From: Jim M
Category: Amis
Date: 7/16/99
Time: 11:17:10 AM
Remote Name: 195.11.50.204
Spot the deliberate red-herring in that last post! You're all gonna say, 'Hang on, how can Murphy salute what John Simon has to say and yet bang on about The Thin Red Line, which is adapted from a novel itself, being the greatest film of the nineties?' Total and utter hypocrit, right? Just to qualify my remarks, I don't wholeheartedly agree with Mr Simon. I don't see why books shouldn't be made into films, so long as the new medium sustains the point/purpose whatever that the original medium did. As I've said previously, I think it would be nigh-on impossible to achieve this with 'London Fields'. Terrence Malick's movie more than does the book it's based upon justice...as I've said, he uses voiceover in an extraordinarily unique and valid way...and seeing as the original book is explicitly graphic, with words used merely to recreate the visceral images and feelings of war, it lends itself more to cinematic adaptation than a book like 'the Fields' which, in every chapter, has a living, breathing consciousness of the fact that it's a novel. Just thought I'd try and clear that up before the vultures attack!