Books, Movies and Weirdness From the Guardian

Via Coffee, coffee and more coffee comes this list, from the Guardian, of the top 50 adaptations of books to movies. It's one of those lists - probably no coincidence that "The chains Waterstones and Borders are also involved and will promote the books in shops." It's pretty close to impossible to discern any criteria used - quality of the film? quality of the book? quality of both? "accuracy" of the adaptation? Who knows. Nellhaus notes one or two further difficulties - no mention of which film version of certain books is meant; only 2 non-English language books, and no non-English language movies - he poked at, but doesn't far pursue the question of the value of the actual choices. The all-English nature of the list is probably understandable, though a bit disappointing - it's harder to come to grips with foreign language adaptations, but it's a rich field. Nellhaus mentions Truffaut, Visconti, and Tanizaki (on the literary front) - we could also ask about Bresson (whose works are almost all adaptations), the many and various adaptations of Dostoevsky (some of which have been quite good), or Kawabata (The Sound of the Mountain), Mishima (The Temple of the Golden Pavillion/Conflagration, at least), etc. Meanwhile - if this is about adaptations - why aren't plays, biblical and other older materials, included? Why no Shakespeare? That wouldn't be related to the involvement of Waterstones and Barnes and Noble, do you think?

And where are Frankenstein and Dracula? The movies might take great liberties with those two texts - but there should be no denying the excellence of both sets of movies and books. Sometimes the excellence of several movies - how many great Dracula adaptations have there been? Not less than three, anyway.