Normally, movies made after very good books disappoint me. For example, "The Count of Montecristo" was really awful. If I had not read the book, pehaps I would have found it different. I beleive there are books that most remain as books, because making a good movie about them is impossible. Making a good movie about "The Karamazovi Brothers" would be a superhuman task. Also a movie about the Divine Comedy..., the Illiad, etc.

The Harry Potter books are much better than the movies, IMO. I prefer reading over watching movies anyway, though, so I suppose that I'm a little biased here

"Fried Green Tomatoes" is a fantastic movie. It's one of my favorites, in fact. The novel is awesome too. I honestly can't decide which version I prefer. The movie basically follows Fannie Flagg's novel, but there are some differences in the subplot. But at least in this case the screenplay wasn't a mashed up, mangled version of the book.

I saw "Field of Dreams" a bunch of times before I read the book ("Shoeless Joe"). I have to say that, in this case, the movie is a lot better than the novel. Kinsella (author) doesn't do well with dialogue. The story itself is fine, though - as long as nobody talks

Most of the older Stephen King movies are utter garbage. I enjoyed the movie versions of "Misery" (with Kathy Bates), "The Green Mile" and "The Shawshank Redemption," though. There are a bunch that I haven't watched, but I'm in no hurry to get around to them.

Alfred Hitchcock's film version of "Psycho" was even better than Robert Bloch's novel. Really. I rarely say that, but in this case it's true. Hitchcock did amazing, fantastic things with that story. The novel rocks, yeah, as do the sequels that Bloch wrote, but man...that black-and-white movie...wow. (The newer version stinks, though.)

For the most part, I'm usually disappointed by the big screen interpretation of the written word, especially from book format. As an example, I found Ann Rice's, "Interview with a Vampire" failed miserably as a film, though I totally devoured it as a book. I do own this DVD and enjoy it on it's own merit; I just don't expect it accurately represent the book. There are, however, a few exceptions. Most notably JR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy. Somehow, this previously unknown production team managed to beautifully execute the spirit of Tolkien's work in one of the most incredible visual spectacles I've ever witnessed. It's one of the few films I can watch repeatedley for the imagery alone.

But generally, I guess you could say I feel the same way about books made to film as I do about musical pieces put to video. Who is the monster that created MTV? There is something so diabolical about removing the individual's own musical imaging and replacing it with the vile content usually so prevalent on MTV.

The Harry Potter movies aren't really great, but I like them. I like the books more of course, but the movies aren't too bad. They are entertaining and it's a good movie to watch when you just want to relax with friends and dont want to think about figuring out a riddle in the movie. The movies skip a lot of things that happend in the books, it's to shorten them down, but sometimes they skip important stuff: like in the third harry potter book he meets Cho Chang for the first time, but in the movies it doesn't happend(as far I can remember?).

The Lord of the Rings movies are better than the books actually. Tolkien really made the books boring with the long dialogs which lasts ten pages each chapter. The movies cut down the boring parts and magnify the exciting events. I didn't like the second movie. It was really boring. The first and the third movies were great. I can't decide which of the movies I like best.

The Lord of the Rings is a bit "thinking-movie" but Harry Potter isn't. If you just wan't to watch a movie without following that much Harry Potter would be a better choice.

== If you enjoy movies, stop reading now ==
First of all, I have to say that I hate it when the turn a perfectly good book into a film. They pretty much always suck.

I'm going to use fantasy in examples, since that's what I have the most experience with.

Since Harry Potter seems to be popular, I might as well start with that. First of all, I hate Harry Potter and everything the damn brat has done to what was once a good genre. It isn't fantasy, it's the product of a sick donkey's back side. After someone went and stepped in it. The quality of makes me wonder why on earth something like that would gain so much support all over the place. Yes, I had a time when I liked it all as well. When I was what? Ten? Is this forum filled with a load of ten year olds or what? So, we have established that Harry Potter and all his little wand-waving cronies are purely the result of mass hysteria, and to be completely ignored by nobody except myself. (Yes, that was on purpose).
The Harry Potter films were good considering what they were made of, but pretty damn sad otherwise. Just for the laughs, bash has the greatest quote of all time

Another one that a few lonely souls had actually heard of was LoTR. The book's not all that bad, even though the characters are not that well developed, and there is no character development during the actual story. But then, Tolkien was more of a historian (more accurately, philologist) than a psychologist. Tolkien's books were decent, even without decent characters. But the films kind of ruined it, didn't they? (oh, btw, I'm not sure that 10 year olds should be watching such violent material alone - I hope you had your mums with you) There was so much they could have kept in and refrained from adding that would have given the whole thing so much more. But I suppose not everybody is in the business for the joy of the literature, are they...

The most classic example is Eragon. The books were not too bad, if odd at certain moments, but hey, it was good in general. And then there's the film. I have never in my life seen a worse rendition of a piece of literature (King Arthur comes close, but they didn't exactly have more than a myth to work on, so they are entitled at least some artistic license). Eragon had nothing to do with artistic license. That is called Macabre Mutilation of Honestly Written Literature. If I had the chance I would happily insert a large sharp object into everyone who had a hand in getting the mutant script to where it went. Fox should be violated anally for what they did.

All in all, I don't think any book should suffer the insult of being turned into the lesser life form of "movie" unless the creator of the film actually enjoyed the book and loves it the way you can only love a book... Please, don't take that the wrong way... And it's clear that most directors, screen-writers, etc go into it because they love movies (well, it makes sense, no?) rather than the books they want to copy so much.

Even they seem to realise that they can't come up with a decent plot, and I wonder whey they can't. Might it perhaps be because while an author devotes more to what he/she creates than, from all appearances, a director does. (Yes, I know, the director doesn't always have autonomous rights to what goes in, blah, blah, blah) There are books that have been worked on for years on end, and that time is spent making something beautiful beyond the scale of any movie. That's something I have never seen, and doubt I will ever see from the film industry, simply because it's an industry, rather than a devotion.

So, that's why I don't like films created from books, nor films created from the void cavity in a screenwriter's head. Now for books created from films.

Since movies created from thin air are by default almost terrible, it's safe to assume that no book created from it will be much better, unless the book is altered from the movie so drastically that the book's writer might as well publish it as a completely independent work. So there. Movie lovers be gone. Your time was in the 90's.

== Ok, you can start reading now ==

For the most part, I think they do a pretty good job putting books into movies. I didn't read the Harry Potter books but like the movies, and I have heard that they don't do them justice. But, I know specifically that Narnia was pretty awesome and stuck to the book pretty well. I can tell you one time where I was really pissed though, and that was the DaVinci Code. It was so good and stuck so well to the book until the last half hour. They TOTALLY changed the ending, mixing around the order that things happened, combining scenes, and ending it completely different from the book. Sometimes I hate Hollywood--they can really ruin great literature.