"Never judge a book by its movie," said someone called J. W. Eagan, who appears to be famous only for saying that one thing. But he (she?) is absolutely right. It's a war that has been waged since the beginning of movies. Do movies steal the souls of books? Are books forever doomed to live in the shadows of their movies? Do we "stay true" to the source material or do we invent new, cinematic ideas? Or worse, what happens to all that stuff that gets lost in translation from page to screen? After all, we're talking two entirely different art forms with different approaches; the only thing they have in common is a narrative flow: a start, middle and ending.

Perhaps these questions are the reason I tend to like movies based on short stories. It's impossible to get a 400-page novel into a 120-page screenplay without losing something, but short stories are far more adaptable to the screen; instead of cramming and condensing, a movie can stretch out with a short story. Some terrific movies have come from short stories: In Old Arizona (1929), Freaks (1932), Bringing Up Baby (1938), Stagecoach (1939), The Killers (1946), All About Eve (1950), Rashomon (1950), Rear Window (1954), Witness for the Prosecution (1957), The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), The Birds (1963), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), A Christmas Story (1983), Re-Animator (1985), Babette's Feast (1989), A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001) and Minority Report (2002), not to mention Robert Altman's Short Cuts (1993), woven from a selection of Raymond Carver stories.

"Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! It is an ever-fixed mark ... "

-- William Shakespeare, Sonnet 116

Grant (Gordon Pinsent) and Fiona (Julie Christie) have been married for 44 years; they read and cook and laugh and walk with the kind of long-shared, hard-fought joy that most of us can only imagine. Their love is a commitment, a shared process, integral to each of their selves. And one of them is slowly, sadly, slipping away. Fiona's not merely forgetful; she's confused, lost, dwindling ... and, horrifyingly, aware of exactly what's happening as Alzheimer's clots her brain with plaques and tangled neurons like hardened roots strangling the life from the tree they've nurtured. Hard decisions must be made; those will lead to even harder decisions. Directed by actress Sarah Polley (The Sweet Hereafter, Dawn of the Dead), Away from Her was adapted from an Alice Munro story by Polley herself; it's an astonishingly moving feature-length directorial debut. It manages to get fresh, bold performances from seasoned veterans Christie and Pinsent.

It also turns what could have been mawkish, rote TV-movie-of-the-week material into a truly engaging drama. Away from Her is that rarest kind of romantic drama -- one that doesn't infer that turning off your brain is the toll to be paid for letting your heart be moved. Fiona makes the decision to enter a permanent care home; it's for the best, she knows. Grant is heartbroken and especially torn over the care home's policy of 'no visitors' for the first 30 days so that new residents might settle into a new routine without confusion. When he returns, Fiona doesn't really seem to know who he is and has made close friends with fellow resident Aubrey (Michael Murphy), whose temporary stay in the facility has coincided with Fiona's first 30 days.

A few more buys have been announced from the Toronto International Film Festival:

• Away From Her, which marks the directorial debut of actress Sarah Polley, with a supposedly brilliant (and "Oscar-worthy") performance by Julie Christie, has been picked up by Lionsgate for U.S. distribution. The deal was a surprise to many in the industry who associate the studio's recent interests to be more genre-based (like cheap exploitive horror) films. The film has Christie as a sufferer of Alzheimer's, and is based on Alice Munro's short story The Bear Came Over the Mountain. Lionsgate will be pushing the film for Oscar contention, but not until the 2008 awards, since they aim for a Spring 2007 release.
• Netflix has picked up the documentary The Prisoner, or: How I Tried to Kill Tony Blair. How does Netflix make distribution deals you ask? Well, through their Red Envelope label, they have been partnering with different theatrical distributors, including IFC, on releasing films like Sherrybaby and This Film is Not Yet Rated. Netflix is said to be looking for a permanent partner, but none have been named for this acquisition. The film, which focuses on a detained Iraqi journalist, is currently under 60-minutes in length, but the filmmakers will be adding more footage before its release.

Sarah Polley, the wildly talented Canadian actress who I will never be able to think of as anything but the poor little girl in The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, is making her feature directorial (and screenwriting) debut at the ripe old age of 27. Based on an Alice Munro short story called The Bear Came Over the Mountain, the film - entitled Away from Her - tells the story of an aging married couple whose warm, comfortable relationship is thrown asunder when the wife is moved into a nursing home that can deal with her worsening Alzheimer’s. When, after two months of "adjustment," her husband is allowed to visit her for the first time, his wife has "forgotten him and turned her affection to...another resident in the home." I'll spare you further details but trust me, it just gets more depressing.

Either a lot of people saw Polley's 2001 short I Shout Love, and were impressed, or faith in her is running rampant, because the cast she's put together for her debut features a pair of pretty big names: Julie Christie will play the afflicted wife, and Olympia Dukakis is also appearing in the film. Atom Egoyan, meanwhile, is executive producing, and Luc Montpellier, who shot both I Shout Love and Guy Maddin's gorgeous The Saddest Music in the World, is on board as cinematographer.

Man alive. I know she's untested and all, but it's clear from that list that if Polley doesn't make it good as a director, a whole lot of knowledgeable people will be awfully surprised.