Some respectable television adaptation, sure.
The most welcome rerelease of recent weeks, meanwhile, is a gleaming new restoration of John Schlesinger's glorious Far From the Madding Crowd (1967), which dwarfs Thomas Vinterberg's respectable new adaptation in every formal and emotional sense; Nicolas Roeg's widescreen photography has never looked more lustrous on your TV screen.
(He is now 65. Who here can do math?) This summer alone, the crazy prolific suspense author has another novel coming out, and a show that looks like the first respectable television adaptation of his work.
The series "Kolchak: The Night Stalker" was spun off from it, and Curtis, who died in 2006 and is now perhaps best known for the "Winds of War" mini-series, also produced or directed very respectable television adaptations of several of the literary classics whose plots he had plundered for "Dark Shadows" story lines: "Dracula," "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" and "The Picture of Dorian Gray".
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The question is of particular interest regarding movies, where these distinctions take on added significance by the fact that movies themselves were long despised by many intellectuals as irredeemably lowbrow and where, to this day, the attempt to render the medium respectable results in stultifying literary adaptations and royal romances.
"The Light in the Piazza" is a title readers of a certain age will remember from the movie adaptation starring Olivia de Havilland, Yvette Mimieux, George Hamilton and Rossano Brazzi, quite respectable as adaptations go, if it lacks some of the nuances of Spencer's story.
"The Longest Ride," the 10th screen adaptation of a Nicholas Sparks romance novel, opened at No. 3, with a $5.5-million 5.5-milliona respectable $1,634 per-screen average.
