Hello there and welcome to Thursday Movie Picks a weekly series where you share movie picks each Thursday. The rules are simple: based on the theme of the week pick three to five movies and tell us why you picked them. For further details and the schedule visit the series main page here.
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This week's Thursday Movie Picks is An Adaptation (of a book, comic, game etc that hasn't been adapted) You Want to See
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Ok I love today's theme because I have often thought...hey I would like to see a movie of that. My Picks are going to be all books, all standalone titles (meaning not part of a series).
YA Books
Looking for Alaska by John Green
YA Books
Looking for Alaska by John Green
This is the only book by John Green (you may have heard of his other books: The Fault in Our Stars and Paper Towns which have been made into movies) that I've read and I love it. Apparently I read somewhere that the movie at some point was in the works but somewhere along the line it fell through or something...I'm not sure if it's back on, which is why it's on this list. The gist: believing he has led a boring existence, a teenage boy decides to go to a boarding school where things are perhaps less boring. There he falls for one of the girls in his group of friends, called Alaska.
The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart
This one is so much fun. Frankie is witty and smart, but has been treated as being less smart or excluded for being a girl. Realising that in the real
world the ruling elite are mostly from the old boys club; she
secretly infiltrates her school's all boys secret society and outwits them...basically there a lot of amazing pranks involved.
Stolen: A Letter to My Captor by Lucy Christopher
16 year old Gemma is drugged and kidnapped from Bangkok Airport and taken to the Australian Outback. The story is told in letter form from Gemma to Ty, her captor, as she reflects on what has happened to her from the moment she saw him. But here's the thing, as you read, you don't really know if Gemma has escaped, is still a captive or worse...until the very end of her letter of course. Anyway there had been news that there was going to be a movie, but it has been a year or perhaps more since the news; it has been very quiet. Here's hoping it is still happening.
Adult Books
Survivor by Chuck Palahniuk
If you've seen Fight Club, or read Palahniuk's books than you sort of know what to expect. His characters tend to be a bit or a lot nutty. In Survivor, the main character is Tender Branson, the last surviving member of a cult. The book opens with him speaking into a flight recorder of an empty plane. He plans to tell his life story, before the plane crashes. The story is all sort of crazy with a lot of dark humor, I'm very curious what a movie of it would look like.
Local Girl Missing by Claire Douglas
I've been reading quite a lot of thrillers lately and this is one of the better ones. The gist: 21 year old Sophie goes missing 18 years ago and her best friend, Frankie, is haunted over what happened to her. When Frankie gets a call from Sophie's brother, now a local newspaper editor, that her remains may have been found, Frankie goes back to her hometown to find out if it's really Sophie. The story is also a little spooky which I like. I don't even remember where it is set, but I imagine the movie would have a lot rain and very misty/foggy.
Stolen: A Letter to My Captor by Lucy Christopher
16 year old Gemma is drugged and kidnapped from Bangkok Airport and taken to the Australian Outback. The story is told in letter form from Gemma to Ty, her captor, as she reflects on what has happened to her from the moment she saw him. But here's the thing, as you read, you don't really know if Gemma has escaped, is still a captive or worse...until the very end of her letter of course. Anyway there had been news that there was going to be a movie, but it has been a year or perhaps more since the news; it has been very quiet. Here's hoping it is still happening.
Adult Books
Survivor by Chuck Palahniuk
If you've seen Fight Club, or read Palahniuk's books than you sort of know what to expect. His characters tend to be a bit or a lot nutty. In Survivor, the main character is Tender Branson, the last surviving member of a cult. The book opens with him speaking into a flight recorder of an empty plane. He plans to tell his life story, before the plane crashes. The story is all sort of crazy with a lot of dark humor, I'm very curious what a movie of it would look like.
