Tag: The Maze Runner

The Best of 2014: Books that became movies

John Guillen5 Comments

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The Best of 2014 is a series of posts in which I talk about a different topic each day this week. Today’s topic will be adaptations. Except today’s post is different. I don’t have a list for you. I’m going to ask what you all think. Because I don’t go to the movies enough to have any idea what the best adaptations of 2014 are.

2014 was no different from other recent calendar years in that there were MANY books adapted into major films. Just a few off the top of my head that were at least fairly well received…Lone Survivor, Gone Girl, Mockingjay Part 1, The Theory of Everything, The Fault in Our Stars, and The Maze Runner. I could have named a lot more, but the point of this post isn’t for me to list out random literary adaptations. I want to know which movies adapted from books you enjoyed this year. Sure there’s an inherent bias if the book happened to be written by an author you like, but who cares.

I have two movies in mind that I think are probably the best movies based on books, but that’s just based on reviews and critics. Y’all may think differently. So tell me, which books adapted into movies did you think stood above the rest in 2014?

PS: Lone Survivor was actually released on Christmas day last year, but it received a wide release in January.

Here They Come

John Guillen19 Comments

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The title of this post could literally mean any one of a hundred different things. I bet if I gave you the chance to guess before I get into what this post is actually about you’d be wrong. Go ahead. Guess.

Now you have something in your head that I am quite certain is incorrect. So let me tell you what is right. Every year Hollywood adapts a million books into movies. We know this. It’s not a new trend. This fall has quite a few new movie releases that are adapted from books. I mean, we know the big ones. Mockingjay. The Hobbit. Gone Girl. And there are more. This comes during a year in which we’ve already seen a number of adaptations released. Divergent. The Fault in Our Stars. The Giver. It appears that Hollywood is fast searching for the next phenomenon, but studios have recently been hit or miss when it comes to literary adaptations. Mostly miss. And the two wildly successful series (THG & The Hobbit) will be over this year and next, so the search will continue.

This article from USA Today lists their ten highlighted adaptations of the fall. Which movie adapted from a book are you most looking forward to? You know the answer for me. Mockingjay Part 1 cannot get here fast enough.