEP is one of my all-time favorite films; both versions are very faithful to the novel, but due to several factors there are differences between the film and the novel. For example, due to the Production Code (I would imagine), the following bits in the film are different from the novel:

-Carmen is wrapped up in illegal pornography (implied in the film) as in the book Marlowe finds her naked in the chair in Geiger's home.
-When Carmen sneaks into Marlowe's apartment in the book she is in bed naked and tries to seduce Marlowe.
-Geiger is in a homosexual relationship with Carol Lundgren which is not obvious in the film. There is some ambiguity in the book as to why General Sternwood is so concerned about finding Rusty Regan; one of the implications may be that Sternwood had "feelings" for him (again, not obvious in the film).
-In the book Vivian is Regan's wife, though he skips out on her to be with Eddie Mars' wife. In the film Vivian's husband is a man named Rutledge (never seen in the film), and Sean Regan becomes someone who was employed by Sternwood. Maybe this was changed due to moral implications??

Most of the other differences between the book and the novel concern Lauren Bacall's part in the film. In the book both Carmen and Vivian are extremely predatory and manipulative; the movie significantly tones down Vivian's predatory character in the book in favor of a tougher but ultimately more sympathetic character in the film. The film chose to create a deeper relationship between Marlowe and Vivian, thus bringing a romantic storyline into the film that was not in the book. That's logical, and frankly it works well. Bogart's and Bacall's chemistry sell the movie. Vivian takes on greater responsibilities in the film - she helps Marlowe escape Art's garage (in the book Eddie Mars' wife does); she helps Marlowe to put Carmen to bed after a raucous night in which Geiger gets shot (she does no such thing in the book); she tries to pay off Marlowe so he will stop digging into the disappearance of Sean Regan (Norris the butler does in the book). These changes make the story more romantic, and while it does change the tone of the book (which is much more sinister) it still makes for an entertaining movie. Finally, the ending of the film has a showdown at Geiger's house between Marlowe and Eddie Mars with Vivian helping Marlowe out; this is different than the book, and I cannot discuss it without giving the book's ending away. Suffice it to say that the book ending has Marlowe solving the crime at the Sternwood's home, with Eddie Mars being nowhere in sight. I think Hawkes made a good choice in playing up a romantic story between Marlowe and Vivian; the scenes edited out of the 1945 film version were more in line with the book but, to be honest, a little more boring. Well acted, well scored (by Max Steiner), and well shot, THE BIG SLEEP is a credit to the novel it was based upon.

[AndyDursin]

I have to again say -- great job Michael, what a fantastic thread with terrific analysis! Thanks so much for contributing!!

[mkaroly]

Thanks for the encoragement Andy! This has been a really fun endeavor for me personally - I love reading and I love film, so it's a win-win! I plan on reading JAWS soon just to give me an excuse to watch that film again...lol...

[Johnmgm]

Great stuff! I’ve enjoyed reading every one.

[Paul MacLean]

I'm surprised no one has gotten to this one yet...

Harry Potter

I came to JK Rowling's books sort of "sideways". I started reading them after seeing the first three films.

Generally the films are faithful to the books, though unlike Lord of the Rings, which slavishly included nearly every scene from Tolkien's story (and even invented some for the films!), the Potter movies strip-out a fair number of subplots. Book #1 has a much more extended prologue, in which Uncle Vernon encounters some oddly dressed people who are in the midst of some kind of celebration. Unbeknownst to him, they are wizards and witches, celebrating the apparent demise of Lord Voldemort -- and Harry Potter's miraculous survival. It is an impressive set-up -- though one that would probably have taken twenty minutes of screen time to depict.

Later books feature a subplot in which Hermione Granger campaigns to free elves from slavery. In The Order of the Phoenix, Professor Trelawney is replaced by the centaur, Firenze (the one who rescued Harry from Voldemort in the first book / film), who transforms the classroom into a kind of planetarium, projecting the image of stars and constellations overhead.

In The Goblet of Fire, Rowling spends a fair amount of time covering the big quidditch mach between the Irish and Romanians (in the film, the scene ends before the match even begins).

After Sirius Black is killed (in The Order of the Phoenix), Harry goes to Nearly Headless Nick and asks him questions about death, but Nick has no answers for him.

Harry's self-defense lessons from Snape (in The Half-Blood Prince) are more detailed, and the way Harry learns that his father was a bully in his youth is shown in a more complex and extended form. There is also an extended flashback in which we are shown Aunt Petunia and Harry's mother Lily as children, and Petunia's anger and jealousy that Lily has magical abilities and she does not.

