Great Books, Great Movies?

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Saw the trail for Baz Lurhman's The Great Gatsby the other day. Meowza! I'm psyched. So much decadence! So much art deco coolness!

Think I'm going to have to reread Fitgerald's classic before I watch it because I'm one of those annoying people who likes to lean over during movies-based-on-books and whisper, "That's not at all how it went down in the book."

I guess I'm on a book to to film roll here. My book club is reading The Thin Man by Dasheille Hammett which got turned into a hilarious six movie series with the perfectly cast Myrna Loy and William Powell. (And their dog who probably appears in more NY Times crossword puzzles than any another animal, except for perhaps an emu: Asta.)

Made between 1934 to 1947, these movies are a kind of shocking reminder of just how much things changed for women over those years for the worse. When you meet Loy's character Nora she's all laughs and adventures and skin and boozin' with the love of her life (Powell/Nick), and by the last one she's a buttoned-up Mom who's no longer allowed to help in any of Nick's detective work. Ugh.

Also on my book to film roll is George R.R. Martin's series A Song of Ice and Fire, better known as Game of Thrones thanks to the successful HBO series of that name.

I just finished book #3 last night and HOLY CRAP this series just keeps getting better. Steven and I are considering buying two copies of book #4 because neither of us wants to wait for the other one to read it first. At first we thought that might be a little excessive, and then we thought no, our bar tabs are excessive-- we can pony up the cash equivalent of two IPA's and support an author we enjoy.

One last book-to-film thought: for the past couple of weeks I've been asking people if there's a book-to-film out there where the movie is actually better than the book because it always seems like people are whining about the injustice that mediocre movies to do amazing books. I hadn't been able to think of one myself until BAM! It hit me:

Sorry Nicholas Sparks. I understand you are prolific and loved by many-a-folk, but your printed word did not stand a chance against the Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams heat.