The Lovely Bones

Boy, was this book depressing. Along with the murder, and the police's subsequent failure to catch the creepy guy, there is a super-weak mother who wanted to escape even before her oldest was taken from her.

But the movie did a great job at taking the dramatic moments and really making the audience feel them. I appreciated the contrasting scenes between Susie being lured into her underground grave, and her family cheerfully preparing for dinner. And her pain as she watched her dad break his ships-in-a-bottle. I found myself crying at several points. I found the scene where Susie began to meet all the other victims especially poignant. The mother's affair was left out of the movie, and I agreed with that decision. As Susie finally lets go of her ties to earth, we start to see that Heaven can actually be a beautiful place.

The Kite Runner

I was not terribly impressed with this book, but I thought it might make a decent movie. There were enough twists and interesting plot points to make up for the dismal ending. As I started the movie, my one hope was that the script had enough sense to leave out the boy's attempted suicide.

Altough it followed the book closely, even repeating some speeches verbatim, the movie was painful to watch. Who made the decision to have the characters speak Farsi, forcing us to read subtitles, for the entire movie? It was made by an American film company...

Also, the drama in this story lies in the emotions of the characters. Yet there is no narrator or voiceover to assist us in understanding these emotions. If the filmmakers thought the plot points and dialogue was enough to clue us in, they were sadly mistaken. I had read the book, and I still found myself questioning the character's motives.

The ending was just as blah as in the book, except the movie never really explained the silent boy. He just showed up, and stopped talking.

Ugh, it was all I could do to watch this crap.