Comments for Weekly Geeks 2009-27: Best Movie Adaptations

Weekly Geeks 2009-27: Best Movie Adaptations: 07/18/09

This week the Weekly Geeks site wants to know about our favorite (or "best") movie adaptations. I consider it a good movie adaptation if the film made me want to read (or re-read) the book.

I could have made a list two or three times longer than what I've picked but these seven were the first to come to mind.

The Ninth Gate (1999)
The Ninth Gate is based loosely on The Club Dumas by Arturo Pérez-Reverte. But wait! The book and the movie have almost nothing to do with each other! That's true and that's part of their charm. I saw the film first and fell head over heels for it with in the first ten minutes. Within the opening credits I also saw that it was based on a novel and after seeing the film I bought the book. I liked that I got two very compelling stories out of one adaptation. I now own both the book and the DVD and I read and watch both on a regular basis.

Rosemary's Baby (1968)
Rosemary's Baby started out as a novel by Ira Levin and has an interesting but somewhat silly sequel called Son of Rosemary (1987). I saw the film on late night TV when I was a teen and the next day went to the library to check out the book. I also checked out the sequel which happened to have been newly published.

Interestingly, though both these first films are done by Roman Polansky, they are very different approaches to adapting. Where the The Ninth Gate takes a very small B plot and develops it into a stand alone film, Rosemary's Baby is a very straightforward dot-to-dot retelling of the book.

Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948)
Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House was published in 1946 and adapted for film in 1948. It's been remade a few times too namely: The Money Pit (1986), The Dream House (1993) and Are We Done Yet? (1993) The novel is by Eric Hodgins and illustrated by William Steig. It's told from both the husband and wife's points of views through diaries and letters and some more conventional narrative. Both the book and the film are worth experiencing.

O Brother Where Art Thou? (2000)
O Brother Where Art Thou actually has a number of points of inspiration so it's not exactly an adaptation of book to film. The most obvious source material is Homer's Odyssey but there is also some of James Joyce's Ulysses (which itself is an adaptation of The Odyssey). On top of that though, the film is also an homage to another very funny film called Sullivan's Travels (1941).

The Snake Pit (1948)
The Snake Pit is another of those late night movies that I caught on a weekend. It's about a woman who is institutionalized for a nervous breakdown and is eventually scared sane by the seeing women far worse off than she is. The book is also called The Snake Pit (1946) and is by Mary Jane Ward.

The Streets of San Francisco: "Pilot" (1972):
The pilot episode of The Streets of San Francisco TV series was inspired by and adapted from a new mystery series by Carolyn Weston. She actually set Poor, Poor Ophelia in Santa Monica, California but I think moving the characters north to San Francisco was brilliant. I also prefer the new names for the characters. None the less, the pilot counts as a good adaptation to me because it did make me seek out the source material.

Hauru no ugoku shiro (2004):
Hauru no ugoku shiro is adapted from the Diana Wynne Jones novel Howl's Moving Castle (1986). It's wonderful anime but it definitely has Hayao Miyazaki's personal touch on it. Some characters are renamed, some are combined together into new characters and Howl's back story is obscured. The relationship between Sofi (Sophie) and Hauru (Howl) is also more like it is in the novel's sequel Castle in the Air (1990).

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Comment #1: Saturday, July, 18, 2009 at 15:25:22

Dreamybee

The Snake Pit sounds good. I love The Money Pit. No matter how ridiculous I always think it is, I crack up every time I catch a bit of it on TV. I think Philip Bosco did a great job in that. He only had a small role, but every time I see him in anything else, I always think of him as the general contractor at the end of the movie giving Tom Hanks some thinly-veiled relationship advice, and before I can ever remember why I'm always thinking, "Aww, I like him! He's such a sweet guy!"

Comment #2: Saturday, July 18, 2009 at 22:49:33

Pussreboots

The Snake Pit is a strong story both as a film and a book. Since you're such a fan of The Money Pit I'm almost certain you'd love Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House. There is a contractor who is giving Mr. Blandings advice on a variety of things throughout the film.

