跟读练习: 5 Books Better Than The Movie - 通过YouTube学习英语口语
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There's a lot of debate about which movies are better than the book,
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There's a lot of debate about which movies are better than the book,
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but some adaptations are universally considered to have missed the mark.
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Here are five books that were definitely better than the movie.
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Number one, The Lovely Bones.
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The Lovely Bones tells a story of a murdered teenage girl named Susie Salmon.
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It's told from the point of view of the murdered girl
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as she watches from the great beyond as her family and friends mourn her and try to move on with their lives.
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Her actual death is covered in the opening chapter,
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with the rest of the book describing how her family and friends deal with the loss,
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which is the story's biggest strength.
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The mistake the movie makes is that it dedicates nearly half the screen time to the girl's death.
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Of course, Hollywood would ratchet up this part of the story,
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but it meant there was less screen time for the friends and family's stories,
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which is what the readers loved about the book.
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Susie's mother, father, sister, friends,
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and even the killer himself have their stories told in the book as she watches on.
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Since the movie focuses on the who,
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what, and where of the death,
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it has little time for these characters to be flushed out.
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And the director Peter Jackson ramped up the special effects,
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which shifted viewers' attention from the family and friends to what heaven looks like in this particular story world.
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Movie critic Roger Ebert went so far as to call this movie deplorable,
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and he didn't even read the book.
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He's judging it as a standalone movie.
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The Lovely Bones is a deplorable film with this message.
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If you're a 14-year-old girl who has been brutally raped and murdered by a serial killer,
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you have a lot to look forward to.
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You can get together in heaven with the other teenage victims of the same killer
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and gaze down in benevolence upon your family members as they mourn you and realize what a wonderful person you were.
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Sure, you miss your friends,
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but your fellow fatalities come dancing to greet you in a meadow of wildflowers,
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and how cool is that?
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He goes on to say,
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It's based on the bestseller by Alice Sebold that everybody seemed to be reading a couple years ago.
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I hope it's not faithful to the book.
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If it is, millions of Americans are scary.
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That's a pretty bold critique.
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Ebert was an avid reader.
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I think he would have been pleasantly surprised if he had read the book.
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It's noted, though, that Saoirse Ronan's performance as the dead girl was widely praised even by critics of the movie.
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And yes, I had to look up how to pronounce her name correctly.
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Number two, The Golden Compass.
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His Dark Materials was the original name of the book.
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In America, it was released under the name The Golden Compass
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and later turned into a movie to capitalize on the success of the Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings movies.
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The book brought a fresh story world to readers
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when it was initially released in 1995 with its distinctive idea that the characters have mystical animals who accompany them in life.
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The book alludes to theology,
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physics, and philosophy through its story elements,
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and some have called it an atheist's answer to C.S.
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Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia series.
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For this reason, the book has been criticized as anti-church,
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and the author, Philip Pullman,
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has made no secret of his disdain for the Chronicles of Narnia.
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He called it a peevish blend of racist, misogynistic, and reactionary prejudice.
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But of love, of Christian charity,
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there is not a trace.
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I need to do a video about writers' feuds.
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That would be kind of fun.
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Philip Pullman's story involves children abducted by church members known as gobblers who use them for experiments.
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Go ahead and draw your own conclusions on what that metaphor represents.
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When the movie was released,
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the filmmakers toned down the anti-church rhetoric, angering fans greatly.
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The movie did okay worldwide,
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but failed at the North American box office,
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probably because moviegoers were tired of wizardry and were moving into Twilight territory.
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The director, Chris Weitz, said he was at odds with new cinema to produce a family film,
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so he had to tone down the anti-religious material that drew readers to the book in the first place.
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This turned the movie into a mediocre fantasy picture
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that left many of the philosophical elements of the book on the cutting room floor.
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Ironically, the Catholic Church called for boycotts of the movie despite the fact
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that the studio caved in and removed the anti-church material.
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In 2008, what was going to be a series of movies was put on indefinite hold.
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Number three, Cloud Atlas.
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Cloud Atlas is a novel
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that tells six stories in six different time periods from the 1800s to the future where humans exist in a post-apocalyptic world.
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It's an ambitious story that succeeds greatly in what it's set out to do.
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The book came out in 2004 and the Wachowskis made it into a movie in 2012.
