FilmRoar

Garth over at Dark Horizons has posted his list of the Top Ten Films of 2002

IFILM has posted streaming videos of this year’s Super Bowl commercials including new trailers for Daredevil, Matrix Reloaded, Terminator 3, The Hulk, and Charlies Angels: Full Throttle.

Conventional wisdom holds that it is unfair to compare movies based on books to their original sources because the book will always be better. The logic behind the argument is evident and hard to argue: A 300 page book has more room for narrative and can take its time developing characters and elaborating on detail in a way that movies cannot.

Even movies made from short stories such as Johnny Mnemonic (1995) seem incapable compared to their literary counterparts (though in the case of Johnny Mnemonic I would argue that Keanu Reeves’ cardboard acting had a definite impact on the quality of the movie).

I would venture to say that movies, for the most part, do not have the same cultural aspirations as literature, so filmic adaptations aim more to entertain and less to elucidate provoke deep thought in their audiences.

Whatever the reason, it is not hard to list a score of movies based on books that are simply ‘not as good as the original’. This begs the obvious question: “Are there any movies that are better than the books upon which they were based?” I have pondered the question for years and have only managed three titles for this list:
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A Japanese Trailer for Matrix II and III shows previously unseesn footage of what is to come.

Following the other studios Paramount Pictures has posted pictures of their upcoming 2003 releases.

Many fans of the Heinlein books complained about the movie adaptation of Starship Troopers. What the fans miss is that what you get is not a Heinlein book, but a Paul Verhoeven movie, and as a Verhoeven vehicle it is not that bad.
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What? You don’t like Donnie Brasco? Forgettaboutit!

Going from Grifters to Wise Guys seems as natural as, well, a movie with Al Pacino as a mafia man. What seems out of the ordinary but turns out to be extraordinary is Johnny Depp’s performance as an undercover FBI agent who comes perilously close to losing his own identity and becoming Donnie Brasco, the wiseguy he is supposed to be impersonating.
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