Yearly Archives: 2011

The Hunger Games Anticipation

Why are you interested in this adaptation?

Rachel-

I am interested in this adaptation because, like everyone else last year, I read the Hunger Games Trilogy over the summer. Initially, I was resistant to reading them because I felt that reading about kids murdering each other would be too stressful, but I gave in. I didn’t have to wait at all to read the complete trilogy because I began the first book only a few months before Mockingjay was published. Good thing, too–I was instantly obsessed. These books are a return to the type of science fiction I read as a child, and thus, I liked them very much. They are a return to the dystopia youth fiction, often shockingly violent and generally interested in psychology and sociology, that forces a young mind to examine its own preconceptions. Books like Ender’s Game, 1984, The Girl Who Owned a City, The Giver (which connects pretty easily to the self-sufficient, nature survival novels like Hatchet or My Side of the Mountain that were also pretty popular with my fellow elementary school attendees).  I will say that the first book is far better than its sequels. There are lots of reasons for that, but it is true. Continue reading →

5 Book To Movie Adaptations And Their Close Casting Calls

 

We all know, or I hope we know, that normally the first choice for a role is not the choice that gets used in movies. Between scheduling conflicts, or “creative differences” actors and actresses quit and move on. This is often a very good thing, such as Jack Nicholson not getting the role of the dad in A Christmas Story, or Kellan Lutz not getting the role of Edward in Twilight. These things happen for a reason. So here are the top 5 book to movie adaptations that had close casting calls. Continue reading →

“Aping Plots and Themes As Best They Can” by Jeffrey Poehlmann

I just put down my copy of Pierre Boulle’s 1963 opus, Planet of the Apes, as translated by Xan Fielding. “Put down” may not be the most accurate phrasing here — I closed the app on my phone and proceeded to do some web surfing for a while. That was primarily to verify the number of  movies spun off of this relatively slender volume: seven films and two television series, at least one video game and several supporting documentaries and behind-the-scenes projects shot up on the IMDB site in short order. At first blush, these varied projects, most of which I have seen, bare little resemblance to the book used as their source material beyond the conceit that apes somehow supplant man as the dominant species of their planet. Continue reading →