I agree completely,

In the Da Vinci Code, I read it a year before most people even heard about it, and I always imagined Robert Langdon looking like Harrison Ford for some reason lol.

chemical_flare wrote:

QUOTE:
I agree completely,

In the Da Vinci Code, I read it a year before most people even heard about it, and I always imagined Robert Langdon looking like Harrison Ford for some reason lol.

Yeah because in the book, he is being described as resembling Harrison Ford ... no clue why they didn't get Harrison Ford to star as Robert Langdon, perhaps they asked him but he turned it down.

However, I think books are usually better than films as well. They provide a deeper insight into characters, make you understand their moves / behaviour, allow you to identify with / feel for these characters, enable you to imagine what the characters and the surroundings look like rather than being "dictated" a clear image and provide you with much more detailed information on why things happen and let you see the connections / events that lead up to certain occurences. If you watch a film, it's a clipped version of the book that can't feature/provide characters as developed and subtle as a book can. For instance, in the Lord of the Rings, Denethor was portrayed as a madman rather than the much more subtle character he really was, which I think was a shame.

Films are nice, but compared with the books they are based on they usually fail to please or at least disappoint you at some points where they leave out important stuff that is in the book or sort of distort the facts.<br /><br />Post edited by: Kev1n, at: 2007/03/31 15:10

they both rock! im a bookamovieholic! WOOOO!!!

Kev1n wrote:
Films are nice, but compared with the books they are based on they usually fail to please or at least disappoint you at some points where they leave out important stuff that is in the book or sort of distort the facts.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Post edited by: Kev1n, at: 2007/03/31 15:10[/quote]

This is my real problem with book movie transitions. Otherwise, the movie format is actually better at expressing action and scenery. If books didn't have the story tortured out of them before being placed on screen, movies would be so much more enjoyable. Books have the advantage in character development and personality. Movies have no real way of expressing character thoughts, and are harder pressed to maintain symbols and motifs.

I love books and films equally, but I've never seen a good adaptation from one to the other. What's more is that, I can really only enjoy books that are atmospherically and sincerely &quot;bookish,&quot; and I can only enjoy movies that are atmospherically and sincerely &quot;movieish.&quot; I can't stand books about actors and directors and I can't stand movies about writers or writing. You take a movie like &quot;Mulholland Dr.&quot;: it's a movieish movie to the core; about actors, directors, and movies in general, but beautiful and devastating in equal measure. Then you take a book like &quot;A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man&quot;: it's about a writer, the process of writing, and once again, it's simply beautiful.

Sometimes movies try to be slow, plodding and personal, like books--forsaking the only thing that keeps it from being a book in the first place: heard dialogue and seen action. Then there're times when you get books that try to be flashy and jumpy--in which the author seems to be ignorant of the fact that we can't see what they see, and that what's important instead is interior monologue and weighty thought.

I'm sure, in time, the mediums will fold and mix more freely, smoothly; but for right now the transitions are always kistchy and cheap, all failures through and through.

OK this is an old thread but I'm going to revive it.

I'll take audiobooks for the win!

Both have their flaws. Books are mere words, and require imagination to get them to do anything. Imagination is generally foggy, at best, unclear and confusing, particularly when dealing with large, complicated stories like Lord of the Rings. Movies are flawed in that they are short, you might spend days with a book, and only an hour and a half with a movie. With the example of Lord of the Rings, much clarity was provided, but the time constraints of a movie meant a great deal had to be diminished.

I believe video games will be the next great era of story-telling. Think about it, a good RPG will have a fantastic story, you'll spend maybe 50+hrs with it, maybe 30+ excluding fighting gameplay, and you also have the visual/audio sensations like in movies.

Then again, if I said movies would be used for complex and rich story-telling back when Charlie Chapman was silently jumping about, up to his old antics, perhaps you would have laughed.

Films for entertainment, books for smarts