Top Ten Book to Movie Adaptations

This is a weekly meme hosted by the girls over at The Broke and the Bookish .

It's a rewind week and I chose book to movie adaptations. I'm not sure if I've done this one before, but I've seen many more adaptations since then I'm sure. So maybe it'll be new. Now before we go into this, I'm going to tell you my criteria for a good book to movie adaptation: 1) Follows the book. Doesn't have to have every little scene, but it should follow the basic plot structure/not change characters entirely etc. Therefore movies like Life of Pi, gorgeous and well acted  as it was, will not be on here because yeah, that ending was totally different and kind of annoyed me. 2) Pretty much it. That is honestly all I ask from movie adaptations: that characters are like the characters in the book and that it follows the book. I'm not hugely picky about this. But it is amazing how hard it is to find adaptations that do that.

1) Holes based on Holes by Louis Sachar-This was a fabulous movie. I think mostly, because the screenplay was actually written by the author. I've noticed when movie screenplays are written by the author, it tends to be better. It expertly weaves in the tales and is wonderfully acted. There's even good music in it.

2) The Hunger Games based on The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins-Speaking of examples of movies adapted from screenplays written by the original author...this was well done. Sure, didn't have every little thing. But considering HG, it could have been ten times worse ;cough; Percy Jackson ;cough; In case you guys have been living under a rock, the Catching Fire teaser trailer has just been released and OMG, it looks EPIC. Possibly better then the first.

3) The Princess Bride based on The Princess Bride by William Goldman-Also written by original author and very close to the book, a few things aside (it ignored a lot of the footnotes which is just as well even though the footnotes were my favorite part of the book).

4) Harry Potter and the Sorcerors Stone based on the first HP book by JK Rowling-Fabulous adaptation, and still one of the most accurate, aside from the two final HP movies and Chamber of Secrets.

5) Jane Eyre (2011 or was it 2010?) starring Michael Fassbender, Judi Dench-Love or hate Jane Eyre, this was a good adaptation period. It was also one of the few adaptations of Jane Eyre I've seen that hasn't tried to excuse away Rochester's shitty way of treating his ill wife.

6) Pride and Prejudice starring Kiera Knightley-Look, I do this crazy thing where I like both the Knightley  version AND the BBC version. Both are good. But we're talking movies here, not TV. So this one makes the list.

7) The Secret Garden starring Maggie Smith-1990s saw a whole bunch of awesome kid movie adaptations and this was one of them. Most accurate, and Smith was flawless as always as was the little girl they found to play Mary.

8) A Little Princess directed by M. Night Shamylan-This was one of the early Shamylan movies and was done before he became a big joke. Again, most accurate and fabulously acted. I know most people know the Shirley Temple one and yes, that has great music. But I much prefer this one.

9) The Fellowship of the Ring directed by Peter Jackson-I like all the trilogy (and I LOVED The Hobbit and can't wait for the sequels) but this one was to me the most faithful of all the movies.

10) To Kill a Mockingbird starring Gregory Peck-Yeah I'm pretty sure my crush on Atticus Finch was mostly because I happened to see the movie first (we saw it in school in my defense). There was talk of doing a new Mockingbird movie and I'm sorry...but no. You don't need any other version then this one.