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The novel structures its six stories in a unique way,
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it splits each one in two for a total of 12 sections.
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The first half of each story is told in chronological order,
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one through six, and then the second half of each story is told in reverse chronological order,
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going from six back down to one where we started.
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The stories are united in a few common themes of how we treat people,
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reincarnation, and humankind's yearning to be free.
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The movie was polarizing among critics and audiences,
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with some saying it was the best film of the year and others saying it was the worst.
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Some audiences found it hard to follow since it jumped around in time
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and some critics found the project to be a highly self-indulgent
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project with actors showing off their ability to be covered in makeup and speak in different accents.
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My own opinion though is I thought the movie failed for the simple reason
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that they abandoned the more linear format of the book and allowed it to jump around sort of pulp fiction style.
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One technique the book employs is that each of the six stories builds on the previous story,
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sort of like one of those Russian nesting dolls.
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The 1-2-3-4-5-6-6-5-4-3-2-1 format was perfect for that storytelling technique.
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The choice to abandon this format in the movie
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and jump around between the six stories actually made the movie more confusing for me,
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despite the fact that I read the book.
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I have to imagine audiences who didn't read the book would be even more lost and confused.
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I think the movie would have been better
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if they had just stuck to the more linear format to the book but I still appreciate the Wachowski's efforts.
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The movie is an achievement of artistic endeavor.
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I'd rather see an ambitious failure than a safe formula any day,
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but I understand why audiences might be turned off by it.
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I still own the Blu-ray and watch it every now and then.
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Despite its flaws, the movie deserves to be seen simply because it exists.
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Number four, The Scarlet Letter.
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Nathaniel Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter is about a woman suffering after being
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caught as an adulterer in a strict religious community in 17th century Boston.
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The story explores themes of sin and guilt and was made into a much hated by critics movie back in 1995.
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The movie's main sin is probably related to the casting of Demi Moore back
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when she was considered the hottest actress in Hollywood.
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At the time, she was known for sexually charged movies like Indecent Proposal and Disclosure.
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The movie is shot with an obvious nod to grocery store paperback eroticism.
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The movie adaptation drops the themes of sin and guilt to highlighting hypocrisy of religious zealots,
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which might be an admirable theme,
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but it's not what Hawthorne's story was trying to do.
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The book starts at her trial,
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but the movie recounts the events leading up to the trial,
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since that's where all the eroticism would take place,
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and thus capitalizing on the bodies of these great-looking actors.
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In Roger Ebert's scathing one-and-a-half-star review,
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he wrote, The great inconvenience of the scarlet letter from a Hollywood point of view is
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that the novel begins after the adultery has taken place.
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This will not do.
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If you haven't figured it out yet,
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I was a huge follower of Roger Ebert,
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so you're going to see quite a few quotes of his in my videos.
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Fans of the movie will point out that the movie should be seen as standalone from the book,
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with some praising to me more in Gary Oldman's performances,
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while followers of the book consider the movie to be an injustice to an American classic.
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Number five, Atlas Shrugged.
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Atlas Shrugged has earned its place as a literary classic,
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although it has its share of critics.
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Even if you are not a subscriber of Ayn Rand's philosophy of objectivism,
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many have said the book is too long and repetitive in its themes,
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and that Miss Rand should have employed a manuscript editor to trim some of the fat.
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I read the book a few years ago and agree with those criticisms,
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but I still think that launching a philosophy through fictional storytelling is a monumental achievement in literature.
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With that said, the movie adaptation is awful.
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For years, there was an effort to bring this story to the big screen,
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but the holders of the book's rights insisted that the core message of objectivism and the long speeches remain in the script.
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Ayn Rand did manage to get one of her books turned into a movie,
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which was The Fountainhead.
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It was said that she hated the results as the message of individual freedom was somewhat muddied in the film version.
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This likely led to a lifetime of skepticism and handing over the creative decision-making for Atlas Shrugged to Hollywood.
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The book was turned into a trilogy back in 2011 at a time
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when the message of the book might be better received at the height of the Great Recession,
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but it was largely panned by critics who either thought it was bad or just plain dull.
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The book has several scenes of internal dialogue which outline the logic behind objectivism.
