Sharon, i don't know about European standards, but get a Blu Ray player instead of a plain DVD player, if possible. Price isn't too much more, and the quality (if you have a HD TV) is better on all disks, Blu-Ray or older ones. (But you can't play BluRay disks on regular DVD player, it does work the other way.) That said, I agree with you completely. That's a great movie! Last night we tried to watch Bad Lieutenant: Port of New Orleans. Don't bother, even if you like Nicholas Cage. Turned it off and put in an old DVD of Big Chill, much better.

Not a Sci-Fi person but we just got back from seeing "Footloose". I really liked it, they kept true to the original story line and I enjoyed all the people they chose as characters. The guy who played Willard (Ren's friend) looks so much like some other actor (who could have been his father) but when the credits ran, his last name was Teller. Can't tell you who he reminds me of - I thought maybe the guy who played in Must Love Dogs and Serendipity. John C someone. Anyway Julianne Hough was really good - she looked like a young Jennifer Anniston. Her parents were played by Randy Quaid (or was it Dennis) and Andi McDowell. Loved the music as before. I will be humming it for the next few days!

Vee, thanks for the link to the Gallup poll. Whew! It will take me a while to assimilate it. As for "the sad state of affairs": I understand now. I tied it to the wrong paragraph. :-) Woodnymph, yeah, I realize that I'm in the minority about the film of To Kill a Mockingbird. I figure my love of the whole book makes me too critical of the adaptation, which picks out and gives emphasis to a particular part. Which reminds me: June, if you watch the Olivier/Oberon Wuthering Heights, don't expect to see the whole story -- you will only get part of it. Otherwise, it's a quite fascinating interpretation: telling, I think, of what adaptors of the 1930s thought was important and what subsequent audiences have taken in. Woodnymph, I saw The English Patient film first, and then read the book. While the "essence" of the book might have been captured in the film, the two are so different! I like the film better. Another essence capturer, I think, is The French Lieutenant's Woman. Oh gosh, yes, the Polanski-directed Tess is superb, I think, and very faithful. Actually I like nearly all of the film versions of Hardy's books, particularly Tess and Far from the Madding Crowd -- Alan Bates will always be my Gabriel Oak. I also liked most of the Merchant-Ivory productions. I certainly like their adaptations of Forster, though I find Forster's writing insufferably Edwardian. I do like some Edwardian writing but Forster's was even more uptight than most. Knowing his bio and the times, I can understand why he wrote the way he did but the priggishness still exasperates me. Speaking of another Forster -- Margaret Forster, that is -- and Alan Bates: I adore the 1966 adaptation of Forster's Georgy Girl. I loved that book so much as a teenager that I determined I was to live in London. When this subject comes up, I always have to mention two of my favorite short story adaptations: John Huston's "The Dead" (from Joyce's Dubliners) and "Babette's Feast" (from Dinesen's Anecdotes of Destiny). June, you're right: there are so many good films that owe their genesis to a book.

They are often totally different, which I think is sometimes necessary, to change what is an interior experience to a moving one. Sometimes the essence of the book is retained very well. But sometimes not and sometimes the movie becomes something totally different. One example of a fail, IMHO, was "The Orchid Thief" which was a movie about trying to turn a book into a movie. I hated the distortion by the movie of what that book was about. I hope Susan Orleans got a hefty check for that one! My dislike for the movie, "And Then She Found Me" caused me to get and read the book by Elinor Lipman. Wowza, not even in the ballpark with the plot of the movie vs the book. However, I didn't much care for the book either. My next attempt will be "Republic of Love" which I sort of liked as a movie but it was sorta weird so I'm gonna try the book by Carol Shields. Two books that I love both the movie and the book are "Dr. Zhivago" which benefits some from the 3D fleshing out of the story, and for me, "The Great Gatsby." The one with Robert Redford, not the newer one. Both books are a totally different experience from the movie, but it is cool to have both the exterior setting and real people living out the experiences in front of you, and then also the experience of their interior lives that you get from the book. In that vein, I liked the movie "Cold Mountain" better than the book. The book got a little too much for me and I didn't have much sympathy for the characters but I did in the movie. Oh and I adore both the book "Auntie Mame" and the movie with Rosalind Russell, even though they are quite different. As a side note, when I was a kid, I ended up enjoying Dr. Doolittle and Mary Poppins as books way better than movies, but the movies did get me into the books. And both Willy Wonka movies were kind of let downs, but the Tim Burton one was especially bad IMHO.