Review of The Silver Linings Playbook by Matthew Quick

I liked the movie but not as much as I expected to.  I loved the book.

The movie was well-cast, well-acted, and rose way above the typical rom-com.  And yet… it was, in the end, a “dance movie”.  Why do movies insist on acting like dancing will heal everyone’s problems?

Without going into a lot of detail about how the book differed from the movie, I’ll just say this: the dance part happens in the middle, not the end.  Pat and Tiffany have issues that can’t just be danced away.

What I loved about this book: Pat Peoples is an amazing character.  He’s not perfect, and he’s not terribly smart, but he’s someone you’ll care about.  I love the way he thinks about literature.  I love that he cries.  And that he loves his wife.  And that he cares about his mother.  And that he’s working towards “being kind, not being right”.  I like that he thinks about what it means to be mentally ill, and how people with problems are treated by society.  And what it means to be a friend.

The movie does a nice job of conveying those things, but the book does it better.

Somehow the book did a better job of not only helping me understand Pat, but also making Tiffany likeable.  She’s not the main character, so you don’t have to love her, and you don’t even have to understand her.  You just have to sympathize.  I found that easier to do in the book than the movie, mainly because the book doesn’t revolve around the dancing quite so much.  Mom is also a more interesting character in the book.

There’s a lot of football in this book, which was a good thing — except while I love football, I hate the Eagles.  Both the book and the movie made me dislike them even more.  Eagles fans seem just fine with beating non-Eagles fans to a pulp.  No, they celebrate it.  Yes, my Redskins have a racist name that bothers the hell out of me – but in general I like our fans.  It’s not easy being a Redskins fan, but at least my life doesn’t revolve around whether they win or lose (although some Sundays it seems to).

This book is funny, smart, romantic and thought-provoking, all in the guise of a rom-com type read.  It never takes itself too seriously even while dealing with serious subjects.  One of my favorite parts is where Pat gives us his version of the dance movie montage (he has to learn the word first from his therapist).

So except for confirming my perception that Eagles fans are basically thugs (the only one that isn’t is the guy who spent years in a mental institution), I liked everything about this book.

In fact, if I wanted to compare this book to something I’ve read recently, I couldn’t.  It’s just different.  You have to like a book where a “dumb jock” reads The Bell Jar and appreciates it.

Pat says he’s living the movie of his life, and he expects it will come out happy.  Only everyone around him says that life doesn’t work that way.  It’s this back and forth about what it means to live in the real world and be a good person, that makes this book so worth the read.

It’s Monday, What are You Reading?

It’s Monday! is a weekly meme hosted by Sheila at Book Journey.

It’s Monday, and I’m reading travel books about Australia!  Our big news is a semi-impulse trip to Australia in May.  I say semi because we’ve been thinking about it for a while but kept waiting for the right time to manage three weeks of travel.  A few things have happened lately.  The first is that I might be going back to grad school, and that means night classes for about the next three years.  The second is I have less responsibility at work right now, and staff to cover my absence.  So the time is right – plus the recent sequester madness has me feeling grateful for what I have. 

Can we pull off planning a trip to Australia in only 2 months?  Of course!  It’s just that we usually spend 6-9 months thinking about a big trip, so this is sudden for us.  I would LOVE to hear advice from anyone who’s been or lived there.  Favorite spots?  Best way to get over jet lag?  How soon to buy within-Australia plane tickets?  Is Ayers Rock worth the trip?  Will May be too cold? 

In other semi-bookish news, has anyone seen the new Oz movie?  I don’t plan to see it.  As most of you know, I’m a pretty big Oz geek – not that there’s an actual term for that, but there is a community out there of people who love the Oz books and L. Frank Baum as much as I do.  They even have conventions (though I’ve never been).  I really just wanted this movie to do right by the books, but according to the New York Times review, Disney has failed on that front.  What seals the deal for me is the NYT’s assertion that, despite the Oz series being full of strong female characters (revolutionary for its time), this movie “has such backward ideas about female characters that it makes the 1939 ‘Wizard of Oz’ look like a suffragist classic.”  And apparently Franco turns in another Oscar-worthy performance (as in, his horrible Oscar hosting performance).  I saw him on Colbert Report last week and almost couldn’t stand to watch.  

So I think I’ll pass.  And now that I’ve expressed my opinion without even seeing the movie, have you seen it?  Plan to?  

In other reading, I finished Karen Lord’s Best of All Possible Worlds, and I’m currently glued to Patricia Briggs’ Frost Burned.  I don’t know why, but reading a Mercy Thompson novel always makes me feel like I’m coming back to old friends – I can’t think of any other series that affects me like that.  I just love her characters. 