The Deathly Hallows is more faithfully adapted, having been split into two movies (personally I though the 7th film was too long and slow; I'd have preferred maybe a three-hour adaptation of Deathly Hallows rather than a couple of two-hour-plus movies).


Unlike LOTR, whose films were the vision of one man, the Potter movies are of course the work of myriad directors, each of whom had their own interpretation on the material.

Chris Columbus' films are to me the most appealing. He accentuates the fantasy, adventure and sentiment with an approach I'd describe as "Spielberg meets Dickens". A genuine "sense of wonder" (which recalls Close Encounters and ET), pervades the movie, while there is a touch of the high adventure too (ala Raiders). I always felt Columbus was exceedingly well-suited to the material, because I have a hard time believing Rowling was not influenced -- even subconsciously -- by Young Sherlock Holmes. John Williams' music (the best of the series by far) also further establishes the "Spielbergian" tone. But Columbus suffuses the picture with a warm, nostalgic "Victorian" quality as well.

I like some of the visual panache which Alfonso Cuarron brought to the third film, but don't care for the dour, unsubtle "real world cynicism" he imposes on the movie. He pushes Rowling's (hitherto subtle) comments on bigotry, inequality, animal rights, etc. (as well as the horror elements) to the fore -- at the expense of the magic and wonder. The result is more social justice sermon than fantasy. Critics of course hailed Cuarron's movie as "more mature", but think it has didactic and pretentious moments (plus I dislike the continuity breaches with the previous films).

Mike Newell plays-up the British boarding school experience -- which makes sense, his having been British boarding school boy himself. The book's emphasis on growing-up (in particular how boys and girls start to regard each other differently around the age of 12) is also nicely handled. In terms of interpretation, Newell seems more sympathetic to the Columbus approach of Harry Potter as a fantasy-adventure first and foremost, while retaining some of Cuarron's visual flair.

David Yates' movies were solid -- but I think the fact that he was a TV director, and the fact that the Harry Potter movies were a series to begin with, cause his films to take-on a more perfunctory, "this week's episode" quality. I don't feel he brought much to the franchise.

[Johnmgm]

IMHO your take on the HP films is spot-on.

[Paul MacLean]

IMHO your take on the HP films is spot-on.

Thanks!

I forgot a couple of other things. In the books, Dumbledore is a more flamboyant, goofy character, who wears a silly hat to the first banquet in Sorcerer's Stone, and exclaims "Before we begin our banquet, I would like to say a few words. And here they are: Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak! Thank you."

And there is there is a scene in Goblet of Fire which always bothered me a bit. After Harry Potter's name emerges from the Goblet, Dumbledore grabs Harry roughly and shouts in his face "Did you place your name in that goblet???" Mike Newell says he wanted to show how headmasters are always frightening to students -- but it was totally out of character for Dumbledore to behave that way, especially toward Harry.

[mkaroly]

I forgot a couple of other things. In the books, Dumbledore is a more flamboyant, goofy character, who wears a silly hat to the first banquet in Sorcerer's Stone, and exclaims "Before we begin our banquet, I would like to say a few words. And here they are: Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak! Thank you."

And there is there is a scene in Goblet of Fire which always bothered me a bit. After Harry Potter's name emerges from the Goblet, Dumbledore grabs Harry roughly and shouts in his face "Did you place your name in that goblet???" Mike Newell says he wanted to show how headmasters are always frightening to students -- but it was totally out of character for Dumbledore to behave that way, especially toward Harry.

I remember trying to read too many of the Potter books in a short amount of time. I think I read the first four novels in a month and got so burned out on them that I never finished reading the rest of the series. It definitely affected how much I liked the movies. The first three are my favorite (my favorite score of the lot is AZKABAN); the rest of them I could give or take.

[mkaroly]

EATERS OF THE DEAD: The Manuscript of Ibn Fadlan, Relating His Experiences with the Northmen in A.D. 922 by Michael Crichton. Crichton's book, written in 1976, is a retelling of Ibn Fadlan's journey to the north and his experiences with Vikings and is also based on BEOWULF. Ibn Fadlin is sent up north on a diplomatic mission to instruct Yiltawar, king of the Saqaliba, in the laws of Islam. It seems Ibn Fadlin had gotten too cozy with the wife of an elderly merchant who was friends with the Caliph, so his assignment was a punishment. Along the way up north he falls into the company of some Vikings, barbarians the lot of them. The Viking group (who had just lost their king and who had sent him along the way to Valhalla) gets a visitor from further north; it seems the King Rothgar and his people are in danger of falling prey to the "eaters of the dead," a powerful and savage enemy who kills and eats the flesh of their victims. Under the leadership of Buliwyf, twelve Viking men answer the summons to go and confront this threat to the King, but they need a thirteenth warrior, someone who is a foreigner, to join their party. Ibn Fadlin becomes that thirteenth member, and the rest of the book details his experiences with the Vikings as they take on the "eaters of the dead."

