Friday, August 29, 2003

I think I agree with the consensus (is that spelled right? it doesn’t look right) of my commenters that books are preferred over movies. I love a good book. But I love a good movie too. The comments got me thinking a little bit - there are times I prefer a movie to the book. Rather, it’s that I appreciate having the movie to help in the reading of the book.

For instance, I’m reading Black Hawk Down right now. I’ve seen the movie already, several times (I saw it in the theater when it came out). While I know that the movie doesn’t tell the whole story and that some of it is fictionalized for the screen, I have found that watching a movie while reading the book can help me to visualize some of what’s being described. For me, war is hard to visualize, no matter how well it’s written. So while I have a good imagination, I can’t fully appreciate battle scenes by just reading them. And I’m finding that to be the case with this book. So I’ve been resisting rewatching the movie until I finish the book, but I decided to go ahead and watch it tonight. I’m at a point in the book where the people and places are getting confused and I’m thinking that watching the movie might help.

Another example of where this worked was with Band of Brothers. I watched the mini-series before I read the book. I came to love those guys (the real men as portrayed by actors), especially the ones who were featured in the snippets of video before and after each episode. Hearing them tell parts of their stories in their own voices, to see their tears, their accents gave me a real sense of who they are. So when I started reading the book, I felt that I already knew who a lot of them were. And having seen the battles they experienced in that movie version helped me keep track of the action in the book too.

So I’m logging off now to go watch Black Hawk Down. It’s a very good movie that should have won Oscar’s Best Picture, imho. But Hollowood didn’t want to reward that kind of movie then. If you haven’t seen it, rent it. And I can recommend the book as well - it’s well written, the research is thorough, and you get a good history of the troubles in Somalia as well as the moment-by-moment action our troops experienced on that terrible day.