So, happy Monday!  Hope you had a great almost-spring weekend.  What are you reading? 

Review of Storm of Swords by George R. R. Martin

Storm of Swords is the third book in George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series, and it will be airing on HBO beginning March 31.  It’s also the book most people say is their favorite in the series.  And while I found Book Two kind of disappointing, Book Three was worth the read.

If you haven’t read or watched Game of Thrones, and you’re wondering what all the fuss is about, these books are definitely fuss-worthy.  Martin has created a fantasy world on the scale of the Lord of the Rings, complete with detailed languages and history that goes back hundreds of years.  You get all the fun of brutal medieval battles plus dragons and zombies.  It’s fantasy, but what a lot of people love about Martin is that the humans come first in the story, and the fantasy creatures are kind of a backdrop.  For now anyway.

I enjoyed Book Three a lot more than Book Two – Book Two was a lot of battle strategy and also seemed like a transition book.  Plus Book Two seemed to spend a lot of time on the less likeable characters.  In contrast, Book Three felt like it gave you more on the characters you love, plus it really developed some characters that hadn’t been developed before (namely, Jaime Lannister).  Another thing I like about Martin is that there are characters you’re supposed to love, characters you’re supposed to hate, and then a bunch you’re not quite sure of.

I won’t deny that this book drove me crazy.  While I was reading it I thought it would never end.  I would watch the percentage meter on the bottom of my Kindle and it just did not budge.  You think these books are a quick easy read, but they are crammed so full of characters and back-history and cities and islands and kingdoms you need an encyclopedia sometimes to follow what’s going on.  You have to be able to tell the Martells from the Tyrells, for example, and you have to know that Davos is a character but Daavos is a town.  You have to know who is from which royal family, who’s a Brother of the Watch, and who’s a wildling.  Just for starters.  There is a guide in the back of the book if you need it.

Martin doesn’t make these books easy on the reader, but I kind of respect that.  It’s like you’re in his world now, and he’ll do what he wants with you.  Which includes making you wait a hundred pages or more to find out whether your favorite character lives or dies.  And with Martin’s books you know anyone can die at any time.  It’s amazing how much that adds to the suspense of a book.

Should a writer write for his readers?  You would think the answer is clearly yes, and yet… I recently heard an interview with writer Jennifer Egan on the subject of how much a writer should care about the opinions of readers while writing a book.  She received tons of comments on her “Powerpoint chapter” in A Visit from the Goon Squad, which won a 2011 Pulitzer and is supposedly being adapted as an HBO series.  A lot of readers told her they couldn’t get through that chapter and either skipped it or stopped reading at that point.  Egan says that chapter is one of the most pivotal in the book and she couldn’t have written it any other way.

I’m telling you nothing about Storm of Swords because anything plot-related would be a spoiler.  Read these books if you enjoy fantasy, or watch Game of Thrones and see if it suits you.  These books are long, complicated, and VIOLENT.  Just so you know.  But Martin has a way of sucking you into his world that very few writers can match.  So when I got close to the end, I felt relieved – and when it was over, I felt like something was missing in my life.

Just a catch-up, tired-of-work, glad-it’s-Friday, ready-for-wine post …

Dear readers, friends, and family,

I’m sorry about the lack of posting lately.  Everything’s all right, I’m just beat.  Had three lovely days in Southern California, then came back to three days of 10 hour workdays and mental exhaustion.  (You know I’m tired when I stop using pronouns.)  I know, there are worse things than a few long days.  It just makes it hard for me to WANT to sit at my computer and type.

And yet, I have lots of books that need reviewing.  I spent ten hours to CA and back strapped into a seat with nothing to do but read.  And I have to say thank you Virgin America and Glen Duncan (The Last Werewolf) for making ten hours on a plane almost pleasurable.

So thought I’d throw out there a few bookish news items that some of you might find interesting, and a few recommendations (until I get around to actually writing reviews).

The big news is there’s talk of a Sony Pictures cable series based on Outlander by Diana Gabaldon.  Awesome or oh-god-please-don’t?  I don’t know, but here’s where you can find out more.  The guy in charge, Ronald Moore, was the executive producer and developer for the Battlestar Galactica series (the remake) and also worked on Star Trek TNG.  How much control will Diana G. have?  Possibly not so much, but she will be consulted.  Moore is already working with Diana and says he’s a huge fan (but then so was Tim Burton when he made Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) and says he’ll do a faithful adaptation (again, Tim Burton).  No guarantees this will actually happen, but it sounds like the big success of Game of Thrones and True Blood is paving the way for TV series based on books.  And that’s a good thing.  I think.

