|
|
Post by Carl LaFong on Aug 16, 2017 11:57:42 GMT
|
|
|
|
Post by marianne48 on Aug 16, 2017 17:48:28 GMT
No Atonement?  Those who have only seen that TV movie version of My Sister's Keeper should definitely read the book. I don't know why they had to give the movie such a different denouement. |
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
@Deleted
Posts: 0
Likes:
|
Post by Deleted on Aug 16, 2017 17:57:44 GMT
If I click on the link will all the books be spoiled for me?
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
@Deleted
Posts: 0
Likes:
|
Post by Deleted on Aug 16, 2017 23:48:41 GMT
"Pennywise Lives."
|
|
|
|
Post by Carl LaFong on Aug 17, 2017 17:55:05 GMT
If I click on the link will all the books be spoiled for me? Yes. |
|
|
|
Post by mikef6 on Aug 27, 2017 18:58:58 GMT
The compiler of this list must not have seen many older movies. Lahane's "bold and all-encompassing" surprise ending is a direct steal from a famous silent film. Scorsese, who is a film history expert and should have known better, went ahead and made the movie of "Shutter Island" anyway. Don't respect him for that.
Come to think of it, the compiler must not have read many older books, either. There is one classic (Jane Eyre, 1847), one second quarter 20th century (Rebecca, 1938), two from the 1980s (Ruth Rendell, P.D. James), and the other 6 are from the new century. I could give you a quick 30 from the so-called Golden Age of the mystery novel (roughly the 1920s and 1930s but some authors like Agatha Christie and Ellery Queen continued writing well into the 1970s).
|
|
|
|
Post by Carl LaFong on Aug 27, 2017 19:44:12 GMT
Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare might have been in there.
|
|
|
|
Post by moviebuffbrad on Sept 12, 2017 7:03:19 GMT
Wait, what was the twist in We Need To Talk About Kevin? The movie didn't really have one. Most shocking for me, surprisingly, is from the third Harry Potter book. Ron's rat has been a human being in disguise the whole time, and the same guy who sold out Harry's parents. |
|
|
|
Post by Nalkarj on Sept 13, 2017 0:33:59 GMT
As mikef6 put it, "The compiler of this list must not have seen many older movies. ... [or] read many older books, either." Indeed. More than that, Sophie Hannah is the one chosen by the Christie estate to write new Poirot adventures, more's our misfortune. (By the way, from that NYT interview to which I linked, it seems that neither the interviewer nor Hannah, the interviewee, has ever read a Christie book.) I don't think Rebecca has all that great of a twist--it's a great novel, but not any kind of spectacular twist, methinks. I haven't read many of the others, but Mike already expressed my concerns. Miss Hannah's list reminds me of Patrick Ohl's parody "greatest mysteries" list, which is not a good thing. It probably would have been better if Hannah kept it to "best twists of the millennium"; as moviebuffbrad noted, one or two of the Harry Potter books could have found their way on there. I think J.K. Rowling has a better sense of inevitability, fair-play cluing, and sheer surprise twists than the majority of modern-day mystery writers (which is probably why Rowling has now turned to detective-stories-- Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire seriously has one of the best puzzle-plots of the millennium). |
|
|
|
Post by mikef6 on Sept 13, 2017 15:06:30 GMT
Wait, what was the twist in We Need To Talk About Kevin? The movie didn't really have one. Most shocking for me, surprisingly, is from the third Harry Potter book. Ron's rat has been a human being in disguise the whole time, and the same guy who sold out Harry's parents. The Prisoner of Azkaban is full of great twists including all the time travel paradoxes. But my favorite, in both book and movie, is that Sirius Black turns out not only to be innocent and framed but a kind and warm person |
|
|
|
Post by Nalkarj on Sept 13, 2017 16:07:32 GMT
Wait, what was the twist in We Need To Talk About Kevin? The movie didn't really have one. Most shocking for me, surprisingly, is from the third Harry Potter book. Ron's rat has been a human being in disguise the whole time, and the same guy who sold out Harry's parents. The Prisoner of Azkaban is full of great twists including all the time travel paradoxes. But my favorite, in both book and movie, is that Sirius Black turns out not only to be innocent and framed but a kind and warm person I think that what works so well for that is how much build-up Rowling gives it. We are so barraged by the idea that Sirius Black is the devil incarnate that the twist is remarkably shocking.
