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So I had to create this spinoff because reading book that my favorite movies were based on is how I got into reading.
So what movies did you think really did the book justice? What movies did you like MORE than the book?
I have many, but I'll try to keep it short:
Princess Bride - I liked the movie even better, I think. The book got a little long in the tooth sometimes. And I read the edited version!
Rita Hayworth and Shawshank - Great acting, great representation of the story.
Scott Pilgrim - I was skeptical, but the movie was made really well.
Blindness - Loved the book and didn't think the movie would live up to it, but I think it did.
Jurassic Park and Jaws - because they're my favorite movies.
@LetThereBeLite: I'm going to probably get in trouble for this but Lord of the Rings. I *adored* the films. I thought they were amazing. The actors were great, the sets were stunning, the locations were fantastic, the music always moves me to tears... I just like them all so much more than the books.
Mind you, I saw them before I read the books so that might be why.
@Misfit: I haven't read them, but I did see the movies and thought they were absolutely beautiful. Mr.LetThereBe has read them though and he loves the way they turned out too. And the music in amazing! In fact, the Mr. and I saw The Fellowship at Radio City Music hall while an orchestra and chorus performed the score along with the movie. It. Was. Breathtaking!
Barney's Version by Mordecai Richler.... WOW. I can cry just thinking about the way the emotions were portrayed at the end of this movie without using words. AMAZING. Bawled my eyes out even after the movie was over.
The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks. I've seen it probably 20 times and I still cry every time.
@LetThereBeLite: I'd love to see it! I just admired it all. The way they (peter jackson, the actors etc) were just so dedicated to it and that, yes they changed some aspects but they kept true to the story as much as possible. They explain that they changed the storyline from the book to be more chronological in the movies... I just love it all. I was disappointed with the books. I found them to be so much longer to get through and I missed Arwen even though her story is told elsewhere. I just love watching them.
ALL THE HARRY POTTERS.
And surprisingly, Forrest Gump is a MUCH better movie than the book ever was. Pretty much the book sucks. Like Forrest is a math genius and goes to space with a chimp in the book. WTF.
And I think the new version of Girl With a Dragon Tattoo that's coming out this winter with Daniel Craig is going to be pretty good.
I usually prefer to see the movie before I read the book simply because I usually hate the movie if I read the book first. I usually like the books regardless if I liked the movie, although recently I found an exception.
The Time Travelers Wife
P.S. I love You (I didn't like the book. It was much more juvenile than the movie.)
Under the Tuscan Sun
Beaches
Gone with the Wind
I haven't read the books yet for the following ones, but I enjoyed the movies.
Bridges of Madison County
Out of Africa
Chocolat
A Good Year
One that I'm looking forward to, but haven't seen or read, is The Help. Since I didn't see it in the theater, I'll wait to see it on DVD and then get the book.
@Loribeth: I saw The Help a few weeks ago, and OMG. It made me laugh and cry all at the same time. It was a great movie! I want to go get the book now to see if it is just as good!
Atonement. I am NOT a crier at books or movies, and both versions did me in at the end. It was beautifully filmed, too. They really did it justice.
Fight Club, To Kill a Mockingbird, Harry Potter, and The Notebook were all great, too.
@Misfit: I totally agree with you about LOTR - never could make it very far in the books but I liked the movies.
I can't think of many others where I like the movie better. Except for possibly Atonement? I love the book, but the movie version just guts me. I think maybe that's James Macavoy's fault though...
These two are incredibly different, but my favorites are probably Fight Club and The Help. I loved the book Fight Club and I think the movie may be the only adaptation that I ended up liking even more than the original novel. We just saw The Help, too, and I liked that they didn't deviate much from the book...when I really like the book, I want the movie to be just like it! I hate when movie makers take too much creative license and change major parts of the story, combine characters, etc.
I'm going to get massacred for this, but I love Memoirs of a Geisha. It's just such a beautiful film. I usually watch it back to back with Cold Mountain (don't know why those two fit so well together for me! You couldn't find two films more opposite!) which is another book to film adaptation I love :)
@misskarianne: the book is wayyy better!
I agree with The Princess Bride and To Kill a Mockingbird!
Fight Club for sure!
The Time Travelers Wife (the book just jumped around and got confusing but the movie captured it perfectly and I went back and read the book again more easily).
@HappilyEverAfter54: I agree about The Time Travelers Wife. The book was so hard to get into, and so confusing. I feel like the movie did a much better job of explaining and telling a story.
I agree about Fight Club! That is one of the reason's I'm so excited about Fincher's Girl with the Dragon Tattoo movie (the absolutely amazing, takes my breath away with excite trailer [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVLvMg62RPA] certainly helps too!)
I also think that A Time to Kill was better than the book, and not *just* because Matthew McConaughey was so hot as a sweaty southern lawyer :)
I don't think any book I've read and then seen the movie has had the movie compare.
But I've seen (and enjoyed) some of the movies written above but haven't read the corresponding books.
@sarahbabs: Have you seen the foreign versions of The Girl yet? I didn't read the books, but the movies were excellent. I'm not so excited to see the American versions, but we might go see it when they hit the cheap theaters.
A clockwork Orange - The book was amazing. The movie was amazing. They captured (at least for me) the feel I got from the book.
Fight Club - as has been mentioned before.
Although a lot from the books were missing, I understand why, and I personally loved LOTR.
Dracula - Bram Stoker - Classic!
Stardust was a fabulous movie!
I'm excited to see ALL the versions of the Millenium Trilogy.
I'm also currently reading The Help and I'm looking forward to seeing the movie, however, I've heard it was a little hollywood compared to the reality of the book.