The smaller news is, there’s a trailer out for an upcoming Wizard of Oz prequel.  Yes, you know I hate to have my favorite children’s books made into movies, but this one might be good for at least two reasons.  First reason: it’s an original story, not a remake.  Those of us who love the books (maybe just me) know that the Wizard’s back-story was pretty weak in the books and definitely allows for some creative interpretation.  In the books, the Wizard gets stranded in Oz, scares some warring witches with his Kansas “magic”, and creates the Emerald City while the witches are banished to the North, East, South and West.   Second reason: the casting gives me great, great hope that this will at least be a decent movie.  Rachel Weisz, Michele Williams, and Mila Kunis play three witches, and these are actresses that pick VERY GOOD movies. James Franco is the Wizard and he’s a pretty good picker too.  So I figure this has to be above-average.

On the book front, I just finished Glen Duncan’s The Last Werewolf (amazing); Alice Hoffman’s Blackbird House (beautiful prose); and Laura Carroll’s The Baby Matrix (will definitely make you think about overpopulation and why we pressure people so much to have children).  And I’m finishing up Redshirts.  All highly recommended!  It’s been a good reading week.

Next up?  The Bride of New France, Ready Player One, and – finally – Stephen King’s 11/22/63.  Maybe not all three at once.

Well, I planned for this to be short.  Now it’s off to make some dinner and settle in with a well-earned glass of wine.

Happy Friday and I’ll try to get some reviews up soon…

The Invention of Hugo Cabret: the Book versus the Movie

I hadn’t heard of this book until the movie came out and got so much Oscar-attention.  Then I came across the book in the library and was intrigued: it’s a hefty hardback with a spine about three inches across, yet it’s the recipient of a Caldecott award (the award for best picture books).  But open up the book, and you’ll find it’s half text, half illustration.  It’s a beautiful, visual book.

Brian Selznick is both the author and illustrator.  I love when the author and illustrator are the same because then you just know it all works together.  No arguments about what is the vision for the book.  It doesn’t happen often (an example is my favorite Dr. Suess) but it’s great when it does happen.

The Invention of Hugo Cabret is about a young boy who lives by himself in a Paris train station around 1920.  His father died, his uncle disappeared, and he’s hiding from the Station Inspector to avoid being sent to an orphanage.  He maintains all the clocks in the station so the Inspector will think that Hugo’s uncle is still around.

This is a strange story but it totally works.  The illustrations are simple but powerful.  Selznick accomplishes something that most illustrators don’t – his illustrations don’t just show you things, but movement and emotion.  For example, he shows you Hugo running from the inspector in a series of illustrations that really make you feel you’re running beside him.  It’s hard to explain but there it is.

It’s also a really cool story.  I think it won’t be telling too much to say it starts out being about the history of turn of the century robotics but ends up being about the dawn of movie-making.  Since I have a thing for turn of the century illustration (Arthur Rackham, Maxfield Parrish, Mucha, etc.) I loved the exploration of art through film-making.

The book gives you a lot of information about the history of film.  Sometimes when a book is written to explain, it doesn’t do a good job of entertaining.  This book puts it all together in a dramatic story.

That said, did the movie live up to the book?  Yes, but no.  Yes, in that it’s very faithful to the book.  No, in that the movie isn’t paced quite right, because ultimately this is a children’s book and doesn’t have two hours worth of stuff in it.  I don’t like children’s books being made into movies, for the reason that stuff always has to be added.  But being too faithful to the plot of a book doesn’t work either.  It’s a Catch-22 but in my mind the solution is DON’T MAKE GREAT CHILDREN’S BOOKS INTO MOVIES.  Look at all the horrible movies that are being made from Dr. Seuss books.  I wish they’d stop.  It’s better with books for older children, just stop making picture books into movies, please!

I found Hugo the movie a little slow. Ultimately, it was a nice rendition of the book, but left me feeling it didn’t ADD anything to the book.

Now, I’ll never know how I would have experienced that movie without having read the book.  That’s a choice you have to make, one way or another.  See the movie first and the book is diminished.  Read the book first and the movie nearly always suffers by comparison.  Hugo is probably a fantastic movie without being compared to the book — but compared to the book it suffered, even with its beautiful graphics and impressive actors like Ben Kingsley.  The book did a better job of conveying Hugo’s feelings; the movie just felt a little forced to me.  Maybe it was the acting, maybe the pacing, or maybe it’s just that some movies work better than others when you already know what’s going to happen (for example, Titanic is still an entertaining movie and you know how that one ends).

Of course, this is just my opinion (as always) — did you see the movie or read the book?  What did you think?

