Word: plot
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Carefully but critically, for it's simply not an option to be totally faithful to a fat novel. The movie version of Arthur Golden's Memoirs of a Geisha takes 2 hr. 24 min.; reading his text could take weeks. Almost any novel's plot must be compressed into a black hole of incident and image. Then there's the challenge any movie faces of putting thoughts into words, emotions into gestures, descriptions into actions. And always the adapters must worry not just about satisfying those persnickety readers but also about pleasing the audience ignorant of the book...
CHALLENGES: Right off the bat, the screenwriters had to commit sacrilege by tinkering with a beloved children's classic. They also had to wrestle with a strongly Christian plot that flirts with Sunday-school didacticism and had to keep kids interested despite a noticeable lack of exploding spaceships...
CHALLENGES: Filmmakers had to consult on changes with author J.K. Rowling (who's usually quite agreeable); appease every kid who has read, memorized and worshipped the book; put Goblet's 734-page bulk on a severe diet that slimmed the plot without starving it; find a strong narrative line that, as director Mike Newell says, you can "hang stuff on like a necklace"; and make a movie that fit into the seven-novel structure but could stand alone as a ripping yarn. "Goblet of Fire was by far the most difficult thing I've ever done in my life," says...
...strands, of generation and regeneration, are twined in "Walk Like a Man." Here's the plot: The singer's girl has defamed him, and he's crushed; he needs mature, male wisdom to caulk his broken heart. In what is surely their last conversation, he tells her: "Oh, how you tried / To cut me down to sigh-yize, / Tellin' dirty lie-yies to my friends. / But my own father / Said, 'Give her up, don't bother. / The world isn't coming to an end. He said: 'Walk like a man. Talk like a man. / Walk like...
...have time even to read CliffsNotes? Come January, Britain's Dot Mobile will roll out a new cell-phone service that summarizes literary classics in ultra-terse text messages. The firm aims to "fillet" pertinent plot points and provide another important study aid by highlighting key quotes. Who's helping the company distill the works of Austen, Dickens and Shakespeare into précis such as the one below of Romeo and Juliet? John Sutherland, who chaired the judging panel for this year's Man Booker Prize for fiction. The University College London professor says text messaging's "educational opportunities...