Apparently Ring is the first book in a trilogy, the other books called Spiral and Loop. And for all Ring’s shortcomings, if they’re ever translated into English, I’d love to read them.
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Chocolat by Joanne Harris was so faithfully adapted that reading the book after watching the movie is almost like reading the script. It’s the story of Vianne Rocher who travels from place to place spreading goodness through her chocolates, and Reynaud, the man who believes that she’s a corrupting influence on the devout Catholicism of the French town. The characters are the same, the incidents are the same (by contrast with the Harry Potter situation, because much of the book is inner dialogue, the movie actually has more detail and more story to it), and the underlying philosophy is essentially the same.
The biggest difference is the tone. The book is far more anti-religion. Reynaud is an intolerant priest filled with hate who wants to run Vianne out of town and refuse “Christian charity” to the gypsies whose houseboats are temporarily moored nearby. The movie, by contrast, focuses on traditions that are kept for tradition’s sake even to the point that they’re hurting people. Reynaud is still a moralizer, but he’s the mayor of the town and not a representative of an organized religion. He is further humanized by his struggles with his personal demons. Even Vianne doubts the necessity of her always moving from town to town because it puts such a strain on her daughter.
The movie is light and fluffy told through chocolates and contrasting colors, spritely musical themes, and original characters. There’s even a happy ending, with not one, but two romances. The movie is set in the 1950s, while the book is set in the present, which makes the religiousness of the town seem slightly unbelievable and anachronistic. The book is told through Vianne and Reynaud’s POVs, with different fonts to denote which is which. And there is a romance, but not the one you’d expect and it’s not nearly as satisfying. While the writing is good, I’d recommend the movie over the book but I would not say that it earned any of its Academy Award nominations.
Article comments
1 - visualsimplicity
A Walk to Remember was fairly butchered when made into a movie. It might have been pretty good if I hadn't read the book first. The matter that they changed the play was sacrilege, since so much of the book was focused around it. Of course I'm not exactly a fan of Shane West's acting either.
On another note, Dune, Dune Messiah, and Children of Dune were superbly adapted into "Frank Herbert's Dune" and "Frank Herbert's Children of Dune" (both mini-series originally aired on SciFi Channel). However, they weren't word for word adaptions due to pacing issues (attention span of watching films differ from reading, naturally). But I thought the some of the changes were for the better actually.
There's probably other's but I can recall them right now.
2 - Rodney Welch
OK, OK -- we get the point. You know, visual, the fact that a post wasn't consumed by the server within a microsecond doesn't mean it won't show up. Just give it time.
3 - Phillip Winn
Note the elapsed time between the first and last comments - nine minutes! Plus, the comment was edited. In fact, all but the last two happen after a delay certainly long enough for the post to finish. This doesn't seem like a technical problem or a microsecond problem.
4 - visualsimplicity
Oh shoot, sorry about that, I kept getting some error everytime I posted. Seemed to be some sort of rebuilding problem. If you notice the post was rewritten because I thought the error ate it up. Then I rewrote it and copied it the next time just in case. Then the error happened again. I checked the posting by refreshing but my comment didn't show up.
However, I check today and I made like 5 posts. My mistake.
5 - Eric Olsen
The LOTR films have done an excellent job with atmosphere, which is probably the most elusive element to grasp. The Potters have done well with atmosphere as well, though less well in other regards.
6 - jadester
although it was good, having read the original book afterward, i was diappointed to find so much was left out of Blade Runner (or, as the book was originally called, Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?)
for a start, there's a whole side-story intertwined with the main plot, involving a relatively new religion, and it's genesis through the course of the story. Attention is drawn to why real animals are prized so much (as opposed to animoids and robots) - most real animals have become extinct on Earth.
There is less ambiguity as to whether Deckard is a replicant or not (leaning towards he's not) and a few other extras that, IMO, would've made the film more of a masterpiece. Especially if they'd left that godawful voiceover off the general release cut too
7 - abbey
hiya peeps!!! well im 14 and i love shane west soooooo much. i first herd about him when i watched A Walk To Remember. it would really make my life if i had a real life photo of him.
than you!!!
8 - abbey
hiya peeps!!! well im 14 and i love shane west soooooo much. i first herd about him when i watched A Walk To Remember. it would really make my life if i had a real life photo of him.
thank you!!!
9 - jordan
i love shane west!!!! sooooo sooooo soooo soooo much
10 - jane doe
the underlying philosophy in the adaptation of Chocolat is not the same. reread the book. A war between church and pagan values is replaced with a war between a morally surerior man and an immoral woman. not the same thing at all. The villian in one is a priest and he is truely a villian. in the film he is a mayor, he controls the weak younger priest and he, like everyone else can be redeamed, through the magic of chocolate and its intuitive maker. They are very different. The book raises interesting question about the primacy of christian values and thier function in society, these are glossed over in the sugary sweetness of the film version.