First some housekeeping: for those hearty souls who read this post (<5), you’ll be excited to learn that I’ve begun my annual read of Rose by Martin Cruz Smith, number 15 by my count. Feel free to check it out for the first time.
With that bit of smug superiority out of the system (or is it a sad admission?), let us turn our attention to today’s blogpost, a relative quickie…
It’s no easy thing to successfully adapt a beloved piece of literature into an equally satisfying movie. Whereas a book can meander, a movie depends on a certain tightness of structure to keep its running time and budget manageable. Which is why audiences familiar with a particular book often leave the theater grumpy that certain scenes, plot lines and characters have been discarded. On the flip side, a movie adaptation can be too slavish to its