Awesome Adaptation with a Tough Heroine

Awesome Adaptations is a weekly bookish meme, hosted at Alisa Selene’s books blog, Picture Me Reading. Each week she writes about an adaptation of a book that she think is worth seeing and has challenged herself to come up with suggestions to match a category. Any format (television series, film, web series, etc.) is acceptable as long as it is based in some form on a book. Today I’m participating in An Awesome Adaptation with a Tough Heroine.

 The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins is one of the first (self identified?) YA book series that I read. It is the story about a girl, Katniss, who grows up in the hills of coal mining country (I imagine West Virginia). She spends her days scrounging and bartering on the black market for food because after a civil uprising the United States has been divided into 13 districts centered around the Capital which now controls the districts by limiting food and her district gets very little from the government. The Capital also makes one boy and one girl from each district every year fight to the death in the Hunger Games to maintain control over the districts and prevent another uprising. Plus, the winner of the Hunger Games gets to bring food back to their district enough to feed everyone very well for a year. But they have to kill all the other tributes to do so.  Katniss volunteers in the place of her sister who was chosen and must take her survival skills from the woods to the arena.

I enjoyed the movie adaptation of The Hunger Games when it came out in 2012. I thought it kept fairly close to the original story, with some minor tweaking to make it more accessible to a wider audience. Some of Katniss’ thinking and analyzing was lost, which was something I enjoyed about the book version of Katniss, but I understand as a medium movies don’t always adequately portray a character’s thinking. But I enjoyed Jennifer Lawrence’s portrayal of the character and think she did a really great job. Unlike the rest of America, I actually liked Josh Hutcherson as Peeta. (I’m team Peeta all the way, FYI. Gale chose to be in the background and talked a bigger game than he acted upon.) I’m excited to see Hutcherson in Catching Fire which is where Peeta’s development in the books really took place. I thought it interesting that in the books he’s a kind of patsy from Katniss’ perspective, it takes her a long time to see him as he really is, thoughtful, brave, and endearing. I hope this transformation is well portrayed in the next movie.

While I could have done without all the camera shaking, I thought it was a fun movie and a decent adaption. And Jennifer Lawrence is hot.

cc Jennifer Lawrence at the 83rd Academy Awards Mingle MediaTV derivative work: Tabercil via Wikimedia Commons

Awesome – Stylized – Adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere

 

Awesome Adaptations is a weekly bookish meme, hosted at Alisa Selene’s books blog, Picturemereading. Each week she writes about an adaptation of a book that she think is worth seeing and has challenged herself to come up with suggestions to match a category. Any format (television series, film, web series, etc.) is acceptable as long as it is based in some form on a book. Today I’m participating in An Awesomely Stylized Adaptation.

Recently I reviewed Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman which I listened to as an audiobook and it was read by Gaiman himself. I really enjoyed the story. I thought his commentary on the people who fall through the cracks in society was timely, engaging, and I really like that he took it to a fantastical level instead of a breaking, on-the-nose type of literary commentary. I liked the tone of the story, how it was quirky and dark at the same time. I also felt like I gained a lot of insight from how Gaiman read the book.

Right after I finished the audiobook the BBC announced they were doing a dramatization of the book with several well known actors playing the main parts. Gaiman scored a voice over part or two himself. It is a six part adaption the novel adapted by Dirk Maggs. James McAvoy plays Richard and the voice over cast also includes Natalie Dormer, David Harewood, Sophie Okonedo, Benedict Cumberbatch, Christopher Lee, and Anthony Head. I enjoyed this dramatization of Neverwhere. I thought it carried over the same dark and fantastical themes as the original source material. It was quirky and thought provoking. There were some exposition points by the actors that did not flow as well as the original prose by Gaiman and at times McAvoy over acted his voice acting. Overall I thought it was a wonderful adaptation that stayed fairly true to the original writing and exhibited the same dark world that Gaiman created, but I would recommend also reading or listening to the book and not just relying on this stylized adaptation to give you the story Gaiman unleashed to the world. (I found the mp3 files here if you weren’t able to listen to them when they made it on to BBC4 Radio iPlayer.) Richard and Door in cartoon style.

I found some lovely fan art doing my review and writing up this post. Including Marc Brownlow’s illustration of Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar. A character study of the main characters in the book. Pencil(?) illustration of Lady Door. Even some cosplay of Lady Door. 

Awesome Adaptations: The Night Circus Needs to Be A Film

Awesome Adaptations is a weekly bookish meme, hosted at Alisa Selene’s book blog, Picture Me Reading. Anyone can play along! Picture Me Reading is a book review site where Alisa draws her reviews. She is a wonderful artist and her reviews are excellent. You should definitely check out her blog. Today’s adaption is: An awesome book that needs to be adapted (and the cast you’d like to see perform it!). While The Night Circus has been optioned by Summit Entertainment, there is little to no news about whether a screen adaption and movie will be happening any time soon. So, I’m still counting this as a book that needs to be adapted.

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern is a magical book, and not just because it is about the lives of illusionist who have actual magical powers, but because of the vivid descriptions in the narrative. If you want to read my full review of the book, you can read it here. Several stories interweave in this wonderful tale. Two old illusionist pick up apprentices and teach them how to work illusions, the apprentices much compete with each other by building illusion upon illusion. The setting is a circus. Each tent and attraction has been created by one of the illusionists.

The circus itself becomes one of the characters in the book and Morgenstern weaves a beautiful setting with her prose describing the visual look to the circus. The colors are very important, every thing is in black and white, and the Circus fan boys and girls start wearing a piece of red to distinguish themselves from the casual circus goer. Each tent has its own theme and color scheme. I can just envision what the circus would look like and feel like as a movie adaptation, and I eagerly await Summit actually producing a film based on the book.

The other characters are quiet charming and several relationship dynamics build up over the course of the story. I think the interplay of interesting circus folk would make for a charming film. As to the two old illusionist I can see Donald Sutherland and Hugh Laurie playing the parts.  I think someone like Alexis Bledel, who is an excellent actress, would do a wonderful job portraying Celia Bowen under the tutelage of her father Prospero the Enchanter (Donald Sutherland). The male apprentice  is nuanced and conniving, so I immediately think of Ian Somerhalder, but that may just be because of my recent obsession with The Vampire Diaries and because I’ve seen him in period pieces. I think The Night Circus would be an easy adaption, so I’m crossing my fingers that it will make its way to the big screen some day and I could relive the wonder of the circus in a new format.