...which makes it even cleverer (in my opinion) when Rowling reverses this trick for the next book. I'm going to have to paraphrase here, but Rich, whose mystery blog is here, wrote on the former (gone, but not forgotten) JDC forum that Mad-Eye Moody is the best kind of least-likely suspect. See, with most least-likely suspects, they're least-likely exactly because they're so nice and kind, and could never be the murderer who bashed Lord Darlington over the head in his locked study on a dark and stormy night. Naturally, of course, modern readers do suspect such a suspect for exactly the same reason: we've become accustomed to the idea of the nice and kind person's actually being the killer. With Moody, though--no way. He's not nice, he's nasty and curmudgeonly. But--and here's a big but!--we still kinda-sorta like him because (1) Dumbledore likes him and (2) he turns Draco into a ferret. I, for one, never dreamed of suspecting that guy--but, of course, Rowling has been giving us all kinds of wonderful fair-play clues. Now that's a good least-likely suspect, and one grand twist. |
|
mrdanwest
Sophomore
@mrdanwest
Posts: 127
Likes: 76
 
|
Post by mrdanwest on Sept 13, 2017 18:31:10 GMT
What? No Oedipus Rex?  |
|
|
|
Post by moviebuffbrad on Sept 13, 2017 19:42:36 GMT
The Prisoner of Azkaban is full of great twists including all the time travel paradoxes. But my favorite, in both book and movie, is that Sirius Black turns out not only to be innocent and framed but a kind and warm person I think that what works so well for that is how much build-up Rowling gives it. We are so barraged by the idea that Sirius Black is the devil incarnate that the twist is remarkably shocking.
...which makes it even cleverer (in my opinion) when Rowling reverses this trick for the next book. I'm going to have to paraphrase here, but Rich, whose mystery blog is here, wrote on the former (gone, but not forgotten) JDC forum that Mad-Eye Moody is the best kind of least-likely suspect--because we're supposed to like most least-likely suspects (which naturally makes us suspect them). With Moody, though--no way. He's nasty and curmudgeonly, but we still kinda-sorta like him because (1) Dumbledore likes him and (2) he turns Draco into a ferret (or something like that). I never dreamed of suspecting that guy--but, of course, Rowling has been giving us all kinds of wonderful fair-play clues. Now that's a good least-likely suspect, and one grand twist. I agree with you and Salzmank , GoF is another great one. It was also clever to bring back the polyjuice potion. I think the film adaptation dropped the ball by giving Barty Crouch and "Moody" the same tongue tick thing. I don't remember that in the book, but it really telegraphed the twist in the movie. |
|
|
|
Post by Terrapin Station on Sept 13, 2017 19:44:32 GMT
The number one twist in fiction? The government in George Orwell's Ninety Eighty-Four didn't actually want you to believe the government or their media propaganda; they wanted to sow distrust of the same.
|
|
|
|
Post by Primemovermithrax Pejorative on Sept 13, 2017 21:11:48 GMT
Nothing will top the Guardian article from last year that promoted human sex with dolphins--I never thought I would be seeing a so-called mainstream newspaper going down the bestiality road but they did...
nevertheless their list is so pathetic and SJW slanted as to be ignorant to extremes.
I think other fiction works are more deserving a mention.
The War of the Worlds
I Am Legend
The Interlopers by Saki
To Serve Man by Damon Knight
A Sound of Thunder by Ray Bradbury
|
|
|
|
Post by mikef6 on Sept 13, 2017 23:12:54 GMT
Rowling has now turned to detective-stories-- Just to add one detail, Rowling's British private eye series is written under the name of Robert Galbraith and the first book is The Cuckoo’s Calling. They are all excellent, but, like the latter Potter books, kinda long and a little overwritten, but super puzzle mysteries just the same. |
|
|
|
Post by Jep Gambardella on Sept 14, 2017 19:01:44 GMT
I can’t believe they missed the biggest twist of them all, from one of the most popular books in history, no less. I am talking about The Bible. THE main characters in the second half of the book dies in the end, and then resurrects! I never saw that one coming!
|
|
|
|
Post by Nalkarj on Sept 14, 2017 20:54:12 GMT
I agree with you and Salzmank , GoF is another great one. It was also clever to bring back the polyjuice potion. I think the film adaptation dropped the ball by giving Barty Crouch and "Moody" the same tongue tick thing. I don't remember that in the book, but it really telegraphed the twist in the movie. Oh, very much so, Brad: the polyjuice potion here is definitely one of the best clues in the Harry Potter series. (Kinda funny to write those words!) We know exactly how it works (from Chamber of Secrets, if I'm remembering correctly), and we watch "Moody" chug it down in nearly every scene he's in. Brilliantly clued.
You may very well be right about the tongue-tick; I saw the movie before I read the book (I came to Potter very late and read up to the penultimate book, which kind of dragged for me--I still haven't read the last book, though I saw the movie), and I didn't guess the twist there. When I read Goblet of Fire, I did think Rowling's cluing was far cleverer than the movie's, so you may be completely right here. |
|
