Top 10 Novel to Movie Adaptations

Being the holidays and having just suffered a computer crash I have taken the easy way out and ripped another top 10 list from LitReactor available at the following link:

http://litreactor.com/columns/the-top-10-book-to-film-adaptations-that-were-actually-good

1. Jurassic Park
By Michael Crichton/Adaptation by Steven Spielberg

2. Fight Club
By Chuck Palahniuk/Adaptation by David Fincher

3. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
By Ken Kesey/Adaptation by Milos Forman

4. Trainspotting
By Irvine Welsh/Adaptation by Danny Boyle

5. American Psycho
by Bret Easton Ellis/Adaptation by Mary Harron

6. Batman Begins and The Dark Knight
Created by Bob Kane, written by others/Adaptation by Christopher Nolan

7. The Shining
by Stephen King/Adaptation by Stanley Kubrick

8. Bringing out the Dead
by Joe Connelly/Adaptation by Martin Scorsese

9. Memento Mori
By Jonathan Nolan/Adaptation by Christopher Nolan (as Memento)

10. The Godfather
By Mario Puzo/Adaptation by Francis Ford Coppola

My personal favorites are:

FIGHT CLUB – Both the book and movie are fantastic and the movie makes changes in all the right places that work. Great soundtrack, great everything.

THE GODFATHER – The movie was better than the book in my opinion and the book was awesome.

THE SHINING – I can’t beleive King doesn’t like this movie.

BATMAN – As long as the movie was by Nolan it’s good. He captured the struggle between the Dark Knight and the Joker beautifully.

One movie that didn’t make the list was CLOCKWORK ORANGE. Another movie that made a few changes that worked well on film, like leaving out the last chapter.

One of my favorite books that I’d love to see as a movie is THE PHYSIOGNOMY by Jeffrey Ford. If you haven’t read it, please do so. It’s time to make this gem into a film.

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Horror Writer, Matt Piskun….I like the sound of that.

I was just featured in the Writing Room as a Brookdale fiction writing grad. The post was made by Jeffrey Ford and award wining author.

Jeff is a great guy, an excellent mentor and an even better author. Do yourself a favor and check out some of his stuff. My 3 favorite works by him, to date, are:

1) The Physiognomy
2) The Girl in the Glass
3) The Shadow Year

You can check out my link here:

Lullaby

I now have three favorite books.

‘The Great and Secret Show” by Clive Barker is my personal benchmark for horror and horror mythology.

“The Physiognomy” by Jeffrey Ford is, for me, the perfect blend of weirdness and dark fantasy.  This book changed the way I think about writing.

“Lullaby” by Chuck Palahniuk was also brilliant.  The themes of life, death, construction and deconstruction (among others) was threaded perfectly throughout the story.  One thing I LOVED is that Palahniuk is twisted but not in a gratuitous manner whatsoever.   Are all Palahniuk’s books this great?  I can’t wait to find out.   Oh, and if you know the proper way to pronounce his last name let me know.