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Post by Samildanach on Jul 22, 2009 10:01:04 GMT -5
I saw Order and Prince at the weekend (the former on dvd as a preparation for the latter). Although Prince is more visually dramatic, I got more enjoyment from the paranoia and doubt that was rife in Order.
I can't compare them to the books though. I gave up on the books after Goblet, when I realised that the increasing length of each book was a result of more filler, not necessarily more content.
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Post by Aguila Saber on Jul 22, 2009 10:20:19 GMT -5
It did not find it difficult to follow the plot in book 7, no.
The book themselves are full of late omissions to keep the reader guessing and not having read an earlier book simply adds to those omissions which are so prevalent anyway.
When it comes to scene selection for the film, the closest film to Prince would be Goblet of Fire, but you hadn't seen that either so I guess it is no help. The two books are probably similar when it comes to the social interaction.
I can say that the perception of film 6 will differ if you have read book 7 as compared to if you have not. There are some nods in a couple of scenes which relevance will be clear only if you have read book 7.
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Post by Black Cat on Jul 22, 2009 12:22:35 GMT -5
I know, I'm late, but I saw Tranformers last Monday. Had my own little private screening since I was alone in the cinema.
Pretty good movie, like it was said earlier, the final battle was a little bit too long.
So, Unicron in the third movie?
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Post by zipp on Jul 22, 2009 20:29:34 GMT -5
I know, I'm late, but I saw Tranformers last Monday. Had my own little private screening since I was alone in the cinema. Pretty good movie, like it was said earlier, the final battle was a little bit too long. So, Unicron in the third movie? Yeah, the last 50 minutes of that movie ruined it for me. Just too long a scene of tanks fighting generic robots. Should've focused on the constructor bots, Fallen, Megatron, and Sky Scream versus Optimus/Radimus. That would've been SWEET.
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Post by Black Cat on Jul 22, 2009 22:31:03 GMT -5
BTW, what happened to Wheelie, the little RC monster truck? He kinda disappeared just before the final battle for no apparent reason and not seen again. If a director's cut is made, the should cut in the final battle and show the fate of Wheelie.
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Post by Simey on Jul 24, 2009 19:24:32 GMT -5
Of course, we all know the films are pale shadows compared to the books Generally, yes. But the film of The Prisoner of Azkaban comes off better than the book for my money. Various reasons including it being a stunning looking film, having a superb score, boasting terrific performances, having David Thewlis in it and being beautifully directed by the brilliant Alfonso Cuarón. The big improvement from the book though is that SPOILER it doesn't have dozens of plot lines that all - every single one - tie neatly together at the end. What bothered me about Film 5 is that it missed a great opportunity to cut out all the extraneous stuff that makes TOotP such a mess and instead focused so much on that very same extraneous stuff that the really important plot elements were relegated to a few short moments here and there - calling the film The Order of the Phoenix when the Order themselves were hardly in it and did almost nothing whatsoever when they were present was a bit of a joke. I believe the same director is responsible for the new one, so what enthusiasm I may have had is dampened somewhat. But I suppose I should try and be optimisitic....except that I didn't even like the book very much. Darn. I've gone through peaks and troughs of Harry Potter enthusiasm, and having read 1-6 and seen 1-5 I've mostly lost interest, but the film of TPoA is something I still love - terrific stuff!
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Post by Beowuuf on Jul 25, 2009 0:49:27 GMT -5
To be fair to the new film, when I try and remember the book, I cannot remember a single thing apart from the potions book, the memory thing, and the cave at the end, and they are all there. The rest was probably filler in the book. In the film, the bits around those memorable bits are heaps of humour and tension so it all works.
I don't think two of the important emotional beats in the end didn't land well. However, I thought the shorthand bit with the wands at the end was very effective, and was a good example of the strengths of cinema versus print.
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Post by Samildanach on Jul 25, 2009 5:53:59 GMT -5
calling the film The Order of the Phoenix when the Order themselves were hardly in it and did almost nothing whatsoever when they were present was a bit of a joke Having never read the book, I did wonder why that installment was named after a pretty minor feature. To be fair to the new film, when I try and remember the book, I cannot remember a single thing apart from the potions book, the memory thing, and the cave at the end, and they are all there. The rest was probably filler in the book. A friend who's a Potter fan told me that there were a lot more memories in the book, and he was disappointed that so few made it into the film. They were his favourite parts of the book.
