Film Fest - Catch-Up

Movies I hadn't got round to mentioning:

Charlie Bartlett (played by Anton Yelchin) is the hero a sweetly odd film about a high school student with, it seems, a real calling as a shrink... or maybe as a drug pusher?  Robert Downy Jr. as his unhappy Principal with a daughter.

The Tale of Despereaux is the animated quest of a brave mouse and a down on his luck rat - with a who's who of name actors doing vocals.  A good story and the first G rated movie I've seen in a while.  Luckily little kids don't fully understand the threaten-the-princess-with-eating-alive-by-rats thing, huh?  Or the death-in-Colosseum-by-cat thing either.  I liked the soup theme.

Image borrowed from Thany's Thoughts Blog, which has a good comparison of book to film

Something's Gotta Give with great performances by beautifully ripe Diane Keaton and Jack Nicholson.  (Who knew Keanu Reeves could be so charming?)

And on TV: watching the new season of Castle (the first ep is startlingly serious) and waiting on Bones (having finally caught up).

Conclusions?  All of these were, in their separate ways, worth watching.  Strange to say, but no duds in this bunch.

Book to TV

I'm kinda fascinated with the way a story is transmuted from one form of storytelling to another; in how books like the Lord of the Rings or Pride and Prejudice, for example, change as they become films or minseries, musicals or radio plays etc.  (Earlier post on this phenomenon re: Atonement.)

The latest such translation I've seen are the mysteries of author and forensic anthropologist Kathy Reichs.  After enjoying the TV show Bones, loosely based on her life and writing, I decided to read her first mystery Deja' Death.  One book is not enough to judge from, but I have noticed a few things:  the TV show, being a visual medium, emphasizes the "Ick!" factor of seeing the body-of-the-week, while the book emphasizes the deep cruelty and perversity of its crimes in a way the show skims over; the TV series is an ensemble piece, while this book at least, is a loner's story; and the book's main character, Dr. Temperance Brennan, is a pretty normal person with caught-in-a-thriller problems, but the Temperance of the TV series is more damaged, frozen emotionally by the circumstances of her upbringing... which adds a great deal of depth and room for character development.

So far I like the TV show better, mostly because of the secondary characters, but I'll definitely be reading a few more of the books.