There are a lot of opinions and viewpoints about books that are translated into films and I’m not going to embrace either side too heavily, but I will say this: having read the books all the way through beforehand, I feel, will optimize my movie experience. Now, this could just be how I approach the situation, but I really feel that if you go into a movie after reading the book with an open mind, EXPECTING the movie to miss on some if not most of the details, you will leave the movie with a more enjoyable feeling. I am not such an extreme book purist that it pains me to watch a movie leave out details and skip out on some story for pacing or for some other reason, that I would post rants after rants about how everyone should boycott the movie because of it…but I can see how a lot of people are. Let’s take LOTR for example, I saw all of the movies first, loved them immensely, and then I began reading the books and found that a lot of the “in-between-action-scenes” story was cut out or short-cutted, and that really upset me. Why? Is it because I loved the LOTR books more than I loved the Narnia books?

What about you? What books have you read that became movies? Did you like the book/movie better? Were you outraged? Better yet, what books-to-movies have been the worst translated? Are there movies that you’ve seen that have totally destroyed the books they were based on? I think this is a hot button issue that sparks a lot of controversy and intensity among movie fans. I just want to know what you think.

It all started with the Oscars. When I was a little boy, my mom, my sister and I used to sit around the TV and watch the Oscars all the way through. The TV Guide used to print all of the categories and all of the nominees with check boxes next to them and we would all pick the winners before the program came on. That was the only day, literally, that we were allowed to stay up past our bedtime. Which, if you knew me and my mom, was a huge thing! It was one of the most exciting events that I can remember about my childhood. Think about it, as a kid, I was learning about screen writing, producing, cinematography, directing, sound, acting, and through it all my mom would add little tidbits about different actors and what they were doing.

I know it’s not the MAIN reason why I fell in love with everything about movies, but as the Oscars aired last Sunday, it did bring up some good memories. I just wanted to share with everyone a little bit about my journey and how I came to develop and feed this intense passion for movies. I hope this gives you a better picture and some insight into who I am and how I come to my opinions and maybe you’ll see a little of that boy in each of my reviews.

-Daniel