Book to Film

Our current book selection for June, The Reader, and the Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF) have my mind on books to film. As we drift closer to summer and perhaps sacrifice a bit of book-reading in order to catch up on our Netflix queues, I wanted to offer a couple of suggestions for book to film that are showing at SIFF this month and might not be on your radar.

• Thomas Mann’s 1901 book, Buddenbrooks, is making its US premiere (2008, German with subtitles)
• Inju, the Beast in the Shadow written in 1928 by Edogawa Rampo with US book title The Black Lizard and the Beast in the Shadow (2008, French with subtitles)
• The Karamazovs, based on Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov (2008, Czech Republic with subtitles)

While I cannot offer advice on the above (other than to read The Brothers Karamazov), I would recommend that you check out the complete listing of films shown; there are a number of shorts and full-lengths which would make for interesting watching on those days that you might not want to read.