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Post by mleducislander on Jan 28, 2008 18:43:57 GMT -5
This book is scheduled to be made into a movie sometime towards the end of 2008. Right now is a good time to check out what the fuss is about before the hype machine kicks in. (Some will argue that it already has, as the book was an Oprah book selection and won the Pulitzer prize).
Simply put...this is a great book. There are no chapters...it flows along, very much like a road (duh). There are basically only two characters, a father and his son, and the story chronicles their struggle to survive in a post apocalyptic world. It is in its own way a love story, but not like any you have read or seen before.
The writing is uniformly excellent. McCarthy has a command of vocabulary and phrasing that has clearly been well honed over the course of his dozen books or so, all highly regarded. An adaptation of his recent book "No Country for Old Men" is currently in theatres and up for various awards. I plan to see it. Have not yet, so for now can't comment, but surely this shows his work has a linear quality that lends itself to the screen as well as to the page...
I don't know how many BRHLers are into books these days, but this is a beautiful piece and may rekindle an interest in them and remind many of the power of the written word.
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Post by KingsGM on Jan 31, 2008 15:02:40 GMT -5
The power of the written word can only be judged by its ability to transfer to the big screen. That's how I know "Nothing Lasts Forever" (the book on which Die Hard was based) was one of the greatest novels ever written.
I will wait for the movie. Reading is for chumps.
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Post by mleducislander on Feb 1, 2008 1:24:35 GMT -5
Well, go see "No Country for Old Men" then, you may be pleasantly surprised...
I also wonder why there hasn't been a superlative version of "Moby Dick", "Ulysses", "The Lord of the Flies", "Animal Farm", "On the Road", or "Don Quixote" been made for the screen...makes me think that the people sitting around with their thumb up their collective asses waiting for the movie version are the true chumps....
How long did you have to wait to be introduced to the story of the Spartans vs. Persian behind "300"?...ohh, only 2,500 years or so...up until then you were likely to be too wrapped up in the thumb sucking, seizure inducing mythology of "Halo" to care...
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Post by KingsGM on Feb 1, 2008 10:50:55 GMT -5
300 was based off a comic book. I'll read those because even though they are books, they are kinda like TV as well.
And there have been movies made about most of those books, but they all sucked.
As for Halo, video games follow the opposite trend - if the game was good, the movie will suck. I'm sure when they eventually make a Halo movie, it will be a collosal pile of crap.
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Post by mleducislander on Feb 1, 2008 12:46:57 GMT -5
Well the comic book was based on "The History of the Peloponnesian War." by Thucydides...
My point is that screenplay adaptations don't write themselves, *someone* has to read the book and care about it enough to get the green light to get the film made whether its "The Shipping News" or yet another version of a Jane Austen novel. The readership still does matter and books do matter. The difference is that with a film you are seeing the directors singular interpretation of writers vision, while with a book each reader can get something different out of the author's ideas, and this can even change from reading to reading as well.
But I'm done with this argument...I understand its a sad but true fact that books matter less than they used to and a re going the way of the buggy whip.
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Post by Nashville Predators on Feb 2, 2008 23:47:02 GMT -5
Lord of the Flies? I remember watching that in Grade 10. Piggy gets hit with the rock... disturbing
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