I liked the movie version of "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" better than the book, and that's rare, because usually I'm the other way around. The movie did leave out a lot, but most of what was left out, I found to be the boring, long and drawn out parts of the book anyway. I suppose it all evens out.
And I don't know if it's just because it's such a damn good movie, (and/or that I've seen it about 8,375,937,566 times) but "A Time to Kill" gets me every time. Sure, they took some liberties and strayed from the book with the closing argument/jury deliberation plot-point, but it was still good.
A Walk to Remember
@Bakerella, I totally agree with you, I love memoirs for a geisha, I think they did a beautiful job with the film!
@.twist.: Really? I hated the movie version of Dracula. Book was waaaaay better, imo. You're talking about the one w/ Winona Ryder, Anthony Hopkins, and Keanu Reeves? Maybe it was just the acting that left a bad taste in my mouth. And I felt like it left out so much. Meh, to each their own.
I thought The Notebook was an awesome movie and the ending was much better than the book!
This only kinda counts but Sex and the City (tv show) is soooo much better than the books.
I cannot believe people liked the Time Travelers Wife movie better than the book, that movie is bad on its own forget about as a book adaptation.
I thought The Notebook was an awesome movie and the ending was much better than the book!
@Wonderwoman217: I did love it. But I also have a huge love of cheesy horror/vampire movies. Which Dracula was. I found the book a tad dry (although good), and the movie brought more to it for me. I also have a major hard on for anything vampire (excluding twilight). I'm obsessed. So, I think that's part of where my love of that movie comes from.
Gone with the Wind and The Godfather. Both amazing, iconic movies. Both also based on books that have engaging plotlines and characters but iffy writing at times.
I mean, don't get me wrong, I love Gone with the Wind, and I read it all the time in the bubble bath, but she's not the greatest writer in the world. Both that and the Godfather are a little...pulpy...which is part of why they're fantastic movies.
@Wonderwoman217: Agreed about A Time to Kill. I think I like most movies of John Grisham novels better than the books.
@.twist.: I think, maaaaybe if I hadn't read the book, I would appreciate it for the vamp story it is. I'm a bit of a vamp whore myself, and tbh, the book was a bit like soft-core porn for me 
Speaking of vamps, after I finish the King book I'm on, I'm gonna dive head-first into the entirety of Anne Rice's vampire chronicles, and follow it with the witches of Mayfair. (I hear she's starting on a werewolf series, with a tie in to the witches) I've read Interview, Lestat, Pandora and Queen of the Damned, but it's been several years, and I read them all out of order, kind of a la carte, so I wanna go back through chronologically.
@Wonderwoman217: Huh. Maybe I haven't gotten to the best parts of the book yet. LOL. I put it down to read a few other books, so I haven't finished it yet, but so far there hasn't been a single person who's had sex? Or maybe I'm just that desensitized?
I have read ANY Anne Rice Vampire Novels (shame on me, I know), I started reading her Sleeping Beauty novels, and I got so bored of Sleeping Beauty getting dragged around by the neck, naked and getting spanked. Like really? haha... So Anne Rice hasn't been in my good books (literally!).
If you're looking for a different take on vampires, you know, to spice things up a little, I recommend a book called Let the Right One In. I thought it was really good and very different from the traditional tale of vampires, which was refreshing.
Also, if you haven't already, I also am loving the Sookie Stackhouse Novels. They do have lots of other super natural beings like werewolves, shifters, etc. But it's pretty good, light vampire entertainment.
@futuremrskline: I agree with A Walk To Remember! I just love Mandy Moore :)
I'm surprised so many of you liked The Time Traveler Wife in movie form. I thought it was awful and did a really poor job conveying how special the relationship between Henry and Clare was. Also, I love her, but Rachel McAdams is NOT Clare and I wish they had chosen a more Clare-ish actress to play Clare rather than one they knew would sell tickets. And I know it's like this with most movies, but there was just SO much from the book that didn't make it into the movie and the story lost a lot of its nuances because of that. It's one of my top 10 favorite books ever. The movie, I found, was forgettable.
While I will always love the book versions of Lord of the Rings (it was my first "big" book back in grade 6, and one of the few books that FI and I have both read and enjoyed), the movie version trumps them for me. Just cutting Tom Bombadil alone makes it that much more bearable! 
For those who couldn't get past the confusing beginning of Time Traveller's Wife, please attempt it again. I promise you that it gets sooooo much better. I was literally putting it aside because I didn't want it to end. The movie version, while good, suffers in comparison.
@.twist.: Meh, it wasn't so much anything sexual, but more of an intimacy aspect. Really, any good vamp story where there's feeding/biting of humans in a non-psycho killer kind of way, will do it for me. Then again, most vamp stories do that for me :) I have a fetish But Dracula was written in such a way that there's an emotional intimacy amongst so many of the characters, so I think that had something to do with it.
@Shosha1: I'm glad they cut Tom too! I mean... I always thought that was really funny, in the book, that everyone's going on and on about this ring and how dangerous it is and how seductive and EVERYONE is bewtiched by this ring... and then in the first half of the first book you meet Tom who just totally isn't seduced/ effected at all!!
It's the reason in the movie they made Faramir enchanted by it too (when in the book he's not)...
like .twist., i loved the stardust movie - more than the book, actually.
@Mrs Grape: Atonement. I am NOT a crier at books or movies, and both versions did me in at the end. It was beautifully filmed, too. They really did it justice.
I agree!
Also enjoyed Misery (Kathy Bates was the best movie villian ever). And both Mystic River and Gone Baby Gone.
I think I posted this in the other thread, but The Notebook! The ending of the movie was so much better than the book. Admittedly, I did watch the movie first, and then read the book - just wasn't a fan.
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