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Clipperton posted:One hill I will die on is that The Chocolate War movie, in particular the ending, is a lot better and more hard-hitting than the book. Happy to elaborate if anyone's seen/read it and gives a poo poo Yes please! I’ve never seen the movie but I read the book in high school and really liked it.
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Oct 21, 2019 22:30
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| # ? May 4, 2024 05:52 |
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One thing I think the book version of A Scanner Darkly did better than the movie is sell the idea that after a certain point Bob Arctor and "Fred" the narc identify as two different people. Which is just easier to do as a book with narration.
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Oct 21, 2019 22:54
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Clipperton posted:One hill I will die on is that The Chocolate War movie, in particular the ending, is a lot better and more hard-hitting than the book. Happy to elaborate if anyone's seen/read it and gives a poo poo I loved that book as a kid and never knew it was adapted to a movie, thanks for the rec
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Oct 21, 2019 23:06
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Right, here we go. Have to pick up my kid in a sec so this’ll be a bit rushed: Book: The Vigils find a way out of the chocolate-sale problem by selling them off at a lottery/“boxing match”, with protagonist Jerry Renault and bully Emil Janza trading blows at the behest of their schoolmates in the crowd. Before the match, the Vigils’ Assigner Archie Costello has to draw marbles out of a box; if he draws a black marble, he has to take Renault/Janza’s place in the ring. He draws white both times, and Janza beats Renault almost to death. The End. Moral: The System will always crush you, any chance at winning even a small victory is utterly illusory, you’re hosed. This certainly resonates with an adolescent-sadbrains worldview, and it’s a great capper to a great book, but there’s not a lot of nuance there and it’s almost cartoonishly grimdark (and the sequel Beyond the Chocolate War gets even grimmerdarker, although it’s still great). Film: Archie picks a black marble and takes Janza’s place in the ring, and it’s Renault who beats the poo poo out of him to the cheers of the crowd. At which point Renault sees all the other Vigils (and psycho acting-headmaster Brother Leon) in the bleachers with poo poo-eating grins, giving him a big thumbs-up. He’s played right into their hands; they’ve sold all the chocolates and gotten loose cannon Archie out of their way to boot (they probably even fixed it so Archie drew black in the first place). Renault is left alone, broken, announcing hopelessly that he should have just sold the chocolates in the first place. Moral: even if you think you’re rebelling against The System, unless you remember exactly who you’re rebelling against and why, it can offer you a meaningless concession and co-opt you without even breaking stride. I have seen this criticized by a bunch of people as a ‘happy ending’, which is mind-blowing to me because after Archie hits the canvas and Renault realizes what’s happened, he sees his dead mother in the bleachers looking horrified and disappointed in him. If anything it’s too on the nose, although apparently not enough for some people! Anyway, great movie and well worth watching as are all of Keith Gordon's, drat shame he mostly just does TV stuff these days.
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Oct 21, 2019 23:32
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drrockso20 posted:I dunno, I thought the animated adaptation of Dark Knight Returns was overall pretty drat good, and that the satire kept from the comic was still very much relevant cause most of those issues from the 80's are still around today, they just sometimes have different faces For my money TDKR is easily the best animated Batman movie, and one of the best Batman movies period.
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Oct 22, 2019 01:05
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also, re: The Godfather: no it's not a masterpiece, but since I read it I doubt a month has gone by without the phrase "enormous, blood-gorged pole of muscle" popping into my head out of nowhere, so it's got a certain staying power (it was referring to Sonny's hog)
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Oct 22, 2019 03:28
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I recently watched the movie version of The Black Stallion, and out of curiosity read the book afterwards; I never read it as a child. The movie was much better. Granted the book was, I understand, written by a teenager, but still it reads like a feature-length episode of Leave it to Beaver, which sucks absolutely all dramatic tension out of the story. Making the main character younger, cutting dialogue down to a minimum, and giving him some more complex motivation for his actions works wonders. The only thing I think the book did better was the racing silks Alec wears at the end--just a plain green jersey and cap versus the ridiculous outfit they give him in the movie.
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Oct 27, 2019 07:19
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| # ? May 4, 2024 05:52 |
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After seeing Jojo Rabbit I'm pretty curious about the book now - apparently it's much much darker. Library has it but queued up.
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Oct 28, 2019 04:39
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