Despereaux

This weekend, we watched the sweet little animated movie called The Tale of Despereaux, by Universal Pictures based on the book of the same name by children’s author Kate DiCamillo.  The story itself is about a little mouse named Despereaux Tilling who is not your ordinary mouse.  He falls in love with a charming fairy tale, and as a result, finds himself a princess that needs to be saved.  It is also the story of a rat named Roscuro who has been banished to the darkness  and a sad little farm girl named Miggery Sow, who longs to live the life of a princess.

The movie itself was beautiful to look at, really getting at the heart of the story which is basically about not judging a book by its cover.  It is amazing to see these stories which sit on our shelves in the library come to life on the big screen.  The amazing animation talents available these days has done quite a bit to move the printed word into the realms of reality.

Searching for some information about the movie and book, I came across a delightful little website produced presumably, by the creators at Universal Pictures as a companion to the movie.  The site allows your child (or you, if you like) to enter information about themselves into a creative machine which designs a character based on one from the movie.  Then, it animates an adventure that can be viewed on your computer with simple creative frames that will delight anyone who loved the book or movie.

We always form our own voices for characters as we read a book, so a movie can really bring a character to life, which can be good or bad, depending on how you “heard” the voice in the first place.  I came across a little background video at the premiere of the movie itself which will show you a little of each actor who played a role in the movie.  Do you think the movie was cast well?

My drive is only four minutes…..

This is a fabulous little stop-motion movie shot entirely from up above called Sorry I’m Late by Thomas Mankovsky.  It makes me happy my trip home isn’t this difficult.  Just a frivolous Friday post!

Where the wild things are….

One of the most popular children’s books of all time has to be Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are, first published in 1963.  The images of the world he created about a boy who is punished and sent to his room without dinner went on to win Sendak the Caldecott Medal in 1964.

Children have been enthralled by the story and the pictures for years, and now director Spike Jonze, is about to release the full-length movie version, due out in October of this year.  Will fans of the book  love it or hate it?  Only time will tell but the movie trailer and poster look to be very true to the book’s illustrations.

Do you YouTube Part Deux….

I recently talked about the value of YouTube as a search engine, but the real reason many of us visit the site is to watch incredible, funny or crazy videos that people have made themselves.  I have not yet ventured into the realm of creating movies and posting them, although my husband did buy a great video camera and I’m itching to find a fun, creative project.  In our library, we have a YouTube for Dummies book and I think I’ll take it out and see just how this all works (they often have great tips for beginners as well as experienced users.)

I started thinking about movies again when I saw this incredible video by Oren Lavie called “Her Morning Elegance” on YouTube. (Thanks to Creature Comforts for posting this on her blog!)   Lavie is a self-proclaimed “songwriter, director and writer of funny books for sad children”.   This video was the first for his self-produced album called The Opposite Side of the Sea and the Israeli-born Lavie shows off his incredible creativity here.  The video is a compilation of 3225 still photos shot entirely over 2 days and edited together.  You can read more about the process Lavie used in making this video here.

I think I’ll start with something less ambitious!

Arthur C. Clarke

The world learned today that another great writer of our time has passed away. Arthur C. Clarke, the celebrated science fiction author died today at the age of 90 at his home in Sri Lanka. Clarke was born in England in 1917, where he grew up in a middles class family. He was always fascinated with science and stargazing and it was during this time that he formulated many of his scientific ideas that would later become part of his novels.

After graduating high school, he did not have enough money to go to university, so he joined the Royal Air Force and served in the war for a number of years. Upon finishing his service, he went on to study at King’s College in London where he earned degrees in mathematics and physics. He began his writing career seriously shortly thereafter, sending in science fiction stories to magazines in 1937. He had a number of short stories published, his fascination with science and the stars growing with each story, and his growing fan base allowed him to begin a correspondence with author C. S. Lewis (Chronicles of Narnia) during the 1940’s – 1950’s.

