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langwidereI had a very nice Christmas — I got a new baby Kindle, a Threadless teeshirt which is not overtly humiliating, and a giant amazing Hokusai book that I have been humping nonstop since I unwrapped it. So, during Christmas, I had the fun — but after Christmas I was forced, by the Politeness Monster (and also the Obligation Monster), to visit some of my adoptive father’s relatives, who somehow always manage to make me feel as though I am the