Even when the narrative stalls from too many detours and decapitations, Sleepy Hollow is gorgeous filmmaking that brims over with fun-house thrills and ravishing romance. The classic Washington Irving tale of a headless horseman who rides at midnight to terrorize a New York village of Dutch settlers -- it's1799 -- proves a natural for Tim Burton. The director of Batman and Edward Scissorhands gives his film the fine burnish of a Bruegel canvas, topped only by eye-popping visual…

Many writers will express dissatisfaction when one of their novels is

turned into a movie. By virtue of the differences between the two

mediums, pertinent parts of the fiction are often omitted or telescoped.

Characters are composited and plot strands jettisoned. Sometimes a fine

film can emerge (think ''Gone With the Wind''), sometimes not (see any

feature film based on F. Scott Fitzgerald's novels).

There are those novelists (like Fitzgerald) who tried their hand in

Tinseltown, yet those who…