Page to Screen Book Club - Past Titles: Other Resources for Books and Movies

For film buffs and literature lovers alike, Turner Classic Movies presents an essential guide to 52 cinema classics and the literary works that served as their inspiration. "I love that movie!" "But have you read the book?" Within these pages, Turner Classic Movies offers an endlessly fascinating look at 52 beloved screen adaptations and the great reads that inspired them. Some films, like Clueless --Amy Heckerling's interpretation of Jane Austen's Emma --diverge wildly from the original source material, while others, like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest , shift the point of view to craft a different experience within the same story. Author Kristen Lopez explores just what makes these works classics of both the page and screen, and why each made for an exceptional adaptation--whether faithful to the book or exemplifying cinematic creative license.

Adaptations gathers together 35 pieces that have been the basis for films, many from giants of American literature (Hemingway, Fitzgerald) and many that have not been in print for decades (the stories that inspired Bringing Up Baby , Meet John Doe , and All About Eve ). Categorized by genre, and featuring movies by master directors such as Steven Spielberg, Stanley Kubrick, Robert Altman, Frank Capra, and John Ford, as well as relative newcomers such as Chris Eyre and Christopher Nolan.

This is intended to help the reader identify the best filmed versions of books for children and young adults. It offers in-depth descriptions of popular films and videos for students in kindergarten through 12th grade. Profiled are some 1200 films, videos, and laser-discs based on hundreds of children's and young adults books.

These essays highlight true cinematic adaptations as completely different products from films based loosely on the gimmick or plot or character of a certain fiction. That phenomenon, the transformation of fiction into a product so similar and yet so foreign, presents the mystery explored in the essays gathered here.

Some of the earliest feature films were derived from classic literature. Even today, most of the movies we see are adaptations of one kind or another. People who have never read Jane Austen can see her characters on the screen; but filmgoers can also see material taken from theater, television, comic books, and every other medium. The essays in this volume, most of which have never before been published, raise fundamental questions about cinema and adaptation: what is the nature of the "literary" and the "cinematic"? Why do so many of the films described as adaptions seem to derive from canonical literature rather than from other sources? How do the different media affect the ways stories are told? Film Adaptation offers fresh approaches to the art, theory, and cultural politics of movie adaptations, even challenging what is meant by the term "adaptation" itself. Contributors examine the process of adaptation in both theory and practice, discussing a wide variety of films. James Naremore's introduction provides an accessible historical overview of the field and reveals the importance of adaptation study to the many different academic disciplines now attracted to the analysis of film as commodity, document, and cultural artifact.

Adaptations have long been a mainstay of Hollywood and the television networks. Indeed, most Academy Award- and Emmy Award-winning films have been adaptations of novels, plays, or true-life stories. Linda Seger, author of two acclaimed books on scriptwriting, now offers a comprehensive handbook for screenwriters, producers, and directors who want to successfully transform fictional or factual material into film. Seger tells how to analyze source material to understand why some of it resists adaptation. She then gives practical methods for translating story, characters, themes, and style into film. A final section details essential information on how to adapt material and how to protect oneself legally.