Tuesday 1 May 2012

Cleckheaton Writers Group and War Horse film review

The Cleckheaton Writers Group met last night and we had an excellent meeting.  We discussed books and their translation into film and television, social media and workshops, books and blogs that we have come across that have excellent advice for writers (one such blog would be Nicola Morgan's Help I Need a Publisher).  We agreed that Daniel would set us a writing task for next session and then I had the pleasure of reading out one of Neil's short stories, which was a fabulous take on the Jack the Ripper story.  Can't wait for the next meeting as Neil is bringing a World War short story and we will be trying out the new writers task.

Just got back from seeing War Horse at the cinema.  I took my Mum in Law and my Mum's friend to see it and the movie theatre was packed out.  I have just read the book and I was interested to see what they did to turn a 182 page book into the length of a movie and I was not disappointed.  They altered it quite a bit, adding a number of things that are just not there in the book (not just events but characters that are major players in the film but do not exist in the book) and even slightly changed the ending, but it was every bit as good as the book, if not better.  When the lights came back up, there was not a dry eye in the house and everyone was talking about how much they had enjoyed the film.  Jeremy Irvine was fabulous as young Albert Narracott as were Emily Watson, Tom Hiddleston and Benedict Cumberbatch and I was even surprised to see the fabulous David Thewlis playing a baddie (he is Professor Lupin to my son no matter what he is in), but the real star is, of course, the horse.  I highly recommend this film, but you MUST take a hankie with you.

No comments:

Post a Comment