{"id":1506,"date":"2008-08-11T23:40:58","date_gmt":"2008-08-11T23:40:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/?p=1506"},"modified":"2008-08-11T23:40:58","modified_gmt":"2008-08-11T23:40:58","slug":"movies_from_books_meme","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/2008\/08\/11\/movies_from_books_meme\/","title":{"rendered":"Movies from Books Meme"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve missed out on a lot of intriguing memes lately because I haven&#8217;t had the time to comment on lengthy lists of stuff, so when I spotted a fairly short one over at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sfsignal.com\/archives\/007027.html\">SF Signal<\/a>, I figured I&#8217;d better grab it. It&#8217;s about sci-fi movies based on books&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>[<b>Update:<\/b> Looks like I was having a moment of extreme dumbness when when I posted this last night &#8212; instead of doing as the third rule asks and italicizing only the movie titles for which which I started the book but didn&#8217;t finish it, I italicized <i>all<\/i> of the titles. Because they&#8217;re <i>titles<\/i> and you&#8217;re <i>supposed<\/i> to italicize those. Doh! Anyway, they&#8217;re fixed now, if it matters to anyone&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\nThe rules are pretty standard:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<ul>\n<li>Underline the movie titles you&#8217;ve seen.<\/li>\n<li>Mark in bold the movie titles for which you read the book.<\/li>\n<li>Italicize the movie titles for which you started the book but didn&#8217;t finish it.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>I added the one about underlining the movie title, and I decided to remove the obligatory &#8220;tag five people&#8221; rule. If you like the look of this one, I invite you to do it. Otherwise, don&#8217;t worry about it.<\/p>\n<p>And here&#8217;s the list (book titles that vary from the movie title are in parentheses):<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><b>Jurassic Park<\/b><\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><b>War of the Worlds<\/b><\/span><br \/>\n(Seen both versions of the movie. I prefer the 1953 one, although I didn&#8217;t think the Spielberg version was bad. Well, except for the lame-o Norman Rockwell coda.)<\/li>\n<li><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><b>The Lost World: Jurassic Park<\/b><\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><b>I, Robot<\/b><\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Contact<\/span><\/li>\n<li><b>Congo<\/b><br \/>\n(A rare case where I&#8217;ve read the book, but don&#8217;t recall ever seeing the movie.)<\/li>\n<li><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Cocoon<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">The Stepford Wives<\/span><br \/>\n(Which version of <i>The Stepford Wives<\/i>? I&#8217;ve seen the schizophrenic 2004 remake, which couldn&#8217;t decide if it wanted to be a comedy spoof or a serious thriller; it <i>seems<\/i> like I&#8217;ve seen the 1975 original, but honestly, I don&#8217;t recall for sure. Haven&#8217;t read the book, obviously.)<\/li>\n<li><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><b>The Time Machine<\/b><\/span><br \/>\n(Seen both versions. Love the 1960 one, <i>loathed<\/i> the 2002 remake.)<\/li>\n<li><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><b>Starship Troopers<\/b><\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><b>The Hitchhiker&#8217;s Guide to the Galaxy<\/b><\/span><\/li>\n<li>K-PAX<\/li>\n<li><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><b>2010<\/b><\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><b>The Running Man<\/b><\/span><br \/>\n(I recall that the book is significantly different from the movie, but I no longer remember the particulars&#8230;)<\/li>\n<li><b>Sphere<\/b><br \/>\n(Another read it\/didn&#8217;t see it scenario&#8230;)<\/li>\n<li>The Mothman Prophecies<\/li>\n<li>Dreamcatcher<\/li>\n<li><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><b>Blade Runner<\/b><\/span> (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?)<br \/>\n(I remember being baffled when I was a kid because the book was so very different from the movie, which I didn&#8217;t really understand at the time anyway. I need to re-read this one of these days&#8230;)<\/li>\n<li><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><b>Dune<\/b><\/span><br \/>\n(Seen both variants of the movie as well as the SciFi Channel&#8217;s miniseries. They all have their pros and cons, in my opinion.)