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Leitch draws our attention to the fact that each time the three films in the Rings trilogy have been released on DVD, they have offered viewers a more comprehensive experience than ever before, with yet more extras, documentaries, or unreleased footage.

Adaptation Studies: Its Past, Present, and Future Thomas Leitch. Film Adaptation & Its Discontents: From Gone with the Wind to The Passion of the Christ. Bloomington and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007. 354 pp. $55.00 hardcover.

In Film Adaptation & Its Discontents Thomas Leitch treats an adapted text as something that does not simply reproduce or imitate an "original." On the contrary it should be treated as a work in its own right shaped by specific social, commercial, and institutional forces. If this view was to gain currency (especially in departments of literature), it might help to promote "active literacy" among students, who would move beyond a passive receptivity to texts toward an active engagement with them. This might be achieved, for instance, by encouraging them to write screenplays of their own, transforming them from passive readers into writers meeting canonical authors on their own terms. Such assignments do not neglect interpretation; rather they change the medium through which the literary text must be interpreted, from the critical essay into a form of writing that requires students to highlight the main themes of the text and rewrite them (18).

Leitch sets himself an ambitious task in trying to prove his point. The book's twelve chapters identify and investigate a variety of issues posed by the problems of transferring a text to the screen. These include a discussion of what kinds of fidelity are possible in an adaptation of sacred scripture (for example, MeI Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, 2004), a critique of films that purport to stay close to their original sources, and a consideration of why some adapters (such as Hitchcock and Kubrick) have acquired a reputation as auteurs. Leitch begins by considering the work of early adapters for the one-reel epics of the late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-centuries, who shoehomed classic works-Shakespeare's plays, for instance-into ten-minute films, passing over the verbal text as quickly as possible. D. W. Griffith proved exceptionally adept at this; he transformed novels like Frank Morris's The Pit (retitled A Comer in Wheat, 1909) into their thematic essence that implied "something of the scale or prestige of the literary original" (46). Leitch likens this process to the creation of a "cinematic haiku" whose brevity "implies a radical figurative compression" (46). The fact that Griffith proved so adept at this demonstrates how effective "active literacy" can be. Another chapter on Dickens suggests that many directors have created "entry-level adaptations" (70), designed to introduce young filmgoers to Dickens's "universal" themes and thereby confirming his reputation as a canonical author. However Leitch shows that there exist almost limitless possibilities for adapting his work, as seen, for instance, in the one-reeler version of A Christmas Carol (1910), or The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992). Such creative transformations of Dickens invite viewers to "play with him and through him" and thereby develop their own "active literacy" (92).

Following the example set by recent critics such as Kamilla Elliott (in Rethinking the Novel/Film Debate, 2003), Leitch creates a grammar of adaptation, focusing on the kind of strategies that might be used in bringing a literary work to the screen. They include adjustment (compressing or expanding the text), superimposition (introducing new material for a variety of reasons, both aesthetic and commercial), colonization (deliberately altering the time and place of a literary text as in Bride and Prejudice, 2004), metacommentary (where the adapter comments directly on the process of transforming a text into a film, as in Looking for Richard, 1996), parody and pastiche, and secondary or tertiary adaptation (The Bride of Frankenstein, 1935). Leitch suggests that films such as Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet (1996) incorporates all these strategies, and thereby shows how "intertextuality takes myriad forms that resist reduction [...] there is no normative model for adaptation" (126). On this view, any grammar of adaptation-including the model Leitch proposes-should be treated as descriptive rather than prescriptive, a framework of options available to anyone engaging creatively with a literary text.

One of the book's main virtues lies in its readiness to engage with the notion of fidelity, which has hitherto dominated the discourse of adaptation studies. Leitch shows how the concept has been variously exploited by Hollywood filmmakers, focusing in particular on Gone -with the Wind(1939) and the Lord of the Rings trilogy (2000-03). Whereas David O. Selznick's film prided itself on its literal fidelity to Margaret MitchelFs novel by incorporating large parts of the text, Peter Jackson sought only to recreate Tolkien's "inclusiveness, decorum, pace [and] consistency" (139). Selznick had to reshape Gone with the Wind to meet the Hays Office requirements, while simultaneously toning down the novel's racist content. No such compromises were necessary in The Lord of the Rings. Leitch draws our attention to the fact that each time the three films in the Rings trilogy have been released on DVD, they have offered viewers a more comprehensive experience than ever before, with yet more extras, documentaries, or unreleased footage. The promise of fidelity-both to Tolkien's text and the director's intentions-operates as "an invitation to the audience to spend without end" (150). In another context fidelity has been used to promote quality products-those adaptations that place particular emphasis on recreating historically accurate sets and costumes. Examples of this include BBC classic adaptations (the majority of which are broadcast on Masterpiece Theatre) or the cycle of Austen and James adaptations appearing in the 1990s.

Leitch also devotes a chapter to post-literary adaptations that move away from the written text altogether and choose other media as their sources-video or computer games, comic strips, or commercial brand-name products. While such adaptations might be dismissed in academic circles as "crass" or lacking intrinsic value, Leitch argues that there is little to distinguish a literary from a post-literary adaptation. Both aim to exploit the commercial potential of the source text through publicity and aggressive marketing. Pirates of the Caribbean (2003)-based on a theme park ride-might not be so far from Pride and Prejudice. With this in mind, I wish that Leitch has devoted more time to the institutional constraints affecting screenplay writers, which might encourage them to rely on tried and tested formulae rather than attempting anything experimental (especially in a big-budget epic like Pirates of the Caribbean). If students are to acquire "active literaCY," they should be aware of how external forces shape the process of artistic creation.

Nonetheless, I believe that Film Adaptation & its Discontents is a valuable book that breaks new ground in exploring the relationship between adaptation studies and creative writing. I hope scholars of the future will be inspired by Leitch's example. I found one minor factual error: BridesheadRevisited(1981) was not a BBC miniseries (173) but a Granada adaptation, designed to prove that Independent Television (ITV) could match, or even surpass anything the Corporation could do in adapting a classic novel. It followed on from the same company's Hard Times (1977) and foreshadowed The Jewel in the Crown (1983). Apart from this, Leitch supports his arguments with a wealth of carefully chosen examples drawn from all periods of film and television history. This book has been penned by a genuine enthusiast-someone who cares deeply about the issues discussed in his work, who makes every effort to communicate that concern to his readers.