One of his most famous works was also one of director Stanley Kubrick’s masterpieces….2001 : A Space Odyssey. Oddly, as with many movies, a book usually inspires the movie, but both Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke wanted to work together and so they began without any concrete idea in mind. Kubrick wanted Clarke to write the screenplay, but Clarke found this too tedious and so began his own novelization of 2001. He wrote the novel while the screenplay was also being written, and eventually, Clarke and Kubrick parted ways artistically. Clarke’s novel had many variations from the movie, many people thinking that it fleshed out the ideas that Kubrick presented in the film, but Kubrick felt his piece was strong enough without the novel. They both raced to release their works, with the movie coming out first, followed by the novel (which was entirely credited to Arthur C. Clarke, even though there had been collaboration.) Both did very well, and the author and director are both remembered for these works.

Arthur C. Clarke will always be one of the foremost authors of science fiction, having written numerous short stories and novels, almost all having a space theme. In December of 2007 on the occasion of his 90th birthday, he recorded a video message to his friends and family bidding them goodbye. Clarke will be fondly remembered by his many readers.

Sharks, Hobbits and Wizards

Sharks need not be afraid anymore. The world has lost actor Roy Scheider, the hard-working sheriff from the movie “Jaws”. When we hear of someone in the entertainment world passing, we often associate them with their biggest role, or the one that left the biggest impression, and so it is true with Roy Scheider. Many of us will never forget the impact the movie “Jaws” had on us all those summers ago. And even watching it years later, without all of the special effects the movie world offers us now, the shark can still chill us to the bone and make us want to avoid even our own swimming pools. The imagination can be much more powerful than anything a movie can show us. Which is why books are so wonderful, and also why many books are made into movies.

Jaws was not the first novel to be made into a movie and it will hardly be the last, with so many amazing stories being written every day. It must be easier for studios to pick up a book that has been on the best seller list and make it come alive on the big screen, than to have writers come up with original stories. After all, someone has already done the hard work for them….creating characters and plots that beg to be brought to life. Often we read books that we think should be made into movies, because our culture these days demands the quick-fix that only a movie can bring. A lot of people would rather sit in the theatre and watch something for 2 hours than read a book over the course of a few days or weeks.

So, why don’t we all just read the books? Usually, they are much better. The characters are more fleshed out and there are usually more plot twists or details than we’d ever find in the movie version, but if we haven’t already read the book when we see the movie, very few of us ever go and get the book to compare. At the library, we do tend to see an influx of people coming in to get a book that has been made into a current popular movie, but rarely do we get requests for an older movie/book duo. Let’s think about it though….what inspired someone to make that movie? The book, of course! That book must have affected someone so powerfully with its story and characters to make them want to pursue making a movie. So, let’s talk about the books!

Jaws, by Peter Benchley, is just one of many famous movies derived from a book.

But there are many more award winning movies that came from books, such as Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone…..

which of course was the first of seven amazingly popular books, and subsequent films. This movie, however, seemed to be produced more to give children something else “Harry Potter” during the frenzy. You would be hard pressed to find any child that hasn’t read at least one of the books and most have read all of them, and the movies are just a bonus to them.

What about “The Green Mile” by Stephen King? Many people didn’t even know that the famous horror writer had anything to do with this film.

This little gem of a movie actually came from the creation of a serial that King put out over the course of 6 or 7 months, producing mini-books, much like they used to do in the past to get readers hooked on a series. It worked. And the movie stuck pretty close to the book, but the draw to this story was only being told a little bit at a time. I don’t think it had the same magic even being published in a single book format once the entire serial version was finished, however, if any of you have seen the movie, you’ll agree it was a special film, and not what you’d expect from a horror writer.

And we can hardly mention books being made into movies without talking about The Lord of the Rings , by J. R.R Tolkien. I think that anyone who read the books as a child (or older) was pleased that the movies were made during this stage in history. If they had been done before (shorter versions were produced, but without much acclaim), the special effects could not keep up with our imaginations. I think we would have been disappointed in the translation to the big screen. But Peter Jackson’s version brought the characters and the places we could only imagine into reality for so many of us.

Even though this is only a short splattering of movies created from books, it gives us all a sense of what can be done, and even if it should be done at all. The imagination can be so much more vivid than something produced, even with a big Hollywood budget. Maybe we should all save the $14+ ticket price and pop to the library to get the book! It might be more rewarding in the long run.