Local Girl Missing by Claire Douglas
I've been reading quite a lot of thrillers lately and this is one of the better ones. The gist: 21 year old Sophie goes missing 18 years ago and her best friend, Frankie, is haunted over what happened to her. When Frankie gets a call from Sophie's brother, now a local newspaper editor, that her remains may have been found, Frankie goes back to her hometown to find out if it's really Sophie. The story is also a little spooky which I like. I don't even remember where it is set, but I imagine the movie would have a lot rain and very misty/foggy.
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I've heard a lot of good things about Looking For Alaska, but I Haven't read any of these. Stolen sounds horrifying.
ReplyDeleteLooking for Alaska is great, read it if you have a chance. Stolen too and yes it is.
DeleteI haven’t read any of these but the last book sou;da good and I love mysteries. Stolen sounds bit too close The Then Collector which was horrifying
ReplyDeleteIf you like atmospheric thrillers, then I think you'll enjoy Local Girl Missing.
DeleteI've read The Collector too. Well it does share the basic premise, you could say Room did too, but everything else is pretty different. The Collector for example has two narrators. Which does make it doubly horrifying because I think halfway through it the story restarts again with the second narrator. Stolen I think is interesting because it explores Stockholm Syndrome. Anyway both books make a good book version of a double feature.
I haven't read any of these but they sound good, especially Survivor.
ReplyDeleteI've heard of a few of these but read none. The one in letter form intrigues me the most, that format is usually compelling. I've read three at least-84 Charing Cross Road, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society and The Stone Diaries, that I've loved.
ReplyDeleteOf the others Local Girl Missing sounds like it's very well suited for adaptation.
This was a fun exercise in wish fulfillment I'd love to see these three books adapted for the silver screen.
How I Paid for College: A Novel of Sex, Theft, Friendship & Musical Theater (2005)-Comic novel by Marc Acito tells the tale of young sexually confused Jersey teen Edward Zanni and the lengths he goes to his senior year when his divorced father marries gold-digging shrew Dagmar and she blocks his way to attending Julliard. Helping Edward are his group of very resourceful and game friends, free spirit Paula D’Angelo, enterprising Natie Nudelman (affectionately called Cheesehead), Edward’s sometime girlfriend, perky blonde Kelly, exotic Persian transfer student Ziba and football jock Doug Grabowski who’s more at home with the theatre geeks than his sport cronies. Together, with the sometime reluctant help of Paula’s dotty Aunt Glo, they scheme to defeat the rapacious Dagmar and make Edward’s musical dream come true.
The Queen’s Man (2000)-In the year 1193 young Justin de Quincy witnesses the murder of a tradesman on the road from Winchester to London. As he lies dying the man hands Justin a letter and begs him to find a way to get it to the queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine. Letter in hand he’s brought into Eleanor’s presence and her confidence leading to a world of intrigue and danger as Eleanor plots to save her favorite son, Richard the Lionhearted whilst her grasping younger son John schemes to seize the throne. Great historical detail and an engaging lead character makes a good adventure.
A Cast of Killers (1986)-In 1982 author Sidney Kirkpatrick is commissioned to write a biography of King Vidor, director of classics The Big Parade and Stella Dallas among many others. Delving into Vidor’s papers he discovered a trove of research that the director and his good friend former silent star Colleen Moore had compiled on the unsolved 1922 murder of film director William Desmond Taylor. Putting the Vidor bio aside for the moment Kirkpatrick built on the existing research and plunged into the jazz mad world of the twenties where men with vague pasts such as Taylor’s could rise to the level of respected film director. Along the way he acquaints the reader with the many people, shaded by Vidor’s intimate knowledge of the film community of the time, involved in the case including the two stars, comic legend Mabel Normand and supposedly innocent Mary Miles Minter, whose careers were destroyed in the scandal and the massive cover-up and graft that protected the killer, whom Vidor deduced, for decades. A fascinating story begging to be filmed.
A Cast of Killers - I don't know any of the names you mention, but I agree, this could be such an interesting movie. Has no one really tried to make one before? Possibly it fell through in the early stages? I mean Hollywood loves movie about Hollywood right?
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