The ABC of literary adaptations

Give me a hand up while I climb on the bandwagon.

The Alphabet Meme, originated over at Blog Cabins, works according to the following rules:

1. Pick one film to represent each letter of the alphabet.

2. The letter "A" and the word "The" do not count as the beginning of a film's title, unless the film is simply titled A or The, and I don't know of any films with those titles.

3. Return of the Jedi belongs under "R," not "S" as in Star Wars Episode IV: Return of the Jedi. This rule applies to all films in the original Star Wars trilogy; all that followed start with "S." Similarly, Raiders of the Lost Ark belongs under "R," not "I" as in Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark. Conversely, all films in the LOTR series belong under "L" and all films in the Chronicles of Narnia series belong under "C," as that's what those filmmakers called their films from the start. In other words, movies are stuck with the titles their owners gave them at the time of their theatrical release. Use your better judgement to apply the above rule to any series/films not mentioned.

4. Films that start with a number are filed under the first letter of their number's word. 12 Monkeys would be filed under "T."

5. Link back to Blog Cabins in your post so that I can eventually type "alphabet meme" into Google and come up #1, then make a post where I declare that I am the King of Google.

6. If you're selected, you have to then select 5 more people.

I should ’fess up here: I haven’t actually been tagged. But to quote McWatt in ‘Catch-22’, “Oh well, what the hell.”

Here’s my ABC of literary adaptations. Links where reviews have already been posted, reviews of the remainder to follow in due course:

All the Pretty Horses (Billy Bob Thornton, 2000; based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy)

Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982; based on the novel ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?’ by Philip K Dick)

Clockwork Orange, A (Stanley Kubrick, 1971; based on the novel by Anthony Burgess)

Deliverance (John Boorman, 1972; based on the novel by James Dickey)

Exorcist, The (William Friedkin, 1973; based on the novel by William Peter Blatty)

Fight Club (David Fincher, 1999; based on the novel by Chuck Palahniuk)

Great Expectations (David Lean, 1946; based on the novel by Charles Dickens)

Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, The (Garth Jennings, 2005; based on the novel by Douglas Adams)

Innocents, The (Jack Clayton, 1961; based on the novella ‘The Turn of the Screw’ by Henry James)

Jaws (Steven Spielberg, 1975; based on the novel by Peter Benchley)

Keep the Aspidistra Flying (Robert Bierman, 1997; based on the novel by George Orwell)

L.A. Confidential (Curtis Hanson, 1997; based on the novel by James Ellroy)

Man Who Would be King, The (John Huston, 1975; based on the short story by Rudyard Kipling)

No Country for Old Men (Coen Bros, 2007; based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy)

Our Man in Havana (Carol Reed, 1959; based on the novel by Graham Greene)

Prestige, The (Christopher Nolan, 2006; based on the novel by Christopher Priest)

Quiet Man, The (John Ford, 1952; based on the short story by Maurice Walsh)

Remains of the Day, The (James Ivory, 1993; based on the novel by Kazuo Ishiguro)

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (Karel Reisz, 1960; based on the novel by Alan Sillitoe)

There Will Be Blood (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2007; based on the novel ‘Oil!’ by Upton Sinclair)

Under the Volcano (John Huston, 1984; based on the novel by Malcolm Lowry)

Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958; based on the novel ‘D’Entre les Morts’ by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac)

Whisky Galore (Alexander Mackendrick, 1949; based on the novel by Compton McKenzie)

XXY (Lucia Puenzo, 2007; based on the short story ‘Cinismo’ by Sergio Bizzio)

You Only Live Twice (Lewis Gilbert, 1967; based on the novel by Ian Fleming)

Z (Costa-Gavras, 1969; based on the novel by Vasilis Vasilikos)