{"id":1164,"date":"2011-05-17T10:18:44","date_gmt":"2011-05-17T14:18:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/flunkingsainthood\/?p=1164"},"modified":"2011-05-17T10:18:44","modified_gmt":"2011-05-17T14:18:44","slug":"is-the-movie-ever-as-good-as-the-book","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flunkingsainthood\/2011\/05\/is-the-movie-ever-as-good-as-the-book.html","title":{"rendered":"Is the Movie Ever as Good as the Book?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/83\/2011\/05\/robert-pattinson-water-for-elephants.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-1165\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/83\/2011\/05\/robert-pattinson-water-for-elephants.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" \/><\/a>I have <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.thethoughtfulchristian.com\/2011\/05\/water-for-elephants-or-is-the-movie-ever-as-good-as-the-book.html\">a short post up at The Thoughtful Christian<\/a> this week about my dilemma about whether to see the movie <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt1067583\/\">Water for Elephants<\/a>.<\/em> I just read the book and was enthralled by it, but am wondering whether the book&#8217;s richly evocative descriptions and characters could possibly translate to the big screen. (I&#8217;m also not that persuaded that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/name\/nm1500155\/\">Robert Pattinson<\/a> can act. There, I said it.)<\/p>\n<p>I can count on one hand the movies that I felt were as good as the book (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0120737\/\"><em>Lord of the Rings<\/em><\/a>) or even better (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0279778\/\"><em>The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood<\/em>)<\/a>. I don&#8217;t believe any of the Harry Potter films have lived up to their source material, even though a couple (3 and 6) have used the film medium to add innovative embellishments.<\/p>\n<p>So the jury&#8217;s still out on whether I will see <em>Water for Elephants<\/em>. It only has <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rottentomatoes.com\/m\/water_for_elephants\/\">a 60% rating on the Tomameter<\/a> at Rotten Tomatoes, which is not a good sign. For now I may prefer to see Rosie the Elephant only in my head, her knowing smile fixed in the memory of my own imagination.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have a short post up at The Thoughtful Christian this week about my dilemma about whether to see the movie Water for Elephants. I just read the book and was enthralled by it, but am wondering whether the book&#8217;s richly evocative descriptions and characters could possibly translate to the big screen. (I&#8217;m also not&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":226,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-cultural-commentary"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Is the Movie Ever as Good as the Book? - Flunking Sainthood<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flunkingsainthood\/2011\/05\/is-the-movie-ever-as-good-as-the-book.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Is the Movie Ever as Good as the Book? - Flunking Sainthood\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I have a short post up at The Thoughtful Christian this week about my dilemma about whether to see the movie Water for Elephants. I just read the book and was enthralled by it, but am wondering whether the book&#8217;s richly evocative descriptions and characters could possibly translate to the big screen. (I&#8217;m also not&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flunkingsainthood\/2011\/05\/is-the-movie-ever-as-good-as-the-book.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Flunking Sainthood\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-05-17T14:18:44+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/flunkingsainthood\/files\/2011\/05\/robert-pattinson-water-for-elephants.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Jana Riess\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Is the Movie Ever as Good as the Book? - Flunking Sainthood","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flunkingsainthood\/2011\/05\/is-the-movie-ever-as-good-as-the-book.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Is the Movie Ever as Good as the Book? - Flunking Sainthood","og_description":"I have a short post up at The Thoughtful Christian this week about my dilemma about whether to see the movie Water for Elephants. I just read the book and was enthralled by it, but am wondering whether the book&#8217;s richly evocative descriptions and characters could possibly translate to the big screen. 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She is also currently working on The Twible, a three-year Twitter project with humorous daily Bible updates for your amusement (find her on Twitter as @janariess). She has a few silly degrees from swanky schools but was never once able to climb the rope in gym class. Her spiritual director is Buffy the Vampire Slayer.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flunkingsainthood\/author\/jriess"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flunkingsainthood\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flunkingsainthood\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flunkingsainthood\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flunkingsainthood\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/226"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flunkingsainthood\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1164"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flunkingsainthood\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1164\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1166,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flunkingsainthood\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1164\/revisions\/1166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flunkingsainthood\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flunkingsainthood\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flunkingsainthood\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}