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However, it's difficult to film internal dialogue unless you use intrusive voiceover like Dexter or Narcos,
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so to someone not familiar with the tenets of objectivism,
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the movie's message is somewhat vague.
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One departure from the book that the movie makes is
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that it's set in present times and alludes to the 2008 economic collapse,
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but still focuses on the rail industry.
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It of course explains why rail is still important to our economy,
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but not very convincingly.
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It would have been better to have just left it in the 1940s.
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Most likely this was a budgetary concern that led to this decision.
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Also, for some reason, the filmmakers decided to cast different actors in the roles for each of the three installments.
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Three different actors to play Dagny,
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three different actors to play Hank Reardon,
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three different actors to play Jim Taggart.
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What an odd choice.
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But then again, I guess the James Bond franchise got away with this.
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Not that my opinion matters,
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but if I had my way,
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I would have the movie take place in the 1940s like the book,
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and I'd add a touch of magical realism.
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The book is a perfect candidate for steampunk.
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Remember that movie Sky Captain in the World of Tomorrow?
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I think that sort of look would be perfect for Atlas Shrugged rather than trying to piggyback it on the 2008 recession.
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I hope someday someone gives it another shot for adaptation.
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A 10-part miniseries might be a better route to take.
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And I remember when I saw Atlas Shrugged in the theater,
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the movie got an applause from the sparse audience.
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The applause was very subdued golf clap.
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I think they were clapping at the fact that it finally got done after 50 years of development purgatory,
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not because it was a good movie.
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So I do hope they get a second shot to get this adaptation right.
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If you're an Atlas Shrugged fan,
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how would you film the book and capture the ideas of objectivism on film?
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It's quite a challenge for the medium of film.
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As a former filmmaker, I'd love to hear your ideas.
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That's it for this week.
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Please check out my own book,
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Grand Portage, about a man who drags a nuclear aircraft carrier across northern Minnesota.
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It's available on Amazon and paperback and Kindle.
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Thanks for watching and never stop reading.
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关于本课
在本课中，学习者将通过分析电影与书籍之间的差异来提高英语口语能力。我们将聚焦于五本被认为比电影更优秀的书籍，了解每本书的故事核心，以及它们在改编过程中失去的深度和情感。这不仅能帮助你扩展词汇量，同时增强你对叙事技巧的理解，有助于雅思口语练习的提升。
关键词汇与短语
- 改编 (adaptation) - 指将一种媒体形式的内容转换为另一种形式的过程。
- 情感 (emotion) - 人类对事件或情境的主观反应，涉及快乐、悲伤等多种感受。
- 故事核心 (story core) - 故事中最重要的主题或情节。
- 叙事技巧 (narrative technique) - 讲述故事时采用的不同方法和技巧。
- 角色发展 (character development) - 角色在故事进展中的变化和成长。
- 视觉效果 (visual effects) - 在电影中利用技术创作的视觉影像。
- 批评 (critique) - 对某个作品的分析与评价。
- 失望 (disappointment) - 对某个结果不如预期而感到的不满或不悦。
练习建议
在进行口语练习时，尝试跟随视频中的演讲者进行shadow speak，尽量与他们的语速和语调保持一致。如视频节奏较快，可以先慢速模仿，再逐步提高速度。注意地道的发音和语音的重音位置，这将有助于提高您的英语发音。
建议学习者反复观看常谈及情感的片段，如关于书籍中的情感表达和角色发展的部分，寻找适合自己声音的节奏和语调。在练习的过程中，可以使用shadowspeaks的技巧，通过复读和朗读提升信心，与他人进行互动。
总之，通过本课的内容，您将能更好地理解如何将书籍的深度和情感融入口语，进而提高您的雅思口语能力。
什么是跟读法？
跟读法 (Shadowing) 是一种有科学依据的语言学习技巧，最初开发用于专业口译员的培训，并由多语言者Alexander Arguelles博士普及。这个方法简单而强大：您在听英语母语原声的同时立即大声重复——就像是一个延迟1-2秒紧跟说话者的影子。与被动听力或语法练习不同，跟读法强迫您的大脑和口腔肌肉同时处理并模仿真实的讲话模式。研究表明它能显着提高发音准确性，语调，节奏，连读，听力理解和口语流利度——使其成为雅思口语备考和真实英语交流最有效的方法之一。