Review: The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

I only discovered Sherlock Holmes last year, although I always wanted to read the stories.  I love Victorian literature and classic mysteries, so Sherlock Holmes is a perfect fit.  Maybe I was inspired by the movie with Robert Downey Jr, which I thought was pretty weak – I wanted to see what Sherlock Holmes was really about.  I also watched some of the vastly better British series with Benedict Cumberbatch (who has one of the coolest British names I think I’ve ever heard).

But nothing beats reading the original, and Holmes is the archetype that so many of today’s mystery-solvers are based on.  I expected a stuffy pipe smoker with a funny hat and that’s not what you get at all (although he does wear the hat with the ear flaps at times).  Holmes is brilliant and not terribly likeable, but always intriguing.  Sometimes he lets you follow along with what he’s doing, and other times he leaves you behind completely and you only find out what’s happened at the end.  He seems to be only happy when he’s working on a case; it’s like his mind needs a challenge at all times.

It was interesting, having just read a book about Asperger’s Syndrome, to see so many of the traits of Asperger’s in Sherlock Holmes.  He has almost no interpersonal skills and his attention to detail rises to an entirely different level from everyone else’s.  In a 2009 article in the New York Times, Dr. Lisa Sanders writes:

He does have symptoms. He appears oblivious to the rhythms and courtesies of normal social intercourse — he doesn’t converse so much as lecture. His interests and knowledge are deep but narrow. He is strangely “coldblooded,” and perhaps as a consequence, he is also alone in the world. He has no friends other than the extremely tolerant Watson; a brother, even stranger and more isolated than he, is his only family. Was Arthur Conan Doyle presenting some sort of genetically transmitted personality disorder or mental illness he’d observed, or was Sherlock Holmes merely an interesting character created from scratch?

Of course no one knew of Asperger’s in the late 1800’s, and other experts have “diagnosed” Holmes with manic depression or bipolar disorder from his wild mood swings, from depression to near-euphoria when solving a crime.  And then there’s the drug use.  Whatever Sir Conan Doyle intended, Holmes is a fascinating character.

I read The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes for the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen challenge, which includes the final short story in the collection, “The Final Problem”, which is all about arch-villain James Moriarty.  But I couldn’t see reading a single short story when I could read the whole book.  And I’m glad I did.

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes is made up of eleven short stories: “Silver Blaze”, “The Yellow Face”, “The Stock-Broker’s Clerk”, “The ‘Gloria Scott’”, “The Musgrave Ritual”, “The Reigate Puzzle”, “The Crooked Man”,” The Resident Patient”, “The Greek Interpreter”, “The Naval Treaty”, and “The Final Problem.”

Each story is a short but fun read, and what makes the book so inventive is that each is completely different.  One of my favorites was “The Yellow Face”, which Watson explains is an illustration of how Sherlock Holmes sometimes doesn’t get it right.  In this story, Holmes is asked by a distraught man to determine why his wife is sneaking to the house next door in the middle of the night.  “The Gloria Scott” involves an uprising on a ship that is deporting criminals to Australia.  “The Crooked Man” involves a man who is murdered, or has a stroke, while fighting with his wife in a locked room.   “The Naval Treaty” involves the theft of a secret treaty between England and Italy.

As Watson makes clear, Holmes investigates all types of cases, some of international importance and some that are purely domestic.  In some cases he gets it wrong (although rarely) and it some cases he does very little.  In others, like “The Resident Patient”, he determines from clues like smoking cigar butts and a screwdriver, that a man who has appeared to have hanged himself was in fact murdered.

There is perhaps less of Holmes’ personality in these stories, compared to Study in Scarlet or The Hound of the Baskervilles, but each is entertaining and original.  One thing I particularly liked was the wide range of settings and characters.  Each story starts out in Watson’s parlor but as the events are recounted, the settings range from the Boer war to the high seas.  Doyle is so descriptive, you really feel you’re seeing the people and streets of London through Watson and Holmes’ eyes.

“The Final Problem” is very different from the other stories.  It is in “The Final Problem” that Holmes meets his match. In this story, rather than someone coming to Holmes to solve a problem, Holmes has decided of his own accord to hunt down a criminal.  He drops in on Watson looking pale and frightened, which is out of character; Holmes usually seems impervious to danger.  He tells Watson of his pursuit of Professor Moriarty, who is brilliant but “A criminal strain ran in his blood, which, instead of being modified, was increased and rendered infinitely more dangerous by his extraordinary mental powers.”

