Stop the Debate

How many times have you heard someone say, "the movie wasn't nearly as good as the book?"
Hmmmm.......
My ongoing thought is, "of course it was not as good! They had to pack 250 plus pages of detail into an hour and fourty minutes. How could it ever be as engaging as the book?!" Give the poor movie makers a break!! With that in mind I am never let down by the movie.

"Books into Movies" was an engaging discovery. In two minutes I found "Invictus" a true story about Nelson Mandela and his joining forces with the captain of the South African Rugby team. Having lived in South Africa for six months I understand how enormous both components are to South African life. I remember driving across SA and seeing traveling gangs of rugby fans going to distant matches and getting the sense that rugby was a way of forgetting the woes that still afflict SA even with aparteid dismantled. Mandela's Robben Island prison cell is a pilgrimage site -- he is the figure that pulled off the impossible and everyone holds him out as some sort of miracle worker even though I constantly encountered people that were discouraged with the new order. It will be a bit like going back to SA and I'm stoked to find this film out in December.

The other film I found out about courtesy of Books to Movies was "Taking Woodstock" which in spite of any bad reviews I'll look for on DVD, because who wouldn't want to celebrate the vicarious experience of Woodstock? I'll put bookreporter.com into my quiver of websites I use and recommend to patrons and I'm going to read, "How Shall I tell the Dog." Check out the review for yourself.