Ibn Fadlan was an actual person, and there are manuscripts which he wrote which detail his journey as part of a diplomatic envoy from Baghdad to Russia in order to explain Islamic law to the Bulgar peoples. Crichton's novel is a fictionalization of this journey; it is told as if it were a translation of an ancient manuscript with scholarly explanations and clarifications. The novel is fun because it is so believable; Crichton is so good at making something fictional sound real. The novel proper is told from Ibn Fadlan's point of view (since he was the one who "wrote" it); it starts off relatively slow but gains momentum as Ibn Fadlin moves deeper into Vikings territory, assimilates with the group, fights at their side, and comes to respect them despite their religious differences. I liked the novel; I have never read BEOWULF, so I imagine I would appreciate the book more if I knew BEOWULF better, but no matter. It is not Crichton's best work, but I applaud how different it is stylistically from his previous books.

The book was turned into a movie in 1999 and was called THE 13TH WARRIOR starring, of all people, Antonio Banderas as Ibn Fadlan and directed by John McTiernan. I am not a fan of Antonio Banderas, and this movie did nothing to convince me he is a good actor. To be honest, I found the movie extremely lame even though the narrative arc of the film is pretty much the arc of the book. The filmmakers could not show the orgies and polygamous sexual encounters spoken of in the book without it being a different kind of film altogether (those events are merely stated in the book; no graphic details given). But the Vikings don't look so "barabaric" and heroic in this film. They look like Hollywood actors who are attempting to be tough, rugged Vikings. There is a key character moment from the novel that is changed in the film; in the book, having suffered more losses after another attack from the "eaters of the dead" (the wendol), Buliwyf has to consult a dwarf prophet about how to defeat their enemy. The dwarf tells him, "The hero's great challenge...is in the heart, and not in the adversary...A hero does what no man dares to undertake..." (page 149). Buliwyf (correctly) understands this to mean that he will have to sacrifice himself in order to defeat his enemy, and in the context of the novel I think this is a powerful moment. In the film Buliwyf visits a prophetess who tells him what he has to do in order to defeat the enemy; self-sacrifice is not one of the things she mentions. Thus, when Buliwyf faces the Mother of the Wendol toward the end of the film, he is just a brave leader who dies, not a self-sacrificing hero as in the book. I think the film missed an opportunity here by ditching the self-sacrificing angle.

Even if it has been in there though, the film is a dud. Full of King Arthur-movie-type clichés (and reminding the viewer of westerns, SEVEN SAMURAI, and fantasy films all the while), the film is more laughable than anything else. It deserves MST3K treatment. And what's worse is the casting of Antonio Banderas as an Arab...sorry, but I can only suspend my disbelief up to a point. Not buying it. The only real good thing to come out of this film was Jerry Goldsmith's score. I guess Crichton was not pleased with Graham Revell's score and rejected it. Goldsmith was brought on board and, at least for me, this score outclassed the visuals in the film. His score has a great Viking/adventurer theme and a great theme for the wendol. The themes do get repetitive in the film, but Goldsmith's music added class to a film that clearly lacks it. Omar Sharif (who played a role in the film) even thought the movie was a turkey and "retired" for a time (according to Wikipedia). The book is much, much better than the film.

[Paul MacLean]

I never read Eaters of the Dead, but have read Beowulf actually -- The 13th Warrior struck as me an attempt to combine Beowulf with Seven Samurai. I've seen the movie once, and was not a fan. I didn't think it was awful, but I found it perfunctory and not especially emotionally resonant. People I know who agreed with my assessment, but later revisited The 13th Warrior, felt it improved on second viewing. Maybe someday I'll give it another look. I think it was an influential picture in some ways -- certainly the look and style of the TV series Vikings is heavily influenced by the film.

Odd that that the movie so deviated from Crichton's original novel (and watered-down so many plot and character elements), when Crichton himself produced the picture. I've heard Graham Revel's original score, and the first few cues are extremely Middle Eastern in style, which suggests the initial cut of the movie contained a lengthy back story explaining who Ibn Fadlan's character is, and how he got to be in Scandinavia.

Agreed on Jerry Goldsmith's score, which I feel is the best thing he wrote in the final decade of his life (and one of the few I thoroughly enjoy on disc). And, as was often the case, Goldsmith wrote a score for a much better film than he was actually given!