The movie “The Ruins,” based on Scott Smith’s 2006 best-selling novel, will be in theaters on April 4. That gives you a little time to read the book before you see the movie. After watching the trailer for the movie, I’m a bit afraid that Smith’s absolutely riveting and wickedly spooky book might turn into just another cheesy horror flick.

In the novel, two young American couples visiting Cancun make friends with a German whose brother has gone off to join an archaelogical dig in the area. Searching for him, the small group find themselves in the jungles of Yucatan at a deserted Mayan site where they encounter something sinister and terrifying. The story becomes one of survival as the characters react in different ways to the life-or-death situation.

In the book, there’s a slow and suspenseful unveiling of a menace that will be difficult to reproduce on film. The good news, though, is that Scott Smith wrote both the book and the screenplay, and this double duty worked well for his last film venture. His screenplay for “A Simple Plan” based on his 1993 novel was nominated for an Oscar in 1998.

Also, Carter Smith, the director of “The Ruins,” said in an interview with the Chicago Tribune, that “the movie is significantly different from the book. There’s definitely lots of changes, so it’ll be a new experience for readers.” 

My advice is to read the book now (it’s in paperback), and then wait for the Beifuss review before you see the movie.

The film of “Beowulf,” packed with grandiose special effects and awash with deluges of digital blood, somehow misses the tone of one of the scariest scenes in world literature. We’re quoting from Seamus Heaney’s splendid translation of the Old English epic published in 1999.

In off the moors, down through the mist bands

God-cursed Grendel came greedily loping.

The bane of the race of men roamed forth,

hunting for a prey in the high hall.

Under the cloud-murk he moved towards it,

until it shone above him, a sheer keep

of fortified gold.

The monster, more monstrous because of his humanoid form — and “greedily loping” is perfect — reaches the great hall of Hrothgar, king of the Danes.

Then his rage boiled over, he ripped open

the mouth of the building, maddening for blood,

pacing the length of the patterned floor

with his loathsome tread, while a baleful light,

flame more than light, flared from his eyes.

It’s the flame in Grendel’s eyes that transfixes us, a malevolent blaze that, as the poet implies, seems to project awful sentience beyond mere light.

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Released the week before this past Sunday’s 80th Academy Awards ceremony, Mark Harris’ “Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood” (Penguin Press, $27.95) chronicles the conception, production and reception of the five films that competed for the Best Picture Oscar in 1967.

Through this narrative device, Harris examines what he calls a “paroxysmal point” in American movie history, when the Hollywood old guard began to be succeeded by voices that were fresh, young, iconoclastic (Dustin Hoffman wields a church cross like a club in “The Graduate”), European-influenced (the new filmmakers loved Truffaut and Godard) and hip.

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When I read a Grisham novel, I like to visualize possible local settings and imagine which actors might play certain characters in the movie version.

Grisham told Charlie Rose in an interview last month that the chance of “The Appeal” becoming a movie was 50/50. “This is book No. 21,” Grisham said. “I’ve only had 8 movies.”

It’s noteworthy that three of the eight had scenes that were filmed in Memphis. (Remember the 1993 auction of opulent furniture and set decorations from “The Firm” at the old International Harvester plant in Frayser.)

I think Grisham’s book might eventually make it to a theater near you. There’s plenty of potential for cinematic excitement in the story of two small town lawyers battling evil corporations and corrupt politicians. Also Mississippi is one of 39 states that elects judges, and this timely issue (see Sandra Day O’Connor’s article in the Feb. 24 Parade) is central to Grisham’s plot.

“The Appeal” has no Memphis scenes and takes place mostly in south Mississippi, but with the proper incentives and lobbying, perhaps the redoubtable Linn Sitler could lure moviemakers to the Memphis area to re-create the book’s settings.

SCOUTING THE LOCATIONS
“The Appeal” begins with a verdict in a Hattiesburg courtroom. Two local lawyers win $41 million from a Manhattan-based chemical company for their client whose husband and son died of cancer caused by polluted water. Read the rest of this entry »

As I watched the montage of the Best Picture films over the years during the Oscars Sunday night, I started thinking about all the great films that were first set down as words in a book.

The Best Picture winner this year, “No Country for Old Men,” began as a novel by Cormac McCarthy. Other nominated films – “Atonement” and “There Will Be Blood” — also were based on books. 

Every good book doesn’t translate into a good movie, though. The film version of one of my favorite books, “Love in the Time of Cholera,” was pretty much panned by critics and dissed at the box office. One person wrote it would’ve been a better movie if they just filmed someone sitting on stage reading aloud the book by Gabriel Garcia Marquez…. Sometimes it’s not so much the story, but the way it is written; it’s hard to make that translate on film.

But there have been many books that make highly successful movies: Ken Kesey’s “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” “Schindler’s List” by Thomas Keneally, the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy base on the book by J.R.R. Tolkien, and Micheal Ondaatje’s “The English Patient,” to name a few.

Of all the Best Pictures from books over the years, I’d have to say my favorite is “Out of Africa.” The cinematography, the music, Meryl Streep telling stories, Robert Redford washing her hair on safari… When I read passages from Isak Denisen’s memoir, I hear them in Meryl Streep’s ”Karen” voice.

I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills…

What is your favorite film based on a book?

“Atonement” was one of my favorite books of the last five years, so I was annoyed that there was going to be a movie. But of course I went to see it. Glumly. I don’t feel that need to see everything I like in print compressed for the screen.

Sometimes the transition is brilliant; “Lolita” the book and “Lolita” the movie are like two freestanding works of art. James Mason is a better Humbert Humbert than I imagined on my own when I read the book, and Shelley Winters just IS Charlotte Haze. The movie wasn’t a road trip like the book was, but since Nabokov wrote the screenplay, it had its own credibility.

“Atonement” is a good movie. The first half is beautiful, the casting is pretty perfect. But here’s why I suffer when I watch movies made from books that I like. One of the great sentences in the first chapter of the book was about the villainous little girl’s room: “a shrine to her controlling demon.” And, “the model farm consisted of the usual animals, but all facing one way, toward their owner, as if about to burst into song.” In the movie’s opening scene, the camera surveys animal figures on a rug on its way to finding the little girl typing. Does that really tell someone who hasn’t read the book that this little girl is self-absorbed and egotistical?

The movie won best drama at the Golden Globe awards and has seven Oscar nominations, including for Best Picture. And the author is a fan. AP last week quoted Ian McEwan saying the actress Saoirse Ronan’s portrayal of Briony Tallis gave you “the sense of her mind just turning.” He did also say that he thinks film is inferior to books at portraying human consciousness.

I didn’t read “No Country for Old Men.”  Any Cormac McCarthy fans have thoughts on that movie?