The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

True story: Author and Elle magazine editor Jean-Dominique Bauby, age 43, suffered a stroke in 1995 that rendered him almost completely paralyzed, though his abilities to think and communicate were unimpaired. In this debilitated state he actually DICTATED HIS ENTIRE AUTOBIOGRAPHY by blinking his left eye. If you're like me, though that is decidedly amazing, it also sounds like it makes for a really really boring movie.

Fortunately whoever made this movie has a better imagination than I do, so it was more than just two hours of a man blinking one eye. It was actually a pretty good (if understandably somber) movie.

Here's Bauby's one statement that impressed me the most: "I have decided to never feel sorry for myself again."

I kind of feel like now I'm required to watch My Left Foot.

The Age of Innocence

At wine book club tonight, our meeting was a multimedia extravaganza. After finishing our bottle of wine discussion on the book, we watched the movie adaptation. It's pretty rare that I get to watch a movie when the book is so fresh on my mind.

Well, of course I mentally catalogued all of the differences between the book and the movie. They left out a few minor characters (most notably Medora Manson and Mr. Welland) and changed a few names (Dallas became Theodore in one instance and Townsend in another, and two different Fannys became Annies), but there were only two major ideas that were left out. I mention both in my review of the book--the first was May Archer's unspoken monologue, the second was Dallas Archer's observation about the nature of communication in his parents' generation. But overall, the movie was very faithful to the book and was an excellent adaptation.

One thing that bothered me a little bit about the movie was the narrator. First of all, that there was one. It was a little awkward. However, the movie would have had to leave out so much without that device. Second of all, the narrator was an older-sounding woman who was never introduced. Who the heck was she, and how did she know all this stuff she was telling us? This was especially odd since the entire book was written from Newland Archer's point of view. It would have made much more sense to me if he had been the narrator.

Not surprisingly, I found the book better than the movie, although the movie was also quite good. If you have to choose between the two, I say read the book. If you can only spare two hours and nineteen minutes, the movie will do.

Dorian Gray

Is it bad that I pick movies based on the cute boys who are in them? Ben Barnes is not hard to look at. Except when he is raptly gazing about London with such an expression of naive innocence that he seems to be putting on an act. (Which he is, of course, but we are not supposed to be reminded of this fact while watching a movie.)

But Ben Barnes is not the only reason I watched this movie. We're back to that compulsion of watching every available film adaptation of the books I read.

It's difficult to avoid comparing the movie to the excellent book. Where the book was more nuanced and subtle, the movie was more creepified and overt. The book was intriguing and thought-provoking, but the movie took the book's concept and created what might almost be called a horror movie (or at least a thriller) out of it. The basic story is the same, and I even recognized a couple of direct quotes from the book, but overall the movie is given that distinct Hollywood sheen.

Not that this is entirely a bad thing. The movie made use of aspects of the medium that are not available in print, and this is as it should be. If a movie has nothing to add, why even make it in the first place? Anyway, as book-to-movie adaptations go, they did a fairly good job with this one; and, when I attempt to look at the movie as its own entity, I think it makes a perfectly entertaining and enjoyable way to spend an evening. Especially if you get to drink a glass of wine while watching.

I'm Not Scared

I read the book by the same name earlier this year, and finally got around to following my usual compulsion to watch the movie adaptation of every book I've read. This movie is in Italian with English subtitles, and it followed the book incredibly closely. This is not completely surprising as the book's author helped write the screenplay.

I was quite impressed by the acting done by all the children. What that means is that I was never distracted from the story by unrealistic or overblown portrayals. I was even more impressed when I discovered, by way of wikipedia, that the children were "local citizens with no filming or acting experience." It was pretty obvious that none of them had ever been on a Disney Channel TV show, anyway.

This movie strangely reminded me of an Italian Stand By Me (albeit with a very different soundtrack). That story didn't come to mind at all as I read the book, which is, I guess, why I found it strange that the movie made me think of it. More about the soundtrack: it was a string quartet, very beautifully done, and often very reminiscent of Pachelbel's Canon in D.

The ending of the film was slightly less ambiguous than the end of the book, but just barely.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

I can recognize a tad of French, a smidgen of German, and a fragment of Spanish, but Swedish? Heck no. That's a whole 'nother ball of spit. I did recognize a few words that sound just like their English counterparts, but that was as far as it went. Anyway, thank goodness for subtitles once again.

I read this book just a few months ago. Once I've read a book, I am frequently eager to watch it come to life on screen, though it doesn't always do so successfully; sometimes it may flop around jerkily like a revenant, sometimes it may be unrecognizable in its new incarnation--but in this case, the adaptation was excellent. I had hoped the movie would eliminate a lot of the blah blah blah that I found at the beginning and end of the book; for the most part it did, although the ending seemed to be a little stretched out--but it had to be, to complete the story.