Comment #3: Saturday, July, 18, 2009 at 17:03:55

Lahni

I've never read any of those books or seen the movies! I guess I'll have to add some of them to my list.

Comment #4: Saturday, July 18, 2009 at 23:02:06

Pussreboots

I hope you enjoy the ones you pick. Thank you for stopping by.

Comment #5: Saturday, July, 18, 2009 at 18:27:38

Kristen

You have a few movies listed that I've never seen. I'll have to check them out!

Comment #6: Saturday, July 18, 2009 at 23:05:34

Pussreboots

Happy watching! Thanks for stopping by.

Comment #7: Saturday, July, 18, 2009 at 18:56:50

Nicola Manning

Love Rosemary's Baby, both book and movie. Same as you I saw the movie as a teen and went right out and read the book.

Mr. Blandings ...ahhhh.... big Cary Grant fan hear! One of my favourite of his movies. I've seen it many times and didn't know it was a book unitl much later and loved it too!

Comment #8: Saturday, July 18, 2009 at 23:08:16

Pussreboots

Rosemary's Baby was my introduction to Ira Levin. He's since become a favorite author of mine.

Like you I'm a Cary Grant film and I stopped to watch Mr. Blandings because of him and because I hadn't seen it before. The very next day I bought a copy of the book.

Comment #9: Saturday, July, 18, 2009 at 21:24:59

Cass

I love Rosemary's Baby, too. Did you happen to see the awful Roseanne episode (it was probably a Halloween special) based on it? It was ridiculous--but memorable, apparently, since I'm pretty sure I only saw it once.

Comment #10: Saturday, July 18, 2009 at 23:12:06

Pussreboots

I've probably seen the Roseanne episode but I don't remember it.

Comment #11: Sunday, July, 19, 2009 at 02:47:53

Maree

Interesting list. I've seen Ninth Gate, but not read the book, and read Rosemary's Baby but not seen the movie.

Happy Weekly Geeks :)

Comment #12: Tuesday, July 21, 2009 at 12:33:46

Pussreboots

Ninth Gate is very different than Club Dumas but you can see how one inspired the other. Rosemary's Baby the film though is very close to the book.

Comment #13: Sunday, July, 19, 2009 at 04:39:29

Rikki

I really like Rosemary's Baby. It was very close to the book, indeed. Never read the Club Dumas, but love the Ninth Gate.

Comment #14: Tuesday, July 21, 2009 at 12:36:03

Pussreboots

Club Dumas is similar in tone but the focus is on a very different set of books.

Comment #15: Sunday, July, 19, 2009 at 07:39:15

uncertainprinciples

Don't think I've seen any of the above, or read them, for that matter. I do want to see O Brother, Where Art Thou though.

Comment #16: Tuesday, July 21, 2009 at 12:39:01

O Brother is a good place to start. It's a wonderful film.

Comment #17: Tuesday, July, 21, 2009 at 14:49:53

unfinishedperson

Your post was a breath of fresh air after the typical Lord of the Rings posts most other participants this week so far had (although I included it too :). I don't think I ever saw The Snake Pit. I love how you included The Streets of San Francisco and an anime. Definitely not the typical answers.

Comment #18: Tuesday, July 21, 2009 at 12:50:46

Pussreboots

I did think about putting the 1970s animated Hobbit on my list but I decided in the end to leave it off. I didn't include the new ones because I wanted to focus on books (or TV shows) that inspired me to read books. I had already read the books by the time the recent films were made. The old animated one though got me into the series in the first place. I know it's a little back to front but I wanted to recognize a bunch of films that had inspired me to read great books.

Comment #19: Friday, July, 24, 2009 at 15:51:58

Memory

I'd forgotten that O Brother Where Art Thou? is a version of THE ODYSSEY! (Weird, considering that I always seem to talk about it in that context). It's one of my favourites, too.

Comment #20: Friday, July 24, 2009 at 13:04:36

Pussreboots

O Brother... is such a mixture of different things that it's easy to forget all the different things that have gone into it.