FilmRoar

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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On Thursday I posted a news item about a quote George Lucas gave to FOX News suggesting there might be three more Star Wars movies to come. The response to the news posting got me to thinking and made me want to elaborate on this news:
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LaCie just announced a new 500 GB Portable FireWire Drive. If you are not sure what this is doing in a film discussion board, you have probasbly not done any digital animation, editing or compositing. The new 500GB drive sells for $949, a similar 400GB model for $899.

When I set up a half a terabyte at Will Vinton Studios for the animated TV show Gary & Mike (2001) it occupied a full rack and cost nearly $20,000. Common everyone, say it with me (and sound like Neo from The Matrix as you say it):

“Whoa!”

Last year I watched Harold and Maude (1971) with some friends. The DVD included a very curious theatrical trailer for the movie . The trailer was shot in a style that was popular in the ’70s of just showing seemingly random scenes from the movie without trying to add commentary or say too much about the movie’s plot. That preview style is one that usually does not work very well for me, but in this case it worked very well. It got me thinking about what makes a preview work.
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Grifter movies such as David Mamet’s House of Games (1987), Stephen Frears‘ The Grifters (1990), Ocean’s Eleven (2001) or Bryan Singer’s The Usual Suspects have long held a special interest for me. I am not sure why this is, but I suspect it is because the roles in these movies require strong acting, intelligent editing, and, most importantly, top-notch acting.
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Sunday night I had dinner with my friend Teresa, the most excellent animator who worked on (amongst others) Chicken Run. Teresa had a copy of the Geek Hierarchy to share with me. We got to talking about how animators fit on the chart and figured that two more tracks should be added to look something like this:

Stop Motion Animators
|
Puppeteers
|
Muppetteers
|
Marionettists

And:

Horror Movie Fans
|
People who know the names
of prosthetic artists from
horror movies
|
People who make their
own prosthetics

What do the Preview before the movie Say about the movie you are about to watch?
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