<\/li>\n<li>The Island of Dr. Moreau<\/li>\n<li><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Invasion of the Body Snatchers<\/span><br \/>\n(I had a copy of this novel, but lost it a couple years ago in the <a title=\"Crimson Tide\" href=\"http:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/2006\/02\/crimson_tide\/\">Great Water Filter Containment Failure and Basement Flood<\/a>. I&#8217;d never gotten around to reading it. Also, I&#8217;ve seen the 1956 and 1978 film versions, and like both &#8212; the &#8217;78 version <i>still<\/i> gives me the creeps &#8212; but I haven&#8217;t seen the 1993 version, <i>Body Snatchers<\/i>, or Nicole Kidman&#8217;s 2007 take on the venerable material, <i>The Invasion<\/i>.)<\/li>\n<li><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">The Iron Giant<\/span> (The Iron Man)<\/li>\n<li>Battlefield Earth<\/li>\n<li>The Incredible Shrinking Woman<\/li>\n<li>Fire in the Sky<\/li>\n<li><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><b>Altered States<\/b><\/span><br \/>\n(One of the weirdest books I&#8217;ve ever read&#8230; and the movie was just about as weird, so I suppose you could consider it a faithful adaptation.)<\/li>\n<li><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><b>Timeline<\/b><\/span><br \/>\n(Even before Michael Crichton demonstrated what a colossal dick he is and I <a title=\"I\u2019m Done with Michael Crichton\" href=\"http:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/2006\/12\/im_done_with_michael_crichton\/\">made the decision to wash my hands of him<\/a> once and for all, I was losing my infatuation with him. This lousy novel\/movie combination was a big part of the reason. Yet again, we had an evil corporation that&#8217;s cooked up a new technology, which The Man intends to use as a tourist attraction because it can&#8217;t think of anything better to do with it, and of course something goes <i>horribly wrong<\/i> and the running and screaming begins. It&#8217;s the same tired plot Crichton&#8217;s been recycling in one way or another since his screenplay for <i>Westworld<\/i>, and even though I liked <i>Westworld<\/i> and <i>Jurassic Park<\/i>, the formula was getting pretty thin by <i>Timeline<\/i>. Lazy, lazy writing, Mike&#8230;)<\/li>\n<li>The Postman<\/li>\n<li><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><b>Freejack<\/b><\/span> (Immortality, Inc.)<\/li>\n<li><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><b>Solaris<\/b><\/span><br \/>\n(It&#8217;s very rare for me to not finish a book, but I came close with this one. I had to read it for a college course and found it to be sheer torture. However, I recently saw the Clooney-Soderbergh film version and actually kind of liked it, so maybe I&#8217;ll give the book another try some time.)<\/li>\n<li>Memoirs of an Invisible Man<\/li>\n<li><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><b>The Thing<\/b><\/span> (Who Goes There?)<br \/>\n(Seen both the 1951 film <i>The Thing from Another World<\/i> and John Carpenter&#8217;s gore-tastic 1982 version. I love both, but Carpenter&#8217;s version is one of my personal classics and is closer to the original concept.)<\/li>\n<li>The Thirteenth Floor<\/li>\n<li><b>Lifeforce (The Space Vampires)<\/b><br \/>\n(Hm. I know own a copy of <i>The Space Vampires<\/i>, and it <i>seems<\/i> like I read it back in my highly impressionable early teens, but I honestly don&#8217;t recall for sure. I know I&#8217;ve never seen the movie, and I don&#8217;t why because I understand it includes both Patrick Stewart <i>and<\/i> gratuitous nudity&#8230; hopefully not of Patrick Stewart!)<\/li>\n<li>Deadly Friend<\/li>\n<li><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><b>The Puppet Masters<\/b><\/span><\/li>\n<li><b>1984<\/b><br \/>\n(Read the book, never seen any filmed versions. I believe there are two, aren&#8217;t there?)<\/li>\n<li>A Scanner Darkly<\/li>\n<li>Creator<\/li>\n<li>Monkey Shines<\/li>\n<li>Solo (Weapon)<\/li>\n<li>The Handmaid&#8217;s Tale<\/li>\n<li>Communion<\/li>\n<li>Carnosaur<\/li>\n<li>From Beyond<\/li>\n<li><b>Nightflyers<\/b><br \/>\n(Before <a href=\"http:\/\/www.georgerrmartin.com\/\">George R.R. Martin<\/a> leaped into the lucrative market for long-running series of doorstop-sized fantasy novels, he wrote some pretty nifty space-based science fiction, including the short-story collection <i>Nightflyers<\/i>, which I&#8217;ve read several times.)<\/li>\n<li><b>Watchers<\/b><\/li>\n<li>Body Snatchers<br \/>\n(Didn&#8217;t we cover this one already, up at number 21? <i>Duh!<\/i>)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve missed out on a lot of intriguing memes lately because I haven&#8217;t had the time to comment on lengthy lists of stuff, so when I spotted a fairly short one over at SF Signal, I figured I&#8217;d better grab it. It&#8217;s about sci-fi movies based on books&#8230; [Update: Looks like I was having a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,12,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film-studies","category-memes-and-quizzes","category-the-bookshelf"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1506"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1506\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}