Holmes goes on to explain that “For years past I have continually been conscious of some power behind the malefactor, some deep organizing power which forever stands in the way of the law, and throws its shield over the wrong-doer.  Again and again in cases of the most varying sorts – forgery cases, robberies, murders – I have felt the presence of this force, and I have deduced its action in many of those undiscovered crimes in which I have not been personally consulted… He is the Napoleon of crime.  He is the organizer of half that is evil and of nearly all that is undetected in this great city. “

Holmes dedicates himself to stopping Moriarty; but unfortunately Moriarty is hot on his trail and has no attention of being captured.  There’s a moral element to this story that is missing in the others.  Typically, Holmes doesn’t pick and choose his cases based on the severity of the crime or the need to right a wrong.  He solves crimes because people ask him to, because he’s genius at it, and because he enjoys it.  In this story, Holmes says he’s willing to die if it means ridding London of its greatest evil.

You’ll have to read the rest to find out what happens, and then you’ll probably do what I did and jump right to the next book to keep reading.  Enjoy!

I’m all about Harry Potter today…

On Thursday I finished up Clash of Kings and thought, okay, enough with the fantasy for a while, I should turn to some books that are a little more (a) realistic and (b) literary.

Then I went to the library and found a Terry Pratchett book in paperback I’d been wanting to read (A Hatful of Sky).  It’s laugh-out-loud funny, by the way — a nice antidote to the gore and violence that is George R.R. Martin. So maybe ONE more fantasy book would be okay.

And last night, I saw the final Harry Potter film.  And now I really need to reread the book.  Normally I like to reread right before the movie, but this time I purposely held off so I would be a little more “surprised” in the movie.   For the record, I’m not sure it matters; it’s impossible to watch the movie without comparing it to the book.

So now I want to re-read the book, but I’m also waiting for it to come out in E-book format.  Rowling has been kind of a ridiculous holdout, and as you probably know, announced a few weeks ago that she’s finally putting her books in e-book format in October.  They will be released on www.pottermore.com and supposedly will be in all e-reader formats.  I’m not sure how that will work for the Kindle but we’ll see.

So, big bulky hardcover now, or e-book in October?  Grrr…..  If Rowling hadn’t created one of the best fantasy series ever, I’d be a little annoyed.  Plus when is she going to actually write something?  I’m happy she’s overseeing a theme park, and very happy she’s taking her time rather than bowing to publisher pressure to crank out books.  But hopefully with the release of the final film, she’ll start working on another series.

If she does, where do you think she should go?  Some people think she should go back to the early generation and explore Snape and Sirius’ childhoods more, but I suppose the more obvious choice would be to look at the next generation.  Maybe get out of Hogwarts altogether, or veer off into the lesser characters, like Luna and Neville, or explore some of the other creatures in the books like the goblins or the giants. A writer for the Washington Post suggested she explore Professor McGonagall, a sadly underutilized character in the books.

Who knows?  For the moment, I’m all about Harry Potter, and I’m guessing a lot of you are too.

Have you seen the movie?  Want to discuss?  In a nutshell, here’s what I thought:

• The movie really captures the tone — no romance, very little humor.  This is Harry and his friends facing death.  The movie respects that.  The atmosphere is gritty, the colors dark, and the characters spend a lot of time looking roughed up and hurt.  This is a DARK movie.
• The movie does the scenes well that it NEEDS to do well, like Harry going off to face Voldemort and Snape’s final confession.
• Only weakness was that it felt rushed a lot of the time; and how could it not, when there’s so much to cover?  There were definitely changes made from the book, but I can’t be sure till I re-read.
• See the New York Times for a really great review.   This review talks a lot about how fantastic the older cast is in this movie, and I agree.  Ralph Fiennes, Alan Rickman, Maggie Smith especially.  I also liked the guys who played Ollivander and Aberforth.  The younger cast has less of a role in the movie (except for Neville), and that’s okay.  In the end, this is Harry’s movie, and Daniel Radcliffe totally pulls it off.
• I was a little worried about how much of a cry-fest this movie would be.  It definitely was — I think I was sniffling most of the last quarter of the movie, but I’m weird like that.   Surprisingly, the movie takes a pretty light touch with the deaths of some of the characters.  By light touch I mean no long, lingering deathbed scenes, not that the deaths are treated lightly. There’s just much more focus on Harry and Voldemort than on the characters who die in battle.  And I think that’s right.

Hope you enjoy the movie, and let me know what you thought!

Top Ten Books That Would Make Good Movies

It’s Top Ten Tuesday time at The Broke and the Bookish, and this week’s question is, what ten books would we like to see made into movies?  This is a difficult question for me to answer, because when I love a book I don’t want to see it made into a movie.  Movies at best are a good version of the book, and at worst they seriously interfere with how you view the book.  Even in a good adaptation, your vision of a character becomes replaced by an actor.  Someday I’ll write up my list of worst-ever movie adaptations of books, but that’s not the question at hand.

