Given how hard it is to get movies off the ground, why are so many adapted from works that cry out to be made into movies in the first place?

NEWYORKER: Nine

Dumky is the plural of Dumka, a kind of folk song that some Czech composers adapted for their classical works.

NPR: Family Affair, and Dvorak's Invited

One of King's most loved works, The Shining was adapted into a 1980 film produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick.

BBC: Jack Nicholson in The Shining

So confident is he about his chances in court that Aho has adapted his technology to a DVD player that works with a TV and comes with hundreds of ClearPlay filters already installed.

FORBES: Monster in a Box

The best news for Baum buffs, however, is a beautiful series of graphic novels lovingly adapted by Eric Shanower and Skottie Young from the original "canonical" works, currently being released by Marvel Comics.

WSJ: The Road Well-Traveled: Oz the Great and Powerful

That is similar to the way the human visual system works, with particular clusters of nerve cells in the brain adapted to respond to, say, horizontal lines, or to lines that run on diagonals.

ECONOMIST: Machine vision: Seeing is believing | The