The Hunger Games

Adapting a wildly popular book series to film is always tricky. Sometimes it fails miserably such as in The Golden Compass. Sometimes, the series has ups and downs like the Harry Potter series. It's easy to make a film feel like a quick summary of the book, to ignore the complexities of the characters you grew to know and love. I suppose the important thing we look for when watching a movie based on a book series is that the spirit of the books makes it to the screen. There are certain emotional connections that need to resonate similarly between the book and the film. With The Hunger Games, that is absolutely the case.

Water for Elephants

I had mixed feelings going into the movie, Water for Elephants. I read the book by Sara Gruen on a long flight from Frankfurt, Germany to Chicago. I finished it over the eight hour flight, but to be honest, I didn't really like the book. I couldn't see the older Jacob and the younger Jacob as the same person. The old Jacob was whiny and had little of the same personality as the younger Jacob. The writing seemed simple- as if written for a much younger audience. The book gave me something to do for eight hours, but otherwise, was unmemorable. Still, I had a good feelings about the movie. The major themes were visual in nature. I wanted to see this Depression era traveling circus, witness visually the dangers of getting on someone's bad side while on a moving train, and most of all see the training of the very independent elephant, Rosie. All of this had the potential to translate well on film.