No need to be sorry, it's the anime topic that has derailed the giveaway topic (not that I mind).

Thank you for the contribution, the aim of the thread is to get a better idea of what we gamer girls like playing.

I actually preferred the book to the movie. I didn't hate the movie, I liked it, but it was nothing special, I also like the two b-movie sequels, but then I have a soft spot for b-movies :-). I liked the tone and setting of the book and while it is not my favourite book by any means, I did like it more than the movie.

Indeed. They transformed it from the silly comedy that it originally was into a trite Hollywood love story. Still, it did give us Sir Alan Rickman as Marvin, so it wasn't all bad, I guess.

It was still pretty much silly comedy. I don't get all the hate behind it. And it's a shame there won't be sequels.
It was also a shame the BBC TV series wasn't picked up on.

I've seen the whole thing and wasn't too fond of it to be honest.
The great thing about this one though was, that it tried to stay close to the book.

Is there any movie adaptation that even tries to stay as close to the book as possible?
(Probably anything made by BBC?)
Since directors are mostly eccentrics who don't like to be told what to do, this seems to be impossible.

On the subject of adaptations, I LOVED Terry Pratchett's "Hogfather" and "Going Postal" and really disliked "The Colour of Magic". In that last one they tried too fit too much material into such a short length and they cut most of the good parts out in order to do so. And now a TV series "The Watch" is in production! Yay! (also Good Omens got a radio show! double yay!)
We're talking about two very different mediums. It's nearly impossible to stay close to books. It would probably lead to confusing and too long films. And some aspects of a book cannot be translated into film, etc.
I don't get why a film just HAS to be faithful to a book. I liked The Hobbit (book) but I LOVE The Hobbit (films) and most people pretty much hate them. I found The Lord of the Rings quite boring on both versions (books and films).
Also, THHGTTG was originally a radio show, then a book.

Doesn't hold a candle to Legend of Earthsea.

I don't mind really long movies, BBC splitted booksup in several movies more than once (Pride & Prejudice, Jane Eyre 2006, Gormenghast...) and this worked well for me (although still not true to the books).

I loathe the Hobbit movies after having seen only the first one. It's Peter Jackson raping literature all over again. Bilbo's surprise and snappy sense of pride which in the end is used against him are not shown well if at all and they really had enough time for this. I don't like the movie dwarfs either, the actors are mostly too young. The doodle doo music all the time is annoying too. The Lord of The Rings made me think "SILENCE!" more than once too. It was especcially bad in the halls of Moria. Too much music takes away so much tension and all the effects silence can have. And if it's playing all the time, it's like somebody tries to get you into some trance making your brain feel like mashed potatoes, but I think that's the kind of consumer those people want.

There you go comparing it to the book again. :D
They're just different visions.
I loved the dwarves, by the way, and the much hated (by others) song. But since you don't, here's a parody of it, to the tune of Michael Jackson:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAxy3HdiCOY

If you say that then you clearly haven't watched the Dragonball Z movie. Worst movie adaptaion ever.

I actually liked both the books and movies. I also liked the Silmarillion book.

Never mind Ghibli, even The Secret of NIMH was way better than any of the Disney stuff.

I love that film :-). It was made by ex-Disney animators. I think they were fed up with Disney cutting corners and not really doing anything original with the stories, just making happy and jolly movies based on well know fairytale and legends. So nearly 20 animators left Disney and started Don Bluth Productions, which has made some very nice movies, with some very dark and interesting stories.

Actually, I didn't and although the song is nothing like described in the book (with harps etc..) I didn't mind it, I did mind all the symphonic background noise all the rest of the time.

The Gormenghast movie (4 hours long) isn't much like the book, but it's damn great and so is the 2006 version of Jane Eyre (both BBC).




I have to correct myself.

Dorian Gray from 2009 was the worst one, although I would have rather thrown myself out of the window than watching more than 15min of it.

The book from Oscar Wilde is one of my all time favourites, such a great protrait and criticism of hedonism with tension and everything, the movie is just a shallow piece of total garbage, even when not compared to the book

The Killer Angels adapted into Gettysburg. That is almost word for word.
I can only remember two changes that the movie made, and they were really excellent changes, IMO.

Well, I believe that some books can't be adapted at all.
Tolkien's books aren't that deep, they're basically adventures, lending themselves to easy film adaptations.
Oscar Wilde's stories are a different case.

and [url=http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0780362/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2]Jane Eyre were a real challenge (much harder than Picture of Dorian Gray) and the results are good.
Disney's old version of Alice wasn't too bad of an adaptation too, in fact I prefer it to the books, although I don't like the story in any form.