Books that should be made into movies

[Joe Pluta]

Grave of the Fireflies
I've read enough about this movie to not want to see it; depicting post-war suffering without addressing the root causes of the war is not my cup of tea. However, if this is your sort of thing, you might enjoy some of the series named at this site. I particularly like the description of Texhnolyze:

Combines the lighthearted cheerfulness of End of Evangelion with the sunny outlook of Now and then Here and There.

Joe

[Jason Menard]

Originally posted by Joe Pluta:
depicting post-war suffering without addressing the root causes of the war is not my cup of tea.

Not to further digress too much from the topic, but I thought one of the points of that film was that the roots of their suffering aren't of much consequence to them. Bothering to address those issues in that story would have fundamentally damaged it imho.
[ February 14, 2004: Message edited by: Jason Menard ]

[Jason Menard]

Back on topic... I'd like to see a good movie made from one of HP Lovecraft's stories. I suppose Re-Animator was probably the best so far. There have been several others, but they really were rather poor for the most part, not to mention low budget. Now there were two movies that were heavily influenced by the works of Lovecraft that were really good: John Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness, and Dagon. Neither of those two was directly from one of his stories though. If we could get a couple as good as those two I'd be happy.

[Joe Pluta]

Not to further digress too much from the topic, but I thought one of the points of that film was that the roots of their suffering aren't of much consequence to them. Bothering to address those issues in that story would have fundamentally damaged it imho.
The fact that the movie is nearly universally presented as an anti-war movie would seem to contradict that statement. Removed from the context of the war, what was the premise of the movie? That suffering occurs? Not much a message there.
Anyway, I have no strong feelings on the matter. It's a movie, nd each person has different tastes.
Me, if I want to see a movie about war, I'll watch Saving Private Ryan. If I want to watch a movie about redemption and inner freedom, I'll watch Shawshank Redemption. And if I want to see a movie about the power of the human spirit, I'll watch What Dreams May Come (but bring a whole box of kleenex for this one).
Joe

[Damien Howard]

Originally posted by Mapraputa Is:
DH: I just watched my 2nd Miyazaki film last night, that guy is brilliant. I can't remember watching any sort of animation that is even close to the greatness of his work. I mean sure Lion King and works from Pixar are all nice films, but they just don't even come close to the two films I saw, Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke. Ok, but I'm hijacking the forum again. Sorry about that, I just get off on tangents sometimes, I can't help myself.
Are we talking about animation? Hedgehog in The Fog (zip, ~24MB) received the first prize in Japan last year. They called it "the best animation ever" or something like that. Just curious what your opinion is!
[end of hijack]

The quality of the animation was very poor. Since the story wasn't in English, I don't think it is fair for me to comment on the story based only on what I could interpret from the pictures. Also it is a short not a full fledged movie, so it is also unfair to compare it against full length movies IMHO atomfilms.com has some excellent shorts, both animated and live action

[Mark Spritzler]

The SpellSinger Novel's from Alan Dean Foster.
"Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand, although I think it would be three movies to get the entire story in.
"Stranger in a Strange Land" Robert Heinlein. I just want to see how they handle the sex scenes.
Mark

[R K Singh]

Originally posted by Mark Spritzler:
"Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand, although I think it would be three movies to get the entire story in.

But it took only one movie to make "The Fountainhead".

[Mapraputa Is]

DH: The quality of the animation was very poor. Since the story wasn't in English, I don't think it is fair for me to comment on the story based only on what I could interpret from the pictures.
The story, words aren't that important here. Actually, I was interested in whether visual script can be interpreted without them. It's a story about a little Hedgehog who is going to visit his friend Bear. Bear is waiting for and worries about him, that's basically all. The last part can be confusing, here Hedgehog falls into a river and Somebody takes him to the land.
I sometimes wonder how my cat sees the world. In this animation Hedgehog is humanized, yet some of this "naive" vision is grasped I believe.

[Mani Ram]

I would love to see Mahabharata in big screen.
I have read few English versions of Mahabharata, but none of them impressive. I heard from my friend that
this version is good, but I haven't read it yet.

