Funny this came up because I just watched the movie on Sunday with my girlfriend who loved it primarily for all the fashion stuff and Leo. I thought the movie was just fine when Gatsby was mysterious, acted weird then had the party scene. But as soon as the real thing came across with him being in love with the chick the movie turned into a boring as fuck play that I watched on screen. It just was meh from there on out. I also watched Life of Pi which was fucking incredible and I'm a little bummed I didn't see it in the theatre now.
Because it features some of the most sumptuous language and beautiful turns of phrase in the history of American literature? Maybe you'd be better off with something that jumps out at you more obviously. Like, you know, a pop-up book.
People who idolize Caulfield should be put against the wall and shot, and NO you don't get a final cigarette. He is an utterly insufferable little bitch. A great literature exercise with a narrator who wrecks it. If you stack either of those books against For Whom The Bell Tolls they pale in comparison. And Nom, I'm sorry you're a fan of the book. Really, I am. But it still sucks.
Okay, I find it a contemporary, overblown exploration on social class. It seems to almost revel rich excess and even glorify it, all the while trying to make its not likeable character as "cool" as possible. In other words, you won't see me walking around campus with a dog-eared copy stuffed in my back pocket.
I actually very much like The Great Gatsby as a book. It's a good commentary on social extravagance and what's behind the facade. But it's never been made into a good movie, and it never will be. It just doesn't translate to the screen very well. What many people who love it, and its attendant movies, don't get is that it's decrying the overblown, rich lifestyle. People throw Gatsby parties without a hint of irony, and I find that funny.
Oh, man. You want great American novels turned into shit chowder films then I urge you to try Bonfire Of The Vanities. The vacuumed every bit of incredible power from that novel and turned every character into a caricature. A disgrace to say the least.
Orange is the New Black. I'm on 8 of season one and haven't decided how much I like it, so if you could muddle your way through that'd be great.
Audreymonroe showed me this a few weeks ago, and I gets fits of laughter whenever I look through it: 23 Dogs Who Are Too Adorably Stupid For Their Own Good Think about your leg movements, dog. Think about them.
I feel the EXACT same way about The Count of Monte Cristo, which is by far my favorite fictional book(for some reason it doesn't sound right calling it a novel...). Every single theatrical incarnation of it either changes/omits entire story arcs, or turns the characters into caricatures of themselves. I used to get mad about it, but now it's just depressing.
Ok. That made me laugh so hard I snorted. Thank you. I had an airrosti appointment this morning, and the things that woman did to my body with her fingertips almost made me black out. But now I can move my head. So that's good.
I plowed through those a couple of weeks ago. I like it, but that may because I have a crush on Laura Prepon, especially as brunette lesbian. That show has her in a towel enough to have inspired some fantasies. She is written out in Season 2, so the show may lose some sparkle for me. Alien was pretty good, I'm in a thriller kind of mood regarding entertainment. Aliens is probably in my near future.
Has a theatrical adaptation of any written work ever done its source material justice? It seems like "the book was better" goes without saying 100% of the time.
I would say Silence of the Lambs did a pretty good job. That's an amazing movie. Jurassic Park was also an awesome movie. I mean it left out a bunch of stuff from the book but I feel like it needed to just to keep it at a watchable length. I don't think the adaptation was bad at all considering what they left out.
Don't get me started. Tom Wolfe is my favorite author (you want sumptuous turns of phrase, man is a literary description master), and Bonfire is one of my favorite books. I remember finding out it was a movie, with Tom Hanks no less, in college and getting excited and couldn't believe why I'd never known. Then I watched it...and I knew why. Everything was terrible, the casting, the caricature nature, the set design, what a fucking joke. How the fuck the same man who gave us The Untouchables and Scarface directed that monstrosity, I'll never know. Michael Cristofer can stick to writing plays and not butchering scripts.