It's a shame that all adaptations can't follow the book as closely as this one. Evidently Sweden has more respect for their own son than Hollywood has for most authors. A few parts were left out, some others were streamlined, but overall the movie was very faithful to the book. (Well, what I remember of it, anyway). Speaking of Hollywood, of course they want a piece of the action and a remake is already in the works. I don't see how they can improve upon the original, though I bet the new version will reveal the dragon tattoo much sooner than this one. American audiences won't be patient enough to wait an hour and a half to see it.

I really needed to wash dishes and iron clothes tonight, but the only thing I managed to do while watching this movie was to drink wine, since I didn't need my eyes for that. The evening was more fun that way anyway. Though it does mean tomorrow will be less so. But there's a tradeoff. I picked up a cooking tip from this movie: the secret to making meatballs is to wet your hands first. I don't remember that from the book. Will have to try it.

I must admit I don't know much about Sweden. I mean, I know it's between Norway and Finland, and I assume it gets pretty cold there, and my parents and sister have vacationed there (without me, I might add), but that's about all I know. So I looked up Sweden online and learned a couple of facts that I will now pass on to you. The country is a little bit bigger than California (which surprised me--I would have guessed it was the size of Florida--I was way off) but its population isn't much greater than that of New York City. There, don't you feel smarter already?

The Outsiders

Believe it or not, I'd never seen this movie before. I haven't even read the book yet. I really wanted to read it before watching the movie, but the disc showed up from netflix before I had a chance to find a copy of the book. I previously only had a vague idea about a gang of greasers, and I knew the phrase, "Stay gold, Ponyboy," but that was as far as my preconceived notions of the movie went.

This is a gripping story--almost good enough to make me forget the total cornball music. You know how they're remaking so many movies nowadays, as if they've run out of ideas and just started over again at the beginning? Well, I don't think they should remake this movie, but I do think it needs to be released with an updated soundtrack. I mean, the music is that bad. With better music this movie could be seriously awesome. Even though I get a weird feeling that the choreographed mayhem of the rumble reminds me of Braveheart.

I already knew the book was supposed to be really good, but now I have especially high hopes for it. I bet it might be excellent.

Speak

I used to be a contender, but recently I've been choosing sleep over movies. And really, a lapse in my rate of movie-watching is OK. I can't believe I watched 15 movies in the month of March. One or two movies a week should be more my speed.

I'm almost embarrassed for liking this movie, like I wasn't supposed to or something, but I must admit I was really impressed by it. It was not at all what I expected, but in a good way. The one surprising thing that was a little disapointing (and only because I think the netflix synopsis made a little too much of it) was the fact that Melinda isn't all that mute. I mean, she is quiet sometimes, but she talks an awful lot for a mute person. OK, so netflix did specify that she was "selectively mute," but I think the emphasis of the movie is more on speaking (hence the title, right?) than on not speaking. But I love how Melinda discovered art as a way to express herself.

The people in this movie are real. They're human. They're not slick Hollywood portrayals, they're not silly caricatures, they're not too much or too little. Some of the characters may be stereotypical, but none of them are false or overblown. Every person in the movie, from the normal ones to the most eccentric, changes in some way throughout the story. Melinda's parents, who are slightly clueless, aren't ridiculous the way most parents of teenagers are shown in the movies. And it's not just the characters; the story itself is completely real. The only thing that rings a little false is Melinda's seemingly sudden transformation at the end of the movie, after telling her ex-best-friend her big secret. I guess I shouldn't look at it as so sudden, since theoretically the change occurred over the entire school year, but it seemed like it happened all at once on the last day of school. That's my only complaint, though. Excellent movie.

Where the Wild Things Are

This was our movie night movie tonight, but I picked it just as much for myself as for my kids. I really loved the picture book when I was little (as well as many others by Maurice Sendak) and I was curious about what was added to make a feature-length film from it.

I must admit that I did not watch every minute of this movie, which is par for the course of movie night movies, but I'm sure I saw enough to get the gist of it. I must also admit that I had a slight preconceived bias against this movie ever since I heard that Dave Eggers was involved. (I read his book, You Shall Know Our Velocity!, several years ago and was not impressed. Whoever called Eggers the "J.D. Salinger of our generation" needs to be smacked upside the head. To me, one obvious difference between the two authors is that Holden Caulfield surely was not modeled after Salinger, while I was just sure that Eggers was the exact same sort of MTV-style loser as his two main characters. But I digress.)

I didn't like the change they made for the movie that has Max escaping from the house and running away. He was supposed to actually go to his room, not just be told to go there. They really missed an opportunity when they skipped showing the part about how in his room "a forest grew . . . and grew and grew until his ceiling hung with vines and his walls became the world all around . . . " (that may not be an exact quote--I pulled that from memory--but it's close enough). Can you just imagine how cool it would have looked to see the trees and vines growing in his bedroom, and the walls melting away? Plus, I always loved the implication that the whole adventure had been a dream, and I didn't know how they could pull that off if he didn't fall asleep in his bedroom. (They didn't even try, by the way).

