Generally speaking, we’d much rather watch the movie than read it’s literary counterpart. I mean, since when did books have flashing colours, Robocop and the possibility of a Jenny Agutter shower scene?

And let’s not forget, movies are done in two hours straight, while a book can take aaaaages to plough through, particularly if it’s the latest chapter of 50 Shades and you keep hurling it out of the window halfway through.

While all the above reasons are definitely 100% true, there are a few paperbacks out there that have yet to receive the Peter Jackson overhaul (not a euphemism), so I decided to head to the local library and steal a few weighty tomes. Here’s what I came back with…

Learn Swedish in Three Months

You ever try to make a movie? Yeah, well let me tell you cadet, it takes years!

It’s like goin’ to war! Something the Swedish are notoriously reluctant to do. Seriously, when was the last time you heard that Stockholm’s finest had become embroiled in a land war in central Asia? Never, because the Swedes are by and large a bunch of placid (if sarcastic) herring lovers who’d rather pump out top-notch murder mysteries and erotic content than fire a cruise missile at Afghanistan.

Let me tell you, you can’t make a movie in three months, but this one should be a doddle.

Not only will it teach you how to climb glaciers and remain relentlessly optimistic even when the sun doesn’t rise for half the year, but it’ll also provide you with useful phrases. From the specific:

“Var är poolen?”

To the romantic:

“Sätt choklad på Moose”

And of course the all-purpose:

“Det skulle vara en ekumenisk fråga “.

With Kenneth Branagh in the directors chair and Stellan Skarsgård in the lead, it’s the multilingual love-in with a cold hard edge (and mobile phone-based sub-plot) we’ve all been waiting for!

John Ruskin’s ‘Modern Painters’

While the 19th Century original took Ruskin some seventeen years to pump out, there’s no reason why this can’t be turned into a 90 minute Dolph Lundgren straight to DVD actioner right away.

Consider the parallels: Ruskin’s book is an elegant criticism beginning as a defence of J.M.W. Turner, transforming into a meditation on the relationship that art plays between god and man, while Dolph generally plays characters with names like Jack ‘ManoWar’ Burner, while here portraying the role of grenades in sending men to meet their maker. Practically writes itself.

Recently re-written for a modern audience by David Barrie, also known as First Secretary for the British diplomatic service, meaning it’s a piece of piss to shoe-horn in a Bond-style MI6 rogue agent angle.

Photoshop in Simple Steps

Simplicity, like an educationally challenged man, crossed with cutting edge graphics. Lawnmower Man may have done it 20 years ago, but hey, that was shit. This is Photoshop, which means this’ll be one movie that’s industry standard, chock-full of vector graphics, and is prone to freezing up for several hours at a moment’s notice.

Of course, you could use the shortcuts to get to the end of the hopelessly contrived plot (boy must impress girl with his artistic prowess, but becomes increasingly addicted to pimping out his Tumblr background instead), but you’ll never bother to learn them will you?

Available for home release in a variety of obscure formats that aren’t compatible with any known player.

The Necronomicon

Hey, it’s already made several guest appearances in Evil Dead movies, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, not to mention a bunch of dodgy H. P. Lovecraft flicks, so isn’t it time this particular bound-in-human-skin piece of pure eeeeevil got to headline?

According to Lovecraft, just reading an old copy would conjure phantasms more ghastly than the human mind could handle. Just imagine a script like that in the hands of Uwe Boll..

Normally when you emerge from the cinema the worst you have to contend with is the realisation that you’re covered in popcorn kernels. With the Necronomicon you’d be faced with an entire universe possessed by the many-angled ones (although this may be difficult to distinguish from the lobby at Cineworld).

Twilight: Eclipse

I just think it’s the one chapter that deserves to be done again. And right!

There’s plenty more stupid claptrap on the site, for instance you can find out which are the cinematic doppelgangers to fear the most.