Customer Reviews

Novels Into Film: The Encyclopedia of Movies Adapted from Books

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Being more of a "browser book," I did not feel the need to read the entire thing to get a glimpse into its quality. Instead, I read its comparisons of three novel-film counterparts in which I was especially familiar--_Frankenstein_, _Jurassic Park_, and _The Wonderful Wizard of Oz_. None of these comparisons contained much substance and were frequently loaded with factual errors. At least the writer of the Oz essay was familiar with Baum's other works, although there many factual errors about them, including the first, as there were for _Frankenstein_ and _Jurassic Park_. The comparisons were very simplistic, and the Oz entry in particular argued for the superiority of the film to the novel, referring mainly to another essay to explain why. While even the best argument probably could not convince me, if it had been better thought out I could at least understand why the writer felt that way. Alas, I could not, as so much of the argument was based on severe factual errors suggesting a very poor memory of the literary counterpart. The Oz entry even cited the Henry Littlefield Populism analogy as fact, despite Littlefield retraction and strong evidence about L. Frank Baum to the contrary.

Using only three entries may seem an unfair litmus test for the book, but my justification is as follows: if the books I'm familiar with are discussed with gross errors about the facts of the texts, how am I supposed to know that other essays, for films and novels I am not familiar with, don't contain erroneous junk that negate their usefulness?

I would love to see a new edition of the book with much more well-thought out essays. Granted, this is published as a "popular" text, but even a popular text should be credible, and this, alas, isn't.

Like other reviewers, I bought this without actually looking at it and I agree that it could have been done much better. It's a very good idea which seems to have fallen down in the execution. To the list of serious omissions I would add: The Ice Storm, The Godfather (!!) Rosemary's Baby, Midnight Cowboy, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Primary Colours, Lady In The Lake, Fear & and Loathing in Las Vegas (if we are talking about Hollywood here.) National cinemas other than American are very poorly represented. The book does acknowledge that it's the 'abridged' edition, and I would not have liked to have to choose what went in and what got left out, but still. The individual essays vary a great deal in usefulness and quality, with some being really very good and others abysmal. In future editions I would like to see more attention given to non-US filmmaking.

This is an excellent book for those who want a snappy and accurate summary review of the book's reception and the associated films'impact.Enables a synoptic overview and a gives an indication of the cultural climate at the time of the book's writing and the films being first distributed.

It is interesting if you like to read. It is also interesting to see how what were once thought as interesting and new stories are old, recycled from novels that few knew existed.