Books and Movies

Thanks to some recommendations to join GoodReads, I've absorbed more books in the last year than I've managed to get through my entire adult life.  Mostly part to Audible, but there are few that I've flipped pages electronically and IRL.

What I've found most interesting is my desire to read/listen to books that were adapted into screenplays.  I am a bit of film nerd so I find myself slowly broadening my imagination with each book and movie.  I find I'm better able to invision characters, settings and most profoundly - emotion for the literature.

When I finish the book I frantically want to see the director's vision of the material.  Sometimes I agree with the adapatation, other times I feel they're way off.  I also find it interesting what the focus of the adpatation is.

For a standard move run time I understand one can't possibly fit the whole story into the production.  The nerdy film side me is pretty good at seeing the details in the shots that convey what might have been an entire chapter in the book.  I find this aspect of the comparisons most fascinating.

My memory of events in the books versus the movie are sometimes at odds, but I think I'm getting the most comprehensive experience by marrying the two in my mind.

Recently I've been reading and watching many outdoor survival themed plots.  In no particular order:

• Seven Years in Tibet
• The Long Walk
• Walk In the Woods
• Into the Wild
• Wild

Of all the movie adaptations, Wild I think was best.  The narrative of the others far out weighed the screenplay.  I found their stories really made me feel the struggle.  The movies seemed to miss the mark.  Maybe I prefer screenplay adaptations of this theme to be more documentary styled than blockbuster I suppose.

Wild stuck with me the most.  Perhaps it was Reese's perfromance over Brad Pitt, Ed Harris, Colin Farrel, Nick Nolte and Robert Redford.  Maybe the 'guys' were to big to act the struggle convincingly enough.   Reese however had the vulnerabilty in her journey.  At any moment you could believe she might fail.

I would put The Long Walk in second.  If Farrel and Harris weren't involved in this I think it would have been more in tune with the theme.

Next on my list is The Grey.