Movies that are better than the book

[SimonDoom]

Contact by Carl Sagan. The book was good, but Jodie Foster and Matthew McConaughey made the movie. (Even with the ridiculous beach scene).

Mm. Now I'm going to go and stare at photos of Ms Foster again. I'll be in my bunk!

I like that choice! It's a good book, but the movie is one of the more underrated sci fi flicks I can think of. Jodie Foster is such a good actress that she makes every movie she's in seem weightier and more significant than it otherwise would be. I loved her in that movie (I gather you did too! Ha). It's a humane and intelligent film, and the ending is great.

 

[lc69hunter]

The Martian was a visually stunning, well done movie with a good cast, and women got to see Matt Damon's butt, but for a real techie nerd, it did not compare to the book. Andy Weir got into the minutia of the technology, and was about 97% true on the science, stuff they couldn't fit into the movie.

 

[djrip]

Contact by Carl Sagan. The book was good, but Jodie Foster and Matthew McConaughey made the movie. (Even with the ridiculous beach scene).

Mm. Now I'm going to go and stare at photos of Ms Foster again. I'll be in my bunk!

I really loved the crazy math and finding messages buried deep in pi when it's calculated in weird ways that the book had, though.

 

[EmilyMiller]

I really loved the crazy math and finding messages buried deep in pi when it's calculated in weird ways that the book had, though.

If - as is strongly suspected - pi proves to be a Normal Number (there is a slightly weaker requirement, I believe, but beyond my math knowledge to say what) then every conceivable message will be encoded in it. Along with the text of Hamlet, and the text of Hamlet with every instance of “Hamlet” replaced by “djrip”. Infinity is weird. But this is not remarkable as most (in a technical math sense) Real Numbers are actually Normal.

Em (loved math, but better at biology)

 

[EmilyMiller]

If - as is strongly suspected - pi proves to be a Normal Number (there is a slightly weaker requirement, I believe, but beyond my math knowledge to say what) then every conceivable message will be encoded in it. Along with the text of Hamlet, and the text of Hamlet with every instance of “Hamlet” replaced by “djrip”. Infinity is weird. But this is not remarkable as most (in a technical math sense) Real Numbers are actually Normal.

Em (loved math, but better at biology)

Let me just leave a marker here for @AwkwardlySet shall I?

Arrange the following letters into a well-known phrase:

R I E L Y D E S A I G N M I B

 

[djrip]

If - as is strongly suspected - pi proves to be a Normal Number (there is a slightly weaker requirement, I believe, but beyond my math knowledge to say what) then every conceivable message will be encoded in it. Along with the text of Hamlet, and the text of Hamlet with every instance of “Hamlet” replaced by “djrip”. Infinity is weird. But this is not remarkable as most (in a technical math sense) Real Numbers are actually Normal.

Em (loved math, but better at biology)

You know I get the monkeys typing Hamlet thing. But this seems to imply that somewhere in pi, there is a sequence of 100 trillion zeros, for instance. That seems hard to believe.

Well with coin flips I could believe if you keep doing it long enough you could eventually get a run like that. But pi is not random numbers. Does that matter? Are we going to find 100 trillion zeros in a row somewhere in pi? That'd be weird!

 

[EmilyMiller]

You know I get the monkeys typing Hamlet thing. But this seems to imply that somewhere in pi, there is a sequence of 100 trillion zeros, for instance. That seems hard to believe.

If it’s a normal number, yes that’s right. Any finite sequence of numbers, no matter how long, will appear.

Here is an example of an actual Normal Number.

0.1234567891011121314151617181920212223…

I.e. the concatenation of the Natural Numbers. It’s pretty trivial to see that 10^14 will appear as 10^14 is obviously a Natural Nunber. If you were to ask most Mathematicians, they’d be surprised if pi didn’t have this property, but it’s not been proven as yet.

Well with coin flips I could believe if you keep doing it long enough you could eventually get a run like that. But pi is not random numbers. Does that matter? Are we going to find 100 trillion zeros in a row somewhere in pi? That'd be weird!

