The Butler

This "book" was just the author's way of attempting to cash in on the film. It did not reveal much more of the true-life butler's life than the initial article. The last 1/3 of the book was devoted to a rant on the film industry's exclusion of blacks. It wasn't particularly well-written either.

The film was well-done. Forest Whittaker did a nice job as the butler. The life of his son was completely embellished for the sake of the film. I guess his true life was just too boring. Mariah Carey was barely recognizable in her role as his mom. It was sweet when he finally recognized his son as a hero.

Wicked

This musical is so, so awesome. It is either my favorite, or maybe a close second to "Rent". I took Megan to see it at the Aronoff on Friday, March 21. It takes the story in the book and makes it so much more straightforward. It also makes it clearer that Elphaba is, for sure, a really wonderful, strong person. It has Fiyero choosing her over Glinda, which is not at all how it happens in the book. It also has a "happily ever after", which 100% did NOT happen in the novel.

There are wonderful, humorous lines that reference the original Wizard of Oz. The novel does reference the original, but not in such a light-hearted, delightful way. Overall, the novel was a strange, scrambled, hard-to-interpret mess. IMHO of course. The changes made for the musical were all understandable, and made the plotline so much easier to follow. And the message behind it all is easy to find too - Don't judge a book by its cover.

In the musical, Morrible is responsible for the tornado that brought Dorothy to town. If this is true in the book, I missed it.
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I accidentally wrote this up twice. Here is my 2nd write-up:

This book was tedious to get through. I know he was trying to send a message about wickedness, but I'm not sure what it was. There seemed to be an element of "we are not always as we seem." But he was shooting for more than that. Whatever his message, it was lost on me.

The musical simplified the story, as all musicals must. Because Glinda showed NessaRose a kindness (which actually was not a kindness at all), Elphaba did Glinda the huge favor of getting her into the sorcery class. This is missing from the book, but a sweeter introduction to their friendship. In the musical, Glinda loves Fiyero. In the book, the romance with Elphaba and Fiyero is completely separate from Glinda and the school. It is so much more satisfying to see Elfie steal Fiyero from Glinda than the hidden, short-lived, fatal romance in the book.

All-in-all, I would say that Gregory Maguire (the author) is immensely lucky that someone decided to take his crap book and make it into a wonderful, uplifting musical loved the world over.

Sherlock: His Last Vow

This episode (the last of season 3) has Sherlock pit against Charles Augustus Magnussen, a man who holds secrets on all kinds of powerful people. This is where we learn that Mary has a very violent, secret past. I do not believe the Mary of the books ever had such a past. The TV movie is very similar to the story in this case. This man is really, extremely, evil. In the book Sherlock allows him to be murdered without interfering. On the TV episode, he murders him himself. All of the secrets die with him onscreen; in the short story, Sherlock burns all the papers.

Sherlock: The Sign of Three

The title of this episode (season 3, ep 2) was inspired by the novel "The Sign of the Four". It doesn't have too much in common with the story. I believe the book does have the meeting of John and Mary, though, and the TV episode shows the wedding of John and Mary.