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IIRC, the dialogue for the film Virginia Woolf is very much like if not pretty much verbatim from the play. And most of the power of that film is simply the great cutting dialogue and explosive performance of the four leads, especially Burton and Taylor. Not sure I would count that as much of an adaptation, that was almost a filmed play.

Good point, but I don't think that takes away from the film at all. It was the correct choice to preserve much of the feel of a play by using so much of the original dialogue, long takes, etc... The movie did depart in some ways (it was shot with multiple camera angles, close-ups, etc... and was staged more like a movie than a play. Also, the scene at the bar in the movie was invented for the movie if I remember correctly.) True, it's the great performances from the actors that really make it, but it's a film with a legitimate identity and style of its own in my opinion.

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I don't want to be the Thread Police, but I think posters should have to have read the book first, before they saw the movie, or put an asterisk by it. If you see the movie first, you have so many ideas in your head because of what you saw about the characters and locations and everything else that it completely distorts (for better or worse, it doesn't matter) the experience you would have had coming to the book fresh.

 

Isn't it true of the exact opposite as well?

 

Either one you're getting to first is going to form the way you see/think of the movie/characters.

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If anyone says "Starship Troopers", I will stuff them in an oil drum and dump them in a landfill.

 

I could not agree more.

 

How about Fantastic Voyage though? I thought it was pretty darn faithful to the book.

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Good books/movie I read/saw:

 

Found a list:

 

American Psycho

Catch 22

A Clockwork Orange

The Day of the Triffids

Devil in a Blue Dress

The English Patient

Fight Club

Get Shorty

The Godfather

The Hound of the Baskervilles

Jaws

LA Confidential

Lolita

Lord of the Flies

The Maltese Falcon

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

The Outsiders

Rebecca

The Spy Who Came in From the Cold

The Talented Mr Ripley

To Kill a Mockingbird****** (My Favorite book/movie)

 

Others off the top of my head:

Almost all the Raymond Chandler/Daishell Hammett books/movies The Thin Man, etc

The James Cain books/movies: Double Indemnity, Postman Always Rings Twice, Mildred Pierce

Graham Greene: The Third Man

Many other vintage crime novels

The Natural

Henry V, Halmet, Julius Caesar

 

GREAT LIST...I'm going to cut and paste and view and review a number of them.

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