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Post by Beowuuf on Jul 25, 2009 6:00:48 GMT -5
There may well have been, but two year later I can't remember them except as a plot point! The sad fact of the later books, very few of the parts register with me after the fact
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Post by Simey on Jul 25, 2009 18:11:46 GMT -5
Having never read the book, I did wonder why that installment was named after a pretty minor feature. It's a shame. Most of the good points of the book - of which there are a fair few, I think - are either missed out or relegated to minor references, whilst far too much of the stuff that was either filler or reasonable enough material that ultimately went nowhere very much - of which I recall there being rather a lot - is brought to the fore and made the main focus of the story. The third and fourth films seemed to show that they'd finally got the idea that a film is - Newsflash! - a very different beast to a book and therefore a lot of adaption was needed to make the stories work on the screen. Granted, this didn't do The Goblet of Fire film any favours, since the fun stuff in the book is the background material, whilst the main plot - which they rightly pared the story down to in the film - is absurd. However, seemingly going in exactly the opposite direction to what would have been sensible in adapting the fifth book was very unfortunate and rather bizarre. The sad fact of the later books, very few of the parts register with me after the fact That's probably what it comes down to really: she had three rollicking good plots, and - whilst not perfect - the first three books stand up very well upon those firm foundations. The subsequent books - as far as I've read (4-6) - have plenty of nice ideas strewn around inside them, but there isn't a good, solid main plot to be found anywhere, so they're over-burdened with filler, because the filler is often more entertaining than what passes for the main focus of the story, and they're messy and not terribly memorable. It would be nice if the screen writer(s) would realise this and do something to rectify it!
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Post by Samildanach on Jul 26, 2009 19:37:56 GMT -5
This is nothing to do with new movies, but there isn't a better place for it to go.
I just read this on the infamous tvtropes.org:
A lot of Die Hard fans don't know that the first movie of the series is based on a novel (Nothing Lasts Forever, 1979). But wait - there's more!. The book that Die Hard was based on was itself a sequel to a 1966 novel, The Detective. The Detective had a film adaptation in 1968 starring Frank Sinatra which is unrelated to the Die Hard series. Moreover, Die Hard 2 was also based on a novel — a novel entirely unrelated to the novel on which the first film was based. (But all Die Hard sequels started unrelated)
Now I keep trying to imagine Sinatra in Die Hard.
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Post by Simey on Jul 26, 2009 20:08:59 GMT -5
Now I keep trying to imagine Sinatra in Die Hard. ;D I'm not sure he would have wielded the automatic weapons as convincingly as Bruce Willis, nor pulled off gamely struggling on against the bad guys despite having walked barefoot through broken glass. But at least he could have broken into song at the end and sung that Christmas song on the credits himself!
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Post by Beowuuf on Jul 27, 2009 0:36:04 GMT -5
Weird!
And of course the film 12 rounds, thta is coming out/has came out recently, must be the original script that the writer of die hard 3 had adapted for die hard 3!
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Post by Samildanach on Jul 27, 2009 1:53:08 GMT -5
According to the Wikipedia entry on the novel:
Nothing Lasts Forever is a sequel to Thorp's 1966 novel The Detective. It follows Detective Joe Leland, who is visiting the Klaxon Oil Corporation's headquarters in Los Angeles, where his daughter Steffie Leland Gennaro works. While he is visiting, a German terrorist team led by Anton "Tony" Gruber takes over the building. Leland remains undetected and fights off the terrorists one by one, aided outside the building by LAPD Sergeant Al Powell.
In 1975, author Roderick Thorp saw the film The Towering Inferno. After seeing the film, Thorp had a dream of seeing a man being chased through a building by men with guns. He woke up and took that idea and turned it into the The Detective sequel, Nothing Lasts Forever.
I'm actually a little curious to read it. Might be interesting. I doubt I can be bothered though, heh.
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Post by Black Cat on Jul 27, 2009 13:59:00 GMT -5
Funny that we talk about Die Hard since I just watched it for the first time this Saturday. I had watched the other three but not the first one.
So, basically:
Die Hard: based on the novel Nothing Lasts Forever Die Hard 2: based on the novel 58 minutes Die Hard With A Vengeance: based on a script named Simon Says which was originally conceived as a Brandon Lee action film, then later considered for use as the fourth installment of the Lethal Weapon series Live Free or Die Hard: based on A Farewell to Arms, an article written for Wired magazine.
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