hooo.

[kaigou]

Kifed this link from Tiercel, who had it posted awhile back but I'd never followed it...damn, I should've. You want Narnia? You want Disney doing Narnia? Here's your response, babe.

Cripes, they're doing a live-action version of Charlotte's Web...with Julia Roberts as Charlotte? Yegawdz.

Comments

[theotherdigit.livejournal.com]

Regardless of whether it's Disney or not, I don't think I've seen a single book-based movie that was better than the book it was based on. So other than the shiny visuals? Chances are I'd be disappointed either way >_>.

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

No, you're being realistic. The visual medium is completely different from the (mental?) book medium. The dialogue is different, the pacing, the way things are described -- in a book, I could take a paragraph to describe A's reluctance, B's fists clenching and shoulders hunching, A's sideways glances, then B relaxing and letting the issue go. In a movie, that lasts about two seconds...if that much.

Although there's a director...whose name escapes me...who did pay attention to pauses, like a book would. I can recognize his work, but I saw it first in Last of the Mohicans, which -- of all possible movies I could name -- is hardly one I'd peg ahead of time as having long, quiet, still camera shots. There are a number of them, where the camera simply rests on someone, for a good ten, fifteen seconds, and doesn't jump about, but lets the actor's face go through mobile changes, sometimes quite slowly.

Granted, that was a truly off-adaptation of a book, but then I read the original and YES I'm much happier with that version than the original's dressed-up version of outright racism. "You ain't bad for an Indian..." Gee, thanks, asshole. (Eh, well, product of his times.)

My point is that it's a rare scriptwriter who can really adapt a book to the movie medium and come up with something true to the spirit. But then, it's easier to see the two as completely different. At least that way if the movie sucks, it's independent -- in my head -- of the book.