So I gave some thought to what I’ve read that would adapt well into movies.  I think fantasy novels are better left alone — unless you have the budget and star power of the Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter movies, it’s very hard to pull off.  I would hate to see the Mercy Thompson or Kate Daniels books made into films.  Have you seen what they did to the Dresden Files?  Horrible.  If you can’t do magic well, don’t do it.

I think the steampunk books would make better films — the effects would be much more manageable and you get to combine them with cool turn of the century costumes.  Scott Westerberg’s Leviathan series would make good movies, as would Paulo Bacigalupi’s Ship Breaker or Cherie Priest’s Boneshaker.

Classic literature makes for good movies, especially if it’s a British production.  I liked a recent version of Sherlock Holmes I saw on BBC.  I’d like to see newly-imagined movie versions of The Woman in White and A Pair of Blue Eyes.

Historical fiction also makes for great movies, so I’d like to see Julie Orringer’s Invisible Bridge as a movie.  Her book, set in World War II in Hungary, was great but slow at times, and a movie could strengthen that.  The Shadow of the Wind would also be a great movie, if not made already.  It’s so dark and visual.

One Day by David Nicholls could be a good movie, and is already being made with Anne Hathaway.  So not sure that counts.  I think all of Jonathan Tropper’s books could make good movies, if done well, since his books almost read as if you’re watching a movie.  Stephen King is the same way.

One person who writes beautiful fiction that could be turned into great movies, is Maggie O’Farrell.  I’ve loved all three of the books I read by her.  Her writing is powerful and emotional and dramatic.  Helen Simonson’s Major Pettigrew Takes a Stand could also be a good movie, with the right casting and good writing.  The Scotland series by Alexander McCall Smith would probably make a great movie or minseries, kind of in the vein of the Tales of the City series.

In the end, I’m wary of any movie or TV version of a book I loved.  There are some great movie adaptations, but there are many more weak or truly bad ones.   So I don’t really want any of my favorite books to be made into movies.

Top Ten Tuesday: Best Book to Movie Adaptations

This week’s Top Ten over at The Broke and the Bookish is Top Ten Book to Movie Adaptations.  This is an easy one since my shelves are full of these movies, and, especially since I was very recently watching the BBC version of Pride and Prejudice and being amazed all over again at how good it is.

So, assuming P&P counts as a movie (it’s a miniseries), here’s my list.

Pride and Prejudice, the Colin Firth/ Jennifer Ehle miniseries.  It does not get better than this.  I love how much emotion the characters are able to convey within the limitations of how they can interact together.  Also love the humor, especially as it relates to Mr. Collins and Lady DeBurgh.  Finally, love the way this movie is shot to please us ladies – Colin Firth in the bathtub, Colin Firth in wet white shirt, Colin Firth sweating as he rides, fences, etc.  Need I say more?  This is one of the best books and one of the best movies of all time.

Nobody’s Fool, by Richard Russo, movie starring Paul Newman.  This is my “you won’t have heard of it” pick.  Richard Russo is an outstanding writer and this is a great book.  It’s about a small, sleepy New England town, fallen on hard economic times.  Sully is an old man estranged from his family but with so much character (most of it cranky and mean) he’s actually very much loved by his friends.  This is a great book but a BETTER movie – Paul Newman even manages to bring out acting talent in Bruce Willis and Melanie Griffith, he is that good.  Love how Paul Newman plays this character as old and crotchety and mean.  He’s one of the rare  male actors that got old and PLAYED old (compared to say, Michael Douglas or Robert Redford).

Those two were easy.  Now I’m struggling with what comes next. I know I’m going to miss a lot of great ones but here goes.

Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin, miniseries starring Laura Linney and Olympia Dukakis.  This movie brought to life all the fun and 70s-cheesiness of the novel.  Linney and Dukakis are perfect, but so are all the supporting characters.   I fell in love with Mouse and Brian from the movie, not just the book.  Although I saw and read this around the same time so it’s hard to separate them.

The Princess Bride by William Goldman.  I’m shamelessly stealing this one from What Red Read’s list, but it really is an amazing book and a perfect adaptation. There is no part of this movie I don’t quote on a regular basis.

Now,  for fantasy and children’s lit (there are so many bad adaptations, so few good ones):

Lord of the Rings.  Sure there are flaws, but Jackson took on an impossible task and even improves on the books in some ways, by cutting out some of the unnecessary stuff, and yes, increasing the role of women in the story.  I might wish the movie had more of Eomer, Eowyn and Faramir, but otherwise can’t complain.  Okay, one complaint – Frodo’s pained “ring” expression and his “I love you Sam” expression get really old after 12 hours.  But that’s all I can pick on.

