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Author Topic: Movie Questions For You to Answer  (Read 50164 times)

ˇKeith!

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Re: Movie Questions For You to Answer
« Reply #290 on: August 28, 2012, 09:53:37 AM »

1SO

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Re: Movie Questions For You to Answer
« Reply #291 on: August 28, 2012, 11:22:11 AM »
This one is good with all the recent Top 100 Books Discussion.

NEW QUESTION:

What author or book would you like to see brought to the screen?


Ebert posted this one before No Country For Old Men and he talked about Cormac McCarthy, whose books are great pieces of literature but could exist also as great cinema without one version making the other irrelevant. He added a good luck to anyone who tackles Blood Meridian, which is the story he'd most want to see adapted though it's the one least likely to survive the development and production process with its teeth.


I like that Ebert considers how much you want to see the movie vs. what it would do to the legacy of the book. The more successful films nowadays are almost direct translations. The book acts as a production draft of the screenplay, because that's what the fans want to see. Ebert asks for a Lolita (1962) approach, where a book that thrives on its word choice became a film that works on its performance and direction.

I'm not a big reader, but I always thought Clive Barker never got his due. His stories became increasingly fantastical and overflowed with too many great ideas, but a lot of his early horror and fantasy material could make for great cinema without taking away from the original stories. Barker adaptations usually end up as grindhouse fare with budgets too low and filmmakers more interested in the gore and slime than the themes. The Midnight Meat Train is a nifty, original idea but the film reduces it to a serial killer on a train with a muddled ending that's a nod to Barker's original concept. This is common with Clive.

Two Barker stories I would like to see. His short story The Age of Desire is a Frankenstein-esque manhunt set in a modern metropolis. Characters defy labels of right and wrong as wonderfully as in Princess Mononoke. Then there's his first novel, The Damnation Game, an epic masterwork of fantasy horror with some of the greatest sequences of terror I've ever known. Plus, again the villains are more of a sympathetic evil while the heroes actions are called into question.

MartinTeller

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Re: Movie Questions For You to Answer
« Reply #292 on: August 28, 2012, 11:27:07 AM »
Italo Calvino.  Most of his work would be hard to translate to the screen, but I think an imaginative director (along the lines of Gilliam or Jeunet, though not necessarily either one of them) could do a really good version of The Nonexistent Knight.

Junior

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Re: Movie Questions For You to Answer
« Reply #293 on: August 28, 2012, 11:37:58 AM »
From my top 50 list...

Kraken by China Mieville. It'd be a fast paced and fun summer blockbuster, but a little dark and fantastical at the same time. There are so many cinematic ideas, including the big setpiece at the end which takes place in the Sea's embassy on land, a house filled with water. It looks really cool in my head.

I'm sure the Magician series by Lev Grossman will be a thing at some point. It's part Narnia and part Harry Potter and more adult than either of those.

A stranger Murakami like The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle or Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World would be cool.

The Giver would be super easy to do, I think.
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AAAutin

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Re: Movie Questions For You to Answer
« Reply #294 on: August 28, 2012, 11:55:38 AM »
What author or book would you like to see brought to the screen?

I've long had ideas for an adaptation of Denis Johnson's ALREADY DEAD. With its PULP FICTION spirit, a cinematic version could be quite the hit...back in the '90s.

(I also, at one time, had a treatment in mind for KISS ME, JUDAS; but that's already happening.)

verbALs

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Re: Movie Questions For You to Answer
« Reply #295 on: August 28, 2012, 12:18:27 PM »
I know there is at least one botched attempt at filming a Travis McGee novel. If one was filmed right, then there are another 17 to film ie instant goldmine. McGee is like the 60s version of Jack Reacher (although John D Mac Donald writes Lee Child under the table), and no I can't see Tom Cruise in that role; unless those platforms are a foot high.
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Bondo

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Re: Movie Questions For You to Answer
« Reply #296 on: August 28, 2012, 03:40:21 PM »
Jennifer Government by Max Barry...cool political sci-fi. It was (is) optioned but who knows if anything will ever happen. Last news I heard of a film adaptation was like 5 years ago.

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Re: Movie Questions For You to Answer
« Reply #297 on: August 28, 2012, 05:19:39 PM »
The Giver would be super easy to do, I think.
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AAAutin

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Re: Movie Questions For You to Answer
« Reply #298 on: August 28, 2012, 07:51:18 PM »
Jennifer Government by Max Barry...cool political sci-fi. It was (is) optioned but who knows if anything will ever happen. Last news I heard of a film adaptation was like 5 years ago.

Well, if I recall, it had been optioned by Soderbergh/Clooney's Section 8; but, of course, that production company doesn't exist anymore. I'm pretty sure the SYRUP movie is in the can, however. (Another one for which I had an adaptation strategy; except mine was a short film that only dealt with the first couple of chapters.)

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Re: Movie Questions For You to Answer
« Reply #299 on: August 28, 2012, 08:46:05 PM »
I'm glad that they're finally going to make Ender's Game.  That's long overdue.

I have love/hate feelings for producing Jeff Smith's Bone.  I've been reading that book out loud to my children for almost ten years and I have the voices down and the timing and I can't imagine it being done differently.  How I would love to get the part for Smiley Bone, especially-- what a great character!

My favorite John Grisham novel is The Testament, which has never been done as a film and I think it would be great-- exotic locations... cool stuff.

Finally, American Gods by Neil Gaiman would be wonderful, although very dark.
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