> > There was a quote in a recent Roger Ebert column that I think is called for. "My feeling is that we go to books for facts, and to movies for feelings." The quote was given to defend the film "A Beautiful Mind" against criticism that it is not, as the book is, wholly factually accurate.
>
> No, no, no! This I will not buy. Ick!

Obviously not ALL books are entirely factual, and obviously books have great power to convey emotions. The quote was given in the context of defending a specific movie with a specific comparison with a specific book that, in that specific case, was absolutely correct.

Certainly that quotation can be abused and misapplied. I believe the point was something like this: The conveying of facts is best suited for books. (Vice versa is not necessarily true.) Movies are best suited to the conveying of feeling. (Vice versa is not necessarily true.) Therefore the criticism of an emotionally evocative movie on grounds that the book of the same story is more factual is dubious.

You certainly don't need to sell me on the power books have to convey feeling in addition to facts, or even in their absence. But there ARE some things books simply cannot do, just as any medium has things it cannot do. What "Moulin Rouge" does is a perfect example of what a book cannot do.

(An aside about Ebert: actually there are few film critics I know that seem to be as well read and as appreciative of the potential of the written word. Where he finds time to read so much when he has to watch so much, too, is beyond me. At any rate, since I went and quoted him without complete context, I felt I should defend him with my general perception of him on the matter.)

> It doesn't make the 'great' list, because I still feel that, for a movie to be great, it should leave the watcher changed in some way (even a very subtle way), and I don't feel that Moulin Rouge did this.

I would go alone with that criterion. Moulin Rouge did that for me, which is ultimately, I guess, the biggest reason *I* consider it great.