Harry Potter.  Not books 1-3, although I love Branagh in #2.  But the movie versions of 5 and 6 really did justice to the books, and I almost want to say movie #4 actually improved upon the book.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl, and Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory starring Gene Wilder.  Yes, it has some flaws, like the drug-induced tunnel scene and the addition of fizzy bubbles.  But that Charlie kid will always be Charlie to me, and Gene Wilder pulls off Wonka as much as anyone could.  Plus, picking this movie also gives me a chance to note my WORST literary adaptation of all time, which is the Tim Burton/Johnny Depp version. That movie was a travesty.  (Second worst might be Where the Wild Things Are, but that’s a list for another time.)

The Wizard of Oz.  You know I have some issues with the tacked-on ending and the I’ll-never-leave-home-again moralizing.  But consider that this movie was made in the 1930’s and it still had flying monkeys, apple-throwing trees, and a broom-riding, fire-throwing Wicked Witch (who melts very dramatically).  And even after a gazillion times it’s still thrilling to watch.

And finally, wanted to give some credit to that most challenging of genres, the modernization.  These aren’t the best movies I ever saw but deserve a lot of credit for cleverly tying classic literature to modern day life.

Clueless.  Emma by Jane Austen, modernized to 90s LA.  Clever, funny, and with all the heart of the book, which is one of my favorites.  I haven’t seen a traditional movie version of Emma I really love, but I do love this movie.

Ten Things I Hate About You.   I know, dumb teen movie, but it’s better than most of them, and it (a) had Heath Ledger; and (b) was a pretty clever interpretation of The Taming of the Shrew.  Julia Stiles was good too.

Bridget Jones Diary, which is a two-fer, an adaptation of a book which is an adaptation of Pride and Prejudice (Austen again).  If for no other reason, this is on my list just for the nerviness of getting Colin Firth to reprise his role as Darcy AND wear a reindeer jumper.  And the movie kept the essential Britishness of the book (I think, since I’m not British) even though it cast Renee Zellwegger – who wasn’t horrible and thankfully was not thin and gorgeous.

If you’re counting, that’s actually 11.  But then everything’s better when it goes to 11.

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and the movie, too

Last month I accidentally watched most of the movie The Wizard of Oz twice.  I say accidentally because when it comes on TV it’s apparently impossible for me to turn it off.  Now this is a movie I know backwards and forwards – when I was a child I remember it coming on every year and it HAD to be watched.  It’s also a movie I have a love-hate relationship with because I love the books so much.  There are things about the movie that bug me every time I see it, and still if it comes on I’m absolutely glued and feel like an 8 year old all over again.

So while sitting and enjoying/hating on the movie (twice), it seemed a good time to re-read L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.  Of the entire series, this was the book I read the fewest times, because a book loses something when you see the movie so often.  If I read The Patchwork Girl of Oz, for example, I’m lost in the story.  But if I read The Wonderful Wizard I’m mostly comparing it to the movie.

I read the book on my Kindle, which I don’t recommend because it lacked illustration (not all Kindle books do, so you know – Leviathan has wonderful illustrations – but this one was just straight text).  The illustrations are really a key part of the story, flowing throughout every page.  Frank Baum and WW Denslow worked side by side on the illustrations and story when they created the book.  But I know the illustrations well enough that it wasn’t too much of a problem to imagine them.

I came to a conclusion I didn’t expect – that the movie was actually far more faithful to the book than I gave it credit for.  In fact, the movie uses dialogue that comes almost exactly from the book, and follows the story very closely.  Everything from Dorothy falling on the witch, setting out on the Yellow Brick Road and meeting the Scarecrow, Tin Woodsman, and Lion, is pretty much exactly as written.  The theme that the Scarecrow, Tin Woodsman, and Lion already have in abundance all of the qualities they think they lack also comes from the book (although the book is a bit more subtle about it).

I also think they kept the costumes and sets fairly consistent with the book.  The whimsical Munchkins and the glamorous ladies of the Emerald City are good examples.  I used to be annoyed with the “getting washed up” sequence in the movie, where Dorothy and friends are getting ready to see the Wizard.  It seemed a poor excuse to sing and change Dorothy’s hair, but in fact Baum paid a lot of attention to where the characters ate, slept, and changed clothes, so getting dressed up for the Wizard is entirely consistent with the book and with the times in which he wrote.  Remember that Dorothy is a poor country girl who doesn’t have any fine clothes, so this is actually important for her.  Also, Baum likes to highlight the differences between Dorothy and Toto and the magical creatures of Oz who don’t have to eat or sleep (and couldn’t if they wanted to) but do need a polish or fresh straw from time to time.

