Books into Movies

As I was following the links to the story on Lovely Bones last night, I saw that they're turning it into a movie next year with big-name actors like Mark Wahlberg, Rachel Weisz, Stanley Tucci, and Susan Sarandon. I'm not sure how I feel about this. I am so excited about Inkheart and The Golden Compass, but there are some movies you wish they would keep their hands off of. Particularly those magical ones that really sweep you off your feet. I suppose it will depend on how good of a movie they make. Fried Green Tomatoes, The Green Mile, and To Kill a Mockingbird were excellent. I have loved all of the Jane Austen movies made, and PBS did an incredible job with Jane Eyre last year, even if every Hollywood version of that story was awful. But they slaughtered Snow Falling on Cedars, no good movie of Les Miserables has ever been made, and I heard Prince of Tides didn't do the book justice. I watched part of Like Water for Chocolate and couldn't finish it. I don't think it was necessarily a bad movie, it was just a book that was so magical, you lost the magic when you took the imaginative part out of the experience. I would be happy to see some of my favorite books as movies such as Snow Flower and the Secret Fan and Daughter of Fortune, as long as they were done well. So why the news of Lovely Bones upsets me... I guess I don't believe they can do the book justice. I hope I am pleasantly surprised. Perhaps at least it will make more people read the book, and that would be wonderful.