Books that will make Good Movies

-Enemy Brothers (by Constance Savery)
(the sets will be comparatively cheap, however, it all depends on the acting. We'll have to get British actors for this one. And everything depends on the actor we get for Dym. I have a feeling that this one has alot of potential in book-to-screen transitions. (trying to get what the narrator lets you know translated back into raw life, do you know what I mean? Like when the narrator says "the others tried to cheer him up, but he was sulky" you can have this whole 3 minute scene that further develops all the characters. It has to flow. Plus for some reason I would like the opening to be in the Norwegian sea, or maybe something with Dym in a plane. I dunno, but he opening has to kind of suggest war/struggle...like what is going on. Tony also somehow stands for humanity, I think. Maybe. That's kinda weird sounding. But doh mean? Then it has to catch all that wwii-struggle, people in Minas Tirith (book) , the Alfred the great Saxons are coming and the onslaught of Sophie Scholl's enemies feeling of the whole era...

-Lantern Bearers (by Rosemary Sutcliff)
This one will make a very very good movie. It says most in what it doesn't say, in what happens between the lines. In the symbolism, the not even overt enough to be called symbolism...the pattern of sunlight through the branches on the monk's wall, and the sound of bees. There is so much there, and must be carefully book-to-screen, to catch it all. Especially that what the book is really about is not lost between the cracks of action that the book pretends to be about. Lots of scenery. Lots of focusing on trees and stuff, for some reason, lots of Britain.

-Joseph
This, I am afraid, has a bigger price tag. The sets will have to be Egypt and Palestine. Maybe the Negev.Alot of what it means to be a man, and to be Holy, when everyone and everything (around you, and back at home) isn't. To know the God of your fathers when an exile in a prison.I feel like this one will mean alot, but am unsure how. Right now I feel like I have enough sense to realize I am not smart enough.

-Mimitsrayim. Out of Egypt. Moshe will be the main (though barely there) character, and it will seem to center around a random Hebrew girl and her family, and how they adjust to this whole, wander-in-the-desert/Holy God/being a people of God thing. It will focus on the dynamics within her family, her aunt loving Egypt once she is in the wilderness, her mother complaining, her father still having faith and trying to understand why his brother had to be killed for unholiness, the rabble rousers, the girl struggling to form an understanding of who this Holy One is out in the wilderness. The whole holiness coming to a very unholy world, and the purifying the desert. But it will really be about Moshe, somehow.

-Acts. The book of Acts is fairly bursting with movie scenes. Peter of course would be a main character. Perhaps better to aim at it from a different level, like through the eyes of a random Jewish Kid or greek slave, and play up on what they hear. See it from the eye level of a first century worker, and how they got the information, etc. We could do it told through the eyes of this person, as if they were telling you their life. We could go from the omnipresent angle, because I really want the Peter before the sanhedrin scene. I think it would be better to do it through the eyes of a child. I don't really know why.

-StoryKeepers
(http://www.storykeepers.com/intro.html)
this sounds so lame, and probably violates a copyright. But StoryKeepers cartoon touched me deeply as a kid. I feel like it was a deep story translated into cartoon/slapstick language so the kids could "get" it. But it touched the kids (me) because they meant so much more than the slapstick thing. It really meant something. Someone has to make a grown up movie about he early church that is NOT really about extolling the *glamorous* lives of the pagan Romans, soap operas involving gorgeous red headed early Christians, or the cool swishy capes of the soldiers.
The arena wasn't glamorous. I thought it was, I really did. But it wasn't...any more than concrete gaschambers or Stalin's re-education camps. But the amazing thing is the Presence of God coming into even that...and making something that can only be called, for lack of the right word, beautiful.
A story about the early church that tells it as it really was. About real people. Real suffering, real courage, real faith, and a real God.

-Anthropos, as of now is the brainchild and intellectual property of one of my esteemed friends.

-Among the Nations [not final title, which must be very clever 2sided and poetic]
For this one, I see a picture. A young girl, perhaps 12, stands by a wall of brick, pressing the side of he face against it, thinking. It is on the side of a street, no bishops in chariots are coming, but she is afraid, and thinking. Blended with that is another young girl, Russian...and I am not sure what she is doing.
A side by side story of two girls growing up in the middle ages, probably in the Ukraine or something. One a Jewish girl, one a Christian Russian. Its a bifurcated story, where the two never speak to eachother, perhaps at the end, they will pass in the street. There will be two plot lines, two stories, two lives. It will show persecution, faith, a whole bunch. This one is going to be done by me and B. She will do the Russian side, I the Jewish. We will both have to research a whole lot, and I regret that I only have 1/8 instinct to go by (great grandma from Ukraine...) but will read a lot. I suspect this one will be emotional. But most of all, not trying to prove a sharp point, or get a message across, but just be, a slice in the life of then. As it really was. All the messy issues, everything, thrown out there in 2 1/2 hours with no easy little recipe to sort it all out, without making you think, and think, and think.