The Wizard is also pretty consistent, even the line “I’m a good man, I’m just a very bad wizard.” A line I tend to disagree with, but there it is. In the book he explains that the Wicked Wizard had terrorized him for years and he would do anything to be rid of her, even putting a young girl’s life in danger.  Baum tries in the later books to redeem the Wizard by teaching him to be an honest magician.

While most of the movie is happily consistent with the book, there are some major differences.  Some of them are perfectly understandable, and some of them infuriate me.

Not surprisingly, a lot of the adventures, battles, and strange creatures in the book don’t make it into the movie.  In the book, for example, Dorothy and the Lion are dragged out of the poisonous poppy fields by hundreds of field mice; the Tin Woodsman has saved their Queen and she helps his friends to return the favor.  The snow sequence in the movie is a poor substitute but understandable.  Can you imagine MGM in 1939, even with all its creativity, pulling off a scene with hundreds of mice?  How about a town where all of the people are tiny and made of china?  There are a lot of really cool (and some of them disturbing) parts of the book that didn’t make it into the movie.  But that’s okay. The trick of making a book into a movie is knowing what you can cut from the story, and the movie Wizard of Oz does quite a good job of this.

Second, and you probably know this already, Dorothy is aged quite a bit in the movie.   Dorothy in the book is much younger, I’d guess maybe in the 8-10 year old range.  Judy Garland is a grown adult, which doesn’t work for me.  MGM considered casting Shirley Temple in the role, who would have been much closer to the book character’s age.  One history of the movie says that the studio’s priority was casting a strong singer, and that made Garland the lead candidate.  They apparently tried to make her look younger by flattening her chest but you can see that didn’t work.  The songs are another issue I have with the movie, especially the dreadful Lion song in the Emerald City, but this is 1939 and the studios wanted lots of singing and dancing.

Where the real differences come in?  First, everything that takes place in Kansas at the beginning of the movie is courtesy of MGM, not Baum.  Baum describes Kansas in a couple of pages, as lifeless, dry, gray and flat.  He says that if it wasn’t for Toto, Dorothy would be as gray and lifeless as everyone else.  Professor Marvel is the studio’s excuse to introduce the character of the Wizard, to set up the dream concept – and also to give Dorothy a whole lot of extra angst about running away and deserting her family.  In the book she simply runs to collect Toto and is swept away by the tornado. No guilt involved.

The things that really bother me about the movie all come at the end.  When Glinda floats down to Dorothy in her bubble after the Wizard has flown away, she gives her this annoying speech about how she always could have left Oz, but “she had to learn it for herself”. Not, “oops I forgot to tell you,” but “we’ve all been watching you put your life in danger for no good reason.”  And then Dorothy gives this even more annoying speech about how she should never have gone looking for her heart’s content and she’ll never again leave her own backyard.  In the book, the characters have to trek all the way to Glinda’s castle to find out about the slippers.  Glinda doesn’t just laughingly withhold the information.

Then, and even worse, when movie-Dorothy awakens in Kansas, the whole thing is a dream and her beloved family and friends all laugh at how silly she is.  Then she laughs and promises (again) never to leave the house again.

Why this bothers me – Baum was all about adventure.  Never in his books does he suggest that Oz is a dream, and never does he suggest that Dorothy is wrong to leave her home and explore the world.  Baum’s message is that Dorothy is right to care deeply about her family and put her home and responsibilities first, but the movie’s message seems to be that Dorothy should never again go out on her own, have adventures, or even leave her backyard.  Never mind that in her short visit to Oz she actually kills two wicked witches, saves her friends, and deposes a fraudulent ruler.  Even worse, the Dorothy in the movie appears to be a grown woman who definitely SHOULD be leaving home sometime soon.  I have to think this is some kind of societal message to women that should not have been introduced into a classic children’s fantasy.

It’s interesting to think of this “don’t venture away from home” lesson in the context of the timing of this movie, which was released in 1939, shortly before the U.S. entered World War II.  In World War II, women took on all kinds of exciting new roles, entering the workforce, sports, the military – and I’m guessing many people weren’t too happy about it.  Of course all of that happened after the movie was made, but maybe those were fears of the time that somehow influenced the movie.

So that’s my review of both the book and the movie.  If you love children’s fantasy, you should read the book for all the cool things that got left out of the movie.  Be sure you get a copy with all the original Denslow illustrations.  And then you should read The Land of Oz, and Ozma of Oz.  Because if you’re anything like me, reading The Wonderful Wizard of Oz will feel a little like you’ve heard it all before.