'Great Expectations'

Once you read the book and watch the original film, it makes the most recent Gwenyth Paltrow-Ethan Hawke version look pretty retarded.

And I used to like that version. I probably watched it an inordinate amount of times.

Literature and film have always been connected, at least by the 1930s. They took both contemporary and classical novels and stories and adapted them no different than they do nowadays. Except back then, they didn't know anything other than basically filming the book, scene by scene.

Today, we have so many reinventions of stories and novels, that things can be lost that you get out of the book. Thusly, many feel the book is always better than the movie. Give me a million words over 100 minutes of film, and there's a lot more room to impress.

The adaptation of literature into film is the most obvious evolution of art. The script is just about written. The scenes, settings, characters and plot are already there. Just storyboard, cast, film and edit.

Another interesting crossover has been music (and lyrics) as dialogue. Look at musicals. It's just a series of songs and dance routines set into an overreaching narrative.

Also, musicals have gone on to use actual songs as dialogue -- meaning, like for Movin' Out, the entire show is just people dancing on stage while an in-house band sings and performs Billy Joel songs. Joel's lyrics are dialogue, but never spoken by the actual actors. It's just a different way to interpret art. It does change the way you look at Billy Joel songs though.