Not just that, but a Googol, a Googolplex, a Googolplexian and so on…

Any Normal Number will have TREE(3) in it and TREE(3) backwards.

Em

 

[EmilyMiller]

If it’s a normal number, yes that’s right. Any finite sequence of numbers, no matter how long, will appear.

Here is an example of an actual Normal Number.

0.1234567891011121314151617181920212223…

I.e. the concatenation of the Natural Numbers. It’s pretty trivial to see that 10^14 will appear as 10^14 is obviously a Natural Nunber. If you were to ask most Mathematicians, they’d be surprised if pi didn’t have this property, but it’s not been proven as yet.

Not just that, but a Googol, a Googolplex, a Googolplexian and so on…

Any Normal Number will have TREE(3) in it and TREE(3) backwards.

Em

Just to make the point that pi isn’t that special. 2^0.5 is likely Normal as well and 3^0.5. Most Irrational Numbers are and most Real Numbers are Irrational.

Em

 

[MillieDynamite]

Bram Stoker wrote Lair of the White Worm on his deathbed. There was no rewrite, no loving embellishment to his first words, and while it was completed, it wasn't typical Stoker. Stoker would never have published it if he couldn't have made it better. His wife had them publish it to take advantage of his death and his name being hot in the UK at that time.

I assume we're not including novelisations written after the film was made, that'd be like shooting fish in a barrel. [edit: I'll make an exception for 2001, since Clarke's involvement was a lot more than just being hired to write a spinoff to somebody else's film.]

Anthony Minghella's "The Talented Mr. Ripley", from Patricia Highsmith's novel. Highsmith's Ripley just feels kind of emotionally dead; he'd be scary to know in real life, but it's hard to care about what happens to him in fiction. Minghella's Ripley is more human, and he has a character arc. (Not a healthy one, but a compelling one.) The film also made great use of music, and there's a beautiful visual metaphor:

Ken Russell's "Lair of the White Worm": Bram Stoker's original is one of the worst books I've ever read, Russell made it into something that's not high art but is at least cheesy fun with an extremely sexy villainess.

No, no, no, just no, you are totally wrong. Enough said.

The movie Bram Striker's Dracula. The added love story as a motivating factor was good.

 

[SimonDoom]

Almost every one of his books (the earliest were medical thrillers, not what he's known for) were about how man's reach exceeded his grasp, and the hubris of trying to play god is his undoing.

He could be preachy.

Definitely. The theme of Rising Sun, which was published in 1992, was that Japan was taking over the world. That was right on the eve of the collapse of its real estate market and its prolonged stagnation. Prescience was not his strong suit.

 

[EroticCupcake]

Bram Stoker wrote Lair of the White Worm on his deathbed. There was no rewrite, no loving embellishment to his first words, and while it was completed, it wasn't typical Stoker. Stoker would never have published it if he couldn't have made it better. His wife had them publish it to take advantage of his death and his name being hot in the UK at that time.

No, no, no, just no, you are totally wrong. Enough said.

I saw Lair of the White Worm at a young age. The movie is quite bad. In other news, I'll go back to writing dub-con or BDSM romance stories. I'm sure there is no connection here.

 

[MillieDynamite]

The second part of my statement was about the movie Bram Stoker's Dracula being better than Dracula. I can't say that for you, I'm right, but for me, I am. Dracula is a literary masterpiece, and no movie about the subject has come close to the novel. The movie Lair of the White Worm was terrible, but the book was worse. It was just not completed, not wholly realized as a book. The film was campy and a bit fun.

I saw Lair of the White Worm at a young age. The movie is quite bad. In other news, I'll go back to writing dub-con or BDSM romance stories. I'm sure there is no connection here.

Again, I can only give my opinion, but mine is the one that matters to me.

 

[EroticCupcake]

The second part of my statement was about the movie Bram Stoker's Dracula being better than Dracula. I can't say that for you, I'm right, but for me, I am. Dracula is a literary masterpiece, and no movie about the subject has come close to the novel. The movie Lair of the White Worm was terrible, but the book was worse. It was just not completed, not wholly realized as a book. The film was campy and a bit fun.

Again, I can only give my opinion, but mine is the one that matters to me.