[Richard Hawkes]

Originally posted by David O'Meara:
Oh, maybe the Belgariad from David Eddings, but likewise not anything since that. The problem is that it would take at least 3 movies, and the books are nowhere near as good as Tolkein's. They might be easier to translate to a film than LOTRs. I'd certainly enjoy it just for the nostalgia!
Originally posted by Damien Howard:
I'd like to see more movies based on works by Philip K. Dick (the guy who did do android dreams of electric sheep [which was turned into blade runner] and minotity report) - Me too. Blade Runner and Minority Report are the only decent treatments of his work I thought. Total Recall was fun, but only in the way RoboCop was fun. Scanner Darkly is my fav K Dick novel though I don't know what to expect from a movie of the same - a David Lynch style might suit it.

[Richard Hawkes]

Originally posted by Jason Menard:
Someone mentioned wishing there were a movie based on Huxley's Brave New World. Well, such a movie does exist unfortunately. It was a made for TV movie that did little justice to the book.
There was another one made in 1980 (for TV) that I had to watch as part of my GCSE English course. That was pretty naff too.

[Jim Yingst]

Re: Brave New World. Cool. Now if only someone were to post some sort of link to, I dunno, a reference site of some sort that had all this info. Maybe someplace where you could look up Aldous Huxley by name...
[ February 16, 2004: Message edited by: Jim Yingst ]

[Phil Chuang]

I've been reading a lot of John Ringo lately, and a lot of his stuff reads like a Sci-Fi Tom Clancy, but not too overly technical. He's a pretty good wordsmith, a lot of his descriptions are pretty vivid and you can easily create your own mental scenary - which makes his books ripe for movie adaptation. Check out his Legacy of the Aldenata series and his March Upcountry series with David Weber

[Frank Silbermann]

If you like police dramas, I think they should make a series of movies from the Stakeout Squad series, by D. A. Hodgman:
_Line of Fire_ (Stakeout Squad #1)
_Miami Heat_ (Stakeout Squad #2)
and
_The Color of Blood_ (Stakeout Squad #3)

[Yuriy Grechukhin]

Originally posted by Jim Yingst:
[QB]I've got several favorites that might make good miniseries (i.e. series, in UK terminology) rather than movies. E.g.
    Hyperion & Fall of Hyperion - Dan Simmons
    Startide Rising - David Brin
    The Song of Ice and Fire - George R.R. Martin (one full TV season per book)

If someone would ever think of making A Song of Ice and Fire miniseries, I'm afraid it would be screwed up by bad acting and removed events or even storylines; there's way too much going on to put it on the screen.

[Phil Chuang]

Originally posted by Yuriy Grechukhin:

If someone would ever think of making A Song of Ice and Fire miniseries, I'm afraid it would be screwed up by bad acting and removed events or even storylines; there's way too much going on to put it on the screen.

Heh, imagine someone trying to adapt Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series

[Jim Yingst]

Actually Jordan would probably be improved by removing stuff. I stopped after three books, with a distinct feeling that too many trees had been sacrificed for too little actual story. Based on reviews on Amazon, the series has gone further downhill in later volumes. I read Martin, I want more; I read Jordan, I want less.
Bad acting - well that's an issue for any movie or show. When we say something should be made into a movie or TV series, I think we usually mean, a good movie or TV series, with good acting etc.
[ February 20, 2004: Message edited by: Jim Yingst ]

[Mark Fletcher]

How about a remake of 1984?
Im currently reading "Glue" by Irvine Welsh, and after the rubbish that was "Filth" I reckon he's still good, even if his books are all set in roughly the same setting. "Glue" would make a good TV series, IMHO
Moving on, his next book "Porno", his latest attempt to cash in on "Trainspotting" might be worth turning into a film. I read than Euan McGregor was approached to resume his role as Renton, but I havent heard any more. Perhaps Danny Boyle will pick this up after his next movie is complete.
Somebody mentioned HP Lovecraft, wasnt one of his stories (plot was something like, a guy walks into a seaside town, all the folks have a strange fishlike look about them, he discovers that they all worship some god of the sea or something, he makes a break for it), being made into a film?
Mark

[Matthew Phillips]

"Atlas Shrugged" and Philip Pulman's works would make good movies. I'd like to add "Damnation Game" by Clive Barker as well.