Turning Books Into Movies

It's Discussion Monday again and today's topic is about books that get turned into movies.

Let me start by saying I am both a book and a movie person. I'm the kind of person who watches the director commentary and all the little bonus stuff that nobody but me cares about. I'm also a person who needs to have a perfectly organized bookshelf. So you see, I care about them both. I think a lot of people don't like it when books get made into movies because they think it ruins them. Well that's not what I see. For example, The Hunger Games, fabulous book, fabulous movie. The Hunger Games is my absolute favorite series ever. So when the movie came out I was nervous because I cared about it. But when they made changes I didn't mind because I knew they had to be made. Things that work in books don't always work in movies. You can have a character with like nine pages of just thought in a book. You cant do that in a movie because movies are visual.

Percy Jackson, great book, terrible movie. Sometimes they don't get it right. Sometimes they butcher everything. This was a movie I came out of upset. I think it was one of the first movies I didn't like. They made a lot of changes. I think when you are making a movie out of a book it's important to only change what you need to change, like in The Hunger Games, but when you change everything that's just a bad idea waiting to happen.

The Great Gatsby, good book, great movie. Sometimes the movies are better than the books (I know most of you wont agree with me on this one but that's fine). Sometimes the changes they make only add more to the original story. The Great Gatsby 2013 movie did that. I know a lot of people were mad when in The Hunger Games movie they killed Seneca Crane by having him eat the berries instead of him getting hanged, but that was a good change. It was more poetic. It made the movie better. Sometimes changes need to happen.

So I don't mind when they make books into movie. I think that as long as the movie somewhat matches the book then all will be well. I think if people started agreeing that sometimes things have to change we would have a lot more happy movie goers.

So what do you think?

Don't Forget To Vote

Hey guys! Don't forget to vote for your favorite series on the poll I've recently put up. Which will you choose? Harry Potter, Hunger Games, Twilight, or The Mortal Instruments? Only 39 days left to vote.

The Wolverine

The Wolverine, directed by James Mangold, was slightly above average. It's good enough to be something that I want to own when it comes out on DVD but at the same time it wasn't the best thing I've ever seen. I'm kind of afraid to talk about it because I feel like it's one of those movies where just saying one thing could give another thing away. So I'm going to give you a pretty dry review of this.

The plot was decent. It was basically about Wolverine/Logan (Hugh Jackman) going to Japan to say goodbye to a dying man he saved many years ago, and then it ended up turning into much more than that. There was a lot of action which was nice. I feel like a lot of superhero movies lately have been less action more emotion. There was basically a fight every scene in this one, or maybe it was more like the movie was one giant fight scene. But don't worry, there was still some love, for those of you that like that sort of thing. The acting was great, which is to be expected.

Don't leave the theater when the credits start! Just because it's not technically a Marvel movie (because you know, Fox owns the X-Men movie rights and that includes Wolverine)  it's still a Marvel movie. If that makes sense? Which means there's a scene at the end of the credits. Personally this little scene was my favorite part of the entire movie and made me really excited and I was about ready to die.

Overall I'm pretty happy with this movie and I cant wait until it comes out on DVD.

I give this movie three and half stars

How School Ruins Reading

It's time for another Discussion Monday. Today's topic: How school ruins reading. I'm a big believer that the education system is messed up and being done wrong. I think one of the biggest things they've screwed up is English classes.

Elementary school is the biggest offender. They sort you into groups based on your reading level and make the not so good readers feel stupid and give praise to the smart little know it alls. They base these groups on how well you read out loud (mostly), or at least that's been the way I've seen it happen. Well this doesn't really work because some people just suck at reading out loud. Like me. I can read fine in my head but don't ask me to read in front of people or I'll be stuttering and will barely be able to get through it. It's more nerves than anything else. You see kids are smart, people don't give them enough credit. If you put a kid in the bad reader group they're going to know. Sure the teacher can lie and tell them that they're the same as everyone else but the kid isn't going to believe them. And when somebody, or a messed up system, tells you that you aren't good at something you aren't going to want to do it. If somebody says you are terrible at sports and makes fun of you, especially at a young age, you aren't going to want to do sports. It's the same with reading. Thus causing a lifelong hate and fear of reading.

I think one of the ways to overcome this is to not sort kids into these groups. And that goes for every subject. Instead of treating each of the students different based on their skills they should all be put on the same level. Some kids aren't going to be as good as others, but that's just part of life. They either need to catch up or fall out. The real world doesn't help you by making thing's easier for you. Being soft is one of the biggest crimes against humanity there is.

Jr. High and High school have a habit of making people read books that are old, and for most people, hard to understand. I'm not one of those people but the majority of students these days are. I think if schools picked more modern books students wouldn't hate it as  much. Most teenagers (again, I'm not one that thinks this way) think that if something is old it isn't going to be good. So they just don't try. Teachers get mad when kids don't do their summer reading but did they ever stop to think that maybe the books on the list were ones that kids weren't going to be interested in? Maybe if they picked better books more students would read them. I've asked several of my non-reader friends why they don't read and most of them either said it's because "it gives them headaches" (which is a stupid excuse, clearly you just need glasses if that's the case) or that they didn't want to read the books from school because they're boring. So I asked why not pick a book for yourself and after a bit of prying we get the conclusion that because school books are boring all books must be boring. It's an incorrect conclusion, but it's what most arrive at.

So I think school really does destroy reading. I think school creates a hate of books and a negative feeling for reading. I don't think school is doing books right and I think something needs to change. What do you think?