No worries. The movie version was a mess, but I liked the origin part and the love story part. I haven't read the book in a very long time.

 

[djrip]

The movie Lair of the White Worm was terrible, but the book was worse. It was just not completed, not wholly realized as a book.

It was just a quick Stoker.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (the actors brought those characters to life in such a great way ) and Jurassic Park (fluff turned to visually beautiful fluff!)

Spot on with Cuckoo's Nest! I almost failed a literature course in college because I couldn't make past the first few pages of the book. Horrible flow. The screenplay and characters in the movie saved it for me.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

Forrest Gump. The movie held my attention. The book, not so much.

I disagree. I enjoyed Tom Hanks in the role and the movie was okay, but far less entertaining than the book. The book is challenging to read but contains so much more of Forrest as a character and the events in his life that were cut out of the movie.

 

[MillieDynamite]

Yeah, a premature-completion event.

It was just a quick Stoker.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

Let me just leave a marker here for @AwkwardlySet shall I?

Arrange the following letters into a well-known phrase:

R I E L Y D E S A I G N M I B

Solved it!
It says: AwkwardlySet is the best author in the universe (+- a few letters)

 

[EmilyMiller]

Solved it!
It says: AwkwardlySet is the best author in the universe (+- a few letters)

That’s deeply impressive, hun. And you did it so quickly.

Em

 

[SimonDoom]

The second part of my statement was about the movie Bram Stoker's Dracula being better than Dracula. I can't say that for you, I'm right, but for me, I am. Dracula is a literary masterpiece, and no movie about the subject has come close to the novel. The movie Lair of the White Worm was terrible, but the book was worse. It was just not completed, not wholly realized as a book. The film was campy and a bit fun.

Again, I can only give my opinion, but mine is the one that matters to me.

I haven't read that book, but it's on my list. I thought the Coppola movie had its good points, including the wonderful Gary Oldman, but even his acting prowess couldn't offset the inadequacies of Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder attempting (with no success) British accents. I love Keanu when he doesn't have to really act (e.g., Speed, Bill & Ted, Matrix, John Wick). But otherwise . . .

I thought the 1979 update of Nosferatu, with Klaus Kinski, was an enjoyable and successful, and highly stylized, retelling of the story.

 

[MillieDynamite]

Both the original silent masterpiece and the retelling are top-notch movies. But they don't come close to reading all 160,000 + words of Dracula in two or three nights. The book is filled with Horror Cliches, but they were the first and best use of them. When literally everyone who follows copies you, it had to be good. Most of Stoker's work is great. Save the odd and inexplicable original end and the even stranger altered endings of The Jewel of Seven Stars that could have been one of his best. The first ending was too bleak but worked much better than the publisher-ordered alterations. I think there may be three different versions of the story. I can't remember.

I haven't read that book, but it's on my list. I thought the Coppola movie had its good points, including the wonderful Gary Oldman, but even his acting prowess couldn't offset the inadequacies of Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder attempting (with no success) British accents. I love Keanu when he doesn't have to really act (e.g., Speed, Bill & Ted, Matrix, John Wick). But otherwise . . .

I thought the 1979 update of Nosferatu, with Klaus Kinski, was an enjoyable and successful, and highly stylized, retelling of the story.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

That’s deeply impressive, hun. And you did it so quickly.

Em

 

[alohadave]

But they don't come close to reading all 160,000 + words of Dracula in two or three nights.

Alternatively, you can sign up for emails in real time of all the letters that are sent in the book.

https://draculadaily.substack.com/about

 

[MillieDynamite]

Well, the letters are certainly important to the story, but so are the diaries, journals, news reports, captain's log, and so forth and so on. I haven't read it in a few years, I feel some late-night reading might be just around the corner.

Alternatively, you can sign up for emails in real time of all the letters that are sent in the book.

https://draculadaily.substack.com/about

 

[theWollstonecraftWoman]

Well, the letters are certainly important to the story, but so are the diaries, journals, news reports, captain's log, and so forth and so on. I haven't read it in a few years, I feel some late-night reading might be just around the corner.

Drakula sax!