I love that the monsters looked just like the monsters in the book, but their voices were too advanced and their emotions were too human. They just don't sound monster-y enough. I couldn't help thinking that the voices were actually coming from the audience of Mystery Science Theater 3000. Not only that, but their movements were not graceful and natural enough. Their slow lumbering waddle made it too difficult to forget that I was watching people wearing monster suits. Even so, I can't express enough how impressed I was with the monster costumes in their faithfulness to the look of the original drawings.

Before he sailed away, Max evidently had some serious anger issues, combined with a distinct lack of self-control. I was sure hoping that his adventure with the Wild Things would solve that flaw in his personality, because I was afraid in a few months Max would start torturing neighborhood cats, and would eventually grow up to be a serial killer. Too bad the part of the movie where he returns home wasn't long enough to show us whether he retained any of the lessons he'd learned with the Wild Things.

If you are wondering whether the monsters would be frightening for children to watch, I'd say I think the scariest part was the doomsday lecture by Max's science teacher. On the other hand, there were a few times my three-year-old squealed and snuggled closer to me (and it wasn't during the lecture).

I feel like all I've done is complain about the movie, but it really wasn't bad. Not necessarily something I'd want to watch over and over again (once was probably enough), and my kids were not interested in watching it again before I return the disk to netflix, but I'd say it's worth seeing once.

I will leave you with my favorite quote from the movie: "Forget it. I'm not going to step on your head just to make you feel better."

The Golden Compass

I had been warned that this movie was evil, but after I read the book I saw no problem with it. So I exposed my children to the evil tonight by watching this with them. I guess whoever thought this movie was evil was the same person from netflix who labeled it as "mind-bending," because I don't think either descriptor applies.

The movie was very well done and relatively faithful to the book. I would even say that it was more engaging than the book, because I actually found the book a bit dull. Even so, it was easy to not pay attention to this movie. In fact, before the movie was even half over, my youngest had fallen asleep, my middle child was going on safari with the Lion King DVD, and my oldest was playing a computer game. After the movie ended, the 6-year-old put in a request for future movie night movies: she only wants to see ones with animated characters instead of real people.

One interesting thing that I noticed is that the movie ended a few huge plot points before the book. But I was actually kind of glad about this, because it was time for my kids to go to bed anyway. I have to get up at an unholy hour in the morning.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid

I'm a nerd, and I have read this book. The series is one of my son's favorites. In fact, I'm pretty sure that before he discovered this book (ahem! I discovered it for him) he hated to read. Now he at least loves to read about Greg Heffley, and he has also been enjoying my old Calvin and Hobbes books. But I digress.

Of course we marked this movie on the calendar as soon as we heard it was coming out, but as this is 1) a book adaptation and 2) made for kids, I was afraid it might suck. I was sure there would be enough bathroom humor and gross-outs to keep my ten-year-old rolling in the aisles (and there was . . . except, of course, I managed to keep him from literally rolling on the floor because you know how sticky those movie theater floors can get). But I am happy to report that I actually enjoyed the movie. It was much cuter than I expected. My literary amnesia keeps me from telling you how faithful the movie is to the book (c'mon, it's been more than a year since I read it) but it has all the right characters and features the Cheese Touch, so I'm guessing it follows the book pretty well. Now, I will say that if you don't have kids to bring with you, you will probably want to skip this one. It's not great date-night material. At least wait until it comes out on DVD. But I think any kid above the age of 3 will love it, especially if they've read the books.

Inkheart

Yes, this is our second movie of the day. Friday night is always movie night at our house (though most of the time we watch movies that only a kid could like, so I don't bother blogging about them--honestly, I usually don't even watch them). I'd had netflix ship us Inkheart before I decided to go see the Percy Jackson movie, and I didn't want to hang onto Inkheart until next Friday, so I figured tonight we'd have a double feature of sorts.

I read this book several years ago and I loved it. (Unfortuntely, by the way, in my opinion the sequel came nowhere near to measuring up, so even though I bought the third book as soon as it came out, I still haven't read it.) It's been so long since I read Inkheart that I really can't tell you how faithful this movie was to the book, but from what I recall, it captures all the main points. The movie isn't bad, but I definitely remember being much more absorbed by the book. Not surprising; it almost always works that way.

Eliza Bennett (the girl who plays Meggie) looks surprisingly like a young Laura Dern. It's also kind of funny to see Horace Slughorn in this movie.

Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief

I read this book a couple of weeks ago and have been considering since then whether I wanted to make a trip to the theater to see it. Well, I figured I'd give the kids a treat after school today and we all went to see it together.

