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The book and/or the movie


Mike

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I have long been an advocate for watching a film based on a book, but skipping the book. I'm a non-fiction reader almost exclusively.

The Hunger Games might change that. I am currently starting a new book, so it will be after this, but the movie was outstanding. I'm n=more than modestly intrigued by what the book may be.

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I have read and re-read the "Game of Thrones" series at least 3 times over. I'm now deeply ensconced in Season 2 of the series, and I haven't been disappointed with anything.

Almost.

The only ONLY thing that isn't like I would have envisioned it myself (and did) is the actor they got to play Sansa. She's nothing like what I always pictured in my head, so that's bothersome.

Other than that, they've done an outstanding job of making those pages come to life on the screen.

I typically choose the book over the movie and am always in awe when a movie is as good as a book. But better than a book? Never.

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I'm with Shawna, for me the book is almost always better than the film - I'm a fan of seeing the film first in most cases, then I'm almost never disappointed, and often am thrilled to read the details left out of the film.

Specifically regarding The Hunger Games - If the film is half as good as the books I'll be happy. From what I've seen the casting looks fantastic, in the terms of being true to the book. Hunger Ganes is truly a good read. I also found it to be a fairly quick read since the series was written with a young audience in mind. I read all 3 back to back, and honestly couldn't put them down.

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The reason a book is typically better than its adapted screen representation is all in the consumer's mind - something rarely surrendered to a white wall in a movie theater, as other consumers sit nearby eating and occasionally emitting sounds. Total sensory surrender is not only improbable under those conditions, but could be embarrassing to permit.

The only two adapted movies I have watched and felt lived up to the precedent of text in mood and substantial detail were Rosemary's Baby and Moby Dick, the latter for which I recently became aware has been remade. That seems not only Hollywood sacrilege to me, but a losing bet. Why not just remake The Wizard of Oz, or Easy Rider? How about King Kong .... oh, wait a minute.

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I may not be quoting exactly, but:

"People always say that the book was better than the movie. You know what I liked about the movie? No reading." - Jim Gaffigan

Personally, I enjoy reading books, though I rarely have the time for it. I used to though. And often I find the movies based on book to be good for the most part. What I dislike is when they take a book and then completely depart from the book (i.e. "I, Robot") though that's rare. I thought the absolute best adaptation of a book to a movie was Lord Of The Rings. It didn't include EVERYTHING, but it included what it needed to. I knew it wouldn't include everything because the movie would've been way longer than it already was. But I loved the books and the movies.

Seeing a movie after reading a book is an interesting experience I think. The great thing about books is that everyone imagines them differently and when you watch a movie based on a book that you've read, you get to experience someone else's vision of that book. It's interesting to see where people can take those stories.

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And from what I understand about "The Hunger Games", the movie essentially is made for the people who read the book. My brother saw it and said that they explain things basically as little as possible. Enough that if you never read the book you could kinda get what was going on but not enough to completely explain it.

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Movies will always be better than books by default. They cover a wider range of talent: photography, drawing, acting/performance/dancing, writing, music and sounds, fashion, set designs and sculpting, engineering of all kinds (sound, electrical, mechanical); everything to produce a work of art that is, on average, 90 minutes. That is incredibly difficult, even for the production of the crappiest movies. There is just no match. Same goes for theatrical plays. If I could change something, it would be to replace the Nobel Prize for Literature to the Nobel Prize for Movies :beatnik:

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Movies will always be better than books by default. They cover a wider range of talent: photography, drawing, acting/performance/dancing, writing, music and sounds, fashion, set designs and sculpting, engineering of all kinds (sound, electrical, mechanical); everything to produce a work of art that is, on average, 90 minutes. That is incredibly difficult, even for the production of the crappiest movies. There is just no match. Same goes for theatrical plays. If I could change something, it would be to replace the Nobel Prize for Literature to the Nobel Prize for Movies :beatnik:

Lack of imagination?

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Let me place it in your own vague and general terms: 1) Imagination is used for all of the arts, 2) The making of movies employs a lot more of the arts than books, and 3) Movies are better than books when it comes to the use of imagination because there is more of it involved in the making of them. Try using less of your imagination and more of your rational/critical thinking, S2V (i.e., use your brain, man) :beatnik:

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So in your terms movies are "better" because of the arts involved and technical aspects applied to the art more or less. That's fine for your own personal definition of better .... my personal definition of better is whatever gives me the most fulfilling experience, no more, no less. The reading of the book is what does it for me nine times out of ten.

Better being always in the eye (or mind) of the beholder.

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Objectively, there is more varied, artisitic talent in the making of a movie than in the writing of a book. Hence, movies are better than books in every respect under those general/objective terms. This is merely matter-of-fact and probably one of a few ways one could compare a movie to a book. How I feel about or opine on different works of art done in different mediums/forms has nothing to do with that since I love all of it and the comparison would not make sense since movies =/= books :beatnik:

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It's fairly simple:

One reads a book, one sees a movie based upon said book.

One enjoyed the book x much

One enjoyed the movie y much.

If x>y, one believes in one's opinion that the book was a more enjoyable experience than the book.

If y>x, one believes in one's opinion that the movie was a more enjoyable experience than the book.

To say a movie employs more artistic aspects and requires a lot more to make than a book is an empirical fact.

However, I have a difficult time saying that watching "Leprechaun 4: Lep In The Hood" is more artistic than reading "To Kill A Mockingbird". Although that is more likely opinion than fact.

