I read a lot, I watch a lot of movies, and I have a lot of opinions.

I have decided to single out four movies and two books. Four movies I have seen and the two books that I’ve read that the movies were based on and do I want to read the other two?

The Kite Runner: I was stubborn, very stubborn and for whatever illogical reason refused to read this book. Too many people were going on about it. One of them as coincidence or fate - whatever you want to call it would have it - was one of my BFF’s who lives in Beijing. Every single time we’d get onto MSN he’d ask me if I had read it yet. I can not for the life of me remember other than wanting to shut Jimmy up why I finally gave in and read it. What a read, I read it in, [oh this book even has the exact finish date written in it how you like that?!] or should say finished it on November 24, 2006. It was originally released in 2003, I held out a while. I flew through the book lost completely in the story, it flows beautifully and grabs you from the very first sentence, not unlike how Hosseini’s second book does with its opening chapter.

Due to the fact that I read a lot of non fiction when books like this come along they never feel fully fiction to me and I think that if the writing is good enough this then does nothing but draw me further into the story.

By the time I had read the book and got back online with Jimmy the film that I had no idea about was a month away from wrapping and James sprung the news that he was still in Kashjar, China as Caterer on the movie. HELL YAY! There are one or two photos in my TV and Movies set on my Flickr but due to normally bad connections only half of what he sends me makes it.

I’m always nervous when I watch a movie that has a book attached to it that I didn’t just enjoy, I loved. The fact that my friend was a part of the crew made me ridiculously nervous yet overly excited to watch the movie. I held to my ban of big movie theatres and brought it home shortly after it was released on DVD.

To say the movie was good is a complete understatement, it was bloody amazing. It gives me chills just thinking about it now. It you didn’t know that it was filmed in China you’d swear they had somehow gotten into Afghanistan for more than just reconnaissance and stills. I thought I was proud of James for the locations he had worked in while head chef for the cast and crew of The Painted Veil but it had nothing on the locations for The Kite Runner.

The book, the movie, they both left something with me; they opened up my eyes to a lot of situations that I generally read about from the perspective of a memoir be it a solider, a journalist, a victim and/or survivor. The story is deep and extremely multifaceted yet simple and eye opening in ways that I never saw coming I guess because sometimes the simplest of things are the hardest to grasp.

Into the Wild: I have read three Jon Krakauer books; Into the Wild was the third one I read in April of 2005. The book was a gift and the giver’s favourite book. I enjoyed this book and I got it, I related to it on a couple levels from the character’s relationship with his parents, to trying to find your own way in a capitalist society, his stubbornness and inability to see very far ahead of himself, the feel of needing to do something, anything but to just do it none the less. Without sounding too cliché here I think I can safely say there is a little bit of Christopher McCandless in all of us, I’d say that has a lot to do with why his story is still gripping new people some fifteen years after his journey into his own seemingly private solace began.

For me this movie should have never been made, I wish I had never seen it, I do not recommend it and I think if you want the real story read the book, the visual you are given on the page is so much better than even one minute of what comes across the screen it was almost un-watch-able. From the horrendous use of his personal letters through most of the movie and especially the beginning to casting Vince Vaughn (EWWW), back to the worst decision ever to have used a soundtrack by Eddie Vedder I just hated it. Adam made it exactly six minutes, started to laugh his ass off and went to bed. He has not read the book. The only thing that saved this movie for me to any degree was the use of a narrative by the actress who plays his sister that was touching and well placed throughout the painstakingly long and large cinematic piece of shit and I enjoy Catherine Keener no matter what she does.

I figure the only reason the McCandless family went along with this screenplay crap was because it was so poorly done it worked for them because they didn’t have to see what their son really went through. Have you seen The Machinist? Christian Bale loses so much weight it is awe inspiringly scary and impressive. Emile Hirsch was just not strong enough for me; Justin Timblerlake is the better actor in Alpha Dog, Hirsch did not do the McCandless role justice. If it weren’t for some superb makeup that I’m only calling superb because Hirsch was so ill-equip to handle a role of this magnitude the heavy makeup when he is dying is necessary because he loses so little weight I can’t even believe he was allowed to act in certain scenes. I counted the ribs I have showing with my hands over my head spinning around like on a bus roof and I have the same amount showing as he did since my drastic weight loss from my head crack and I’m not portraying someone who is going to die I just got sick.

The cover of this novel states “He had given $25,000 in savings to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, burned all the cash in his wallet, and invented a new life for himself,” YET we see the character of McCandless in a different t-shirt in almost every scene. This really bugged me what a ridiculous oversight by the costume department, I just can’t see a guy who abandons his CAR and burns his CASH caring that much about what t-shirt he is wearing and I found it really distracting. I want a movie like this to be REAL not a bunch of wardrobe changes and fancy makeup. Nuff said.

Atonement: In my humble opinion this is the movie that should have won the 2007 Oscar. It is amazing, beautiful, poignant, outright sad, flabbergasting, real - even through the illusion of fiction.

Two words, James McAvoy.

Droooooool central, but it is worth mentioning that all of the performances in this movie are brilliant.

I saw lots of people walking around with this book with the movie cover on it a long time before I saw the movie and now I’m annoyed because it will take me forever to find this book without the movie cover on it. BOOK NERD CONFESSION ALERT: I despise owning books with movie covers, it infuriates me. One time, I lent my copy of The Beach to a friend and she accidentally spilt pea soup all over it but the movie was out then and when she ordered it for me even though she asked for original cover they sent STUPID Leo cover and I was MAD not at her at the book, I had it sent back and it took I kid you not NINE months to get it delivered with original cover I had about given up and forgotten about it when one day I came home to an unexpected delivery of it and had a good chuckle.

I want to read this book pretty bad, considering how incredible the movie is, I think I can safely assume that it will be an out of this world read but I will wait until I can obtain it sans movie poster cover to own.

No Country for Old Men: I walked out of my shrink’s office one day and saw a dude reading and I spied with my little eye the author Cormac McCarthy and the book title was No Country for Old Men. I thought cool beans MAN because I had just recently become a McCarthy fan after falling in love with his latest novel, a post-apocalyptic father and son’s journey called The Road and I had no idea he had written No Country for Old Men until right then.

Although Javier Bardem does deliver a fantastic performance, to be able to still pull off sex appeal with a hair cut like that alone was impressive, the movie was an utter disappointment it felt as if they had taken a story that may or may not be a good one and stripped it down to their favourite parts of its dialogue and severed it up as a movie with guns and blood and Javier delivering some of said dialogue with a sexy psychopathic drawl. When it comes to Oscar worthy I think it would have been a lot harder to pull off the sort of performance delivered by Ryan Gosling in Lars and the Real Girl than a gun toting funky walker dirty talker.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 8th, 2008 at 7:31 pm and is filed under Books, T.V. & Movies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. All content (c) 2005 - 2008 Gus Greeper, unless otherwise credited. All rights reserved.