It was scarier than I expected it to be! I think I was a little more sensitive to this because I had my three-year-old with me. It's not like I wet my pants or anything. Anyway, I think the movie actually improved on the book in some cases; for instance, I liked the pearl-hunt idea as opposed to the pearls just being handed to Percy. And for once, I can't remember anything that I was really, really hoping to see onscreen that they left out of the movie. But there were a LOT of differences between the book and the movie. Obviously those in charge of making this movie didn't feel the same sort of obligation that those making the Harry Potter movies feel in being faithful to the book.

It will be interesting to see what Logan Lerman (the boy who played Percy) does in the next few years. That is, if he doesn't get stuck in a Percy Jackson time warp, as has happened with Daniel Radcliffe of Harry Potter fame. The reason I wonder is because I think Lerman looks like a younger (and cuter!) Zac Efron. Or maybe it's just the hair.

The Time Traveler's Wife

I came to this movie intentionally planning to try to view it as its own separate entity, even though I have read the book (and it was one of my favorites of the last year, by the way). I wanted to determine whether the movie was a good one on its own merit, because I knew it wouldn't measure up to the book but I thought it might be decent anyway.

I didn't like the movie's hint that Henry's time traveling was the cause of his mother's death. Unless I'm totally forgetting that part of the book (it has been six months since I read it), the accident wasn't Henry's fault. He did time-travel just at the point of impact, but his fading away did not distract his mother in her driving. And speaking of the fading away, I don't remember it being so gradual in the book. There were, of course, other differences between the book and the movie (some of which I actually liked. I'm glad Henry didn't lose his feet, and I didn't mind not seeing Henry's 15-year-old-self with himself doing whatever it was they did to each other in their bedroom), but I'm not going to bother listing every difference. I feel like the movie had all the most important points, anyway. It didn't really capture the essence of the book, and turned it into a sappy chick flick, but it was a pretty good sappy chick flick. Better than I expected, anyway!

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

I think this may be one of the many movies that was better as a book. (Not that I've read the book--I'm just guessing). It didn't contain much that was more compelling visually than I imagine the story is in words (except perhaps the scene where Daisy dances at night in the gazebo), although as I've said before, Brad Pitt is awfully pretty and I don't mind looking at him one bit. On the other hand, once again his obviously fake accent was annoyingly distracting.

For most of the movie I found I didn't care much about the characters. Benjamin's condition was mildly interesting, but beyond that I didn't give a whoop about what happened to any of them. (I was curious about how his retro-aging would progress and what this would do to Benjamin's relationship with Daisy, but that was about it). Until Daisy announced that she was pregnant. Then I started to care. Of course Brad Pitt ruined the moment of the baby's birth by announcing that his daughter was "poifect." (I am not kidding. He did it again on Caroline's "foist boithday.") But I must admit it was sadly sweet to watch Toddler Benjamin walking along with Old Daisy, holding her hand as she bent down so he could place a baby kiss on her wrinkled cheek, and I was slightly choked up by the time the cherubic Baby Benjamin closed his darling little eyes and died.

And I was most impressed by the way they managed to make Brad Pitt look younger when he returned after his long absence. Movie magic! How did they DO that?? I mean, he's still a beautiful man, but there's no denying he has some age on him these days. They somehow got him to look just like he did back in his "A River Runs Through It" days, or maybe even "Thelma and Louise" young. I did notice he only appeared in low lighting, so I'm sure that helped, but they must have somehow digitally erased the years. Where can I get me some of that?

Coraline

Coraline is another Friday night movie we watched with the kids. I wasn't completely surprised to find that it's not your garden-variety sweet little children's movie, but it was more weird than I expected. It's a creepy movie, but to my surprise my kids liked it and weren't scared by it.

The story reminded me of a modern Alice In Wonderland that arises from a child's world and a child's fears rather than from an adult's drug-induced hallucinations. The film itself, with stop-action animation, is visually stunning. I was surprised that Tim Burton was not affiliated with it, because this is the look I associate with him (think Nightmare Before Christmas and The Corpse Bride).

I thought the soundtrack was somewhat odd, but fitting. It does well to create the eerie mood. Several of the songs sound like they're sung in French...? I'm not sure what went into that decision unless it was for ambiance without distraction by lyrics (except for people who understand French, I guess).

I didn't realize this movie started as a book. Now I'm interested in reading it to the kids, especially since they really liked the movie.

Atonement

I had never heard of this movie (which is surprising, considering one of the main characters is Keira Knightley, a fairly big star) until I bought the book to read on a trip. After I read the book, as often happens with books that have movie adaptations, I was eager to watch the movie and see what they had done with it. I was impressed by how faithful to the book they managed to stay. There were very few things I noticed that had changed between the book and the movie, and none of those were changes that I regretted.