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An analogy might be appreciation for the sublime beauty of a masterfully constructed building. In comparing the effective contributions of the General Contractor to the vision of the architect, an argument could be built that each had their moments of brilliance, each found their vexing problems and creative solutions, in the completion of the project. However, I believe that, if asked point blank, 99 out of 100 GCs would recognize the greater genius behind the success of the edifice resides with the architect.

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the fact that I am in the (albeit very slow) process of writing a book at the moment, I have come to realize just how much goes into one of these things. Although I don't have an art director, a costume designer, a makeup guru, a hair stylist, a set designer, etc. etc at my service, what I do have is historians, librarians, friends with knowledge, photographs, other books, artwork from the time period, many many many niches and cubbys to look to or wander around while doing my research - just for a single paragraph of text.

So I respectfully disagree with a statement regarding more creativity in creating a movie, since it's from the research which involved the places, people, experiences, interviews conducted, photographs, and all those various sources that created the very idea that a movie should be made based on such material. There's a whole helluva lot more work that goes into writing a book than people realize, and the amazing thing is that it's one person who has to bring it all together in the end and all the way throughout.

And if it's done right, it unfolds like a movie in the reader's mind - which is the goal of most storytellers - and that alone is accomplishing what many moviemakers could never without the impetus of having a story already told upon which to base their movie.

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Movies employ the same research techniques, so in that context, movies are the same as books in their creative process. Not just that, but the audience gets to see and hear the result of it in movies. Hence, movies are better than books because there is more and varied artistic displays rather than the one, solitary effort of a book writer. Once book authors start composing music scores, engineering sounds, designing costumes and make-up, building sets, become proficient at special effects, display photographic and editing techniques, and be able to act out the roles of their characters is when their books become as good as the movies.

I watched Marcel Carne's Les Enfants Du Paradis last night... and no book could ever match the mastery of such a grandiose film. Honore De Balzac and Marcel Proust would have to have written the equivalent of three lifetimes to reach such a height of artistry :beatnik:

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Movies will always be better than books by default. They cover a wider range of talent: photography, drawing, acting/performance/dancing, writing, music and sounds, fashion, set designs and sculpting, engineering of all kinds (sound, electrical, mechanical); everything to produce a work of art that is, on average, 90 minutes. That is incredibly difficult, even for the production of the crappiest movies. There is just no match

Isn't that like saying music by a boygroup is by default better than that of a singer-songwriter, because while the latter is just one person singing with one guitar, the former covers more aspects (singing, dancing, costumes, make up, many instruments, many songwriters, many producers, maybe even acting, visual concert gimmicks (laser, fire, fog, etc), marketing, merchandise, etc) ?

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the fact that I am in the (albeit very slow) process of writing a book at the moment, I have come to realize just how much goes into one of these things. Although I don't have an art director, a costume designer, a makeup guru, a hair stylist, a set designer, etc. etc at my service, what I do have is historians, librarians, friends with knowledge, photographs, other books, artwork from the time period, many many many niches and cubbys to look to or wander around while doing my research - just for a single paragraph of text.

So I respectfully disagree with a statement regarding more creativity in creating a movie, since it's from the research which involved the places, people, experiences, interviews conducted, photographs, and all those various sources that created the very idea that a movie should be made based on such material. There's a whole helluva lot more work that goes into writing a book than people realize, and the amazing thing is that it's one person who has to bring it all together in the end and all the way throughout.

And if it's done right, it unfolds like a movie in the reader's mind - which is the goal of most storytellers - and that alone is accomplishing what many moviemakers could never without the impetus of having a story already told upon which to base their movie.

I know only one person, personally, who has written a book. It comes quite naturally for him.

But as to the difficulty of a task of writing a story on paper or telling a story using celluloid. For this comparison I prefer to turn our attention to Peter Benchley and Steven Spielberg and a little fish story from the mid-seventies.

Now Pete din't really have too difficult of a time telling his story in a way that would chew at him all that much, but Steven, struggled with every element know to a storyteller. His environment, his characters, his technical support group (or lack there-of), his moral support (hahahaha) - and everything inbetween. The clock was biting at his ass, and his main character wasn't biting at all. Everthing that could go wrong went wrong, and even somethings that couldn't go wrong went wrong also. His story was the most laborious and tedious to tell foresure than that of Benchley's story. I think Pete would quickly and heartedly agree.

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Not exactly and not quite so simply. You are making a comparison between two genres of music, so the analogy doesn't fit between the comparison of what comprises books and what comprises movies. Now, if you were to compare live/stage performances, that, too, also depends on what you are looking for. Or if you are comparing the music videos between these music artists, that's yet another comparison. Singer-songwriters are just as capable of producing a music video and a live stage performance, so it can be just as good as the combined efforts of a boy band music marketing machine.

Books don't even come close to movies in terms of the artistry and creativity involved, and that's a [song]fact. Hell, I may enjoy reading a book or two way more than watching the movies based on those books, but the movies will always be characteristically better :beatnik:

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All I know for sure is that I don't care much for movies. A good novelist can create anything and the reader should be able to see, hear, smell, feel and even taste everything the writer has created.

All I smell at the movie theater is urine :laughing:

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I'm with you Ray, for the most part (although I really wish you hadn't indentified that smell) :D There are very few movies that I will go to the theater for. I can count my theater excursions over the past 5 years on one hand, yet I've read over 100 books over the past year and a half (so my Amazon account says), not counting books I've read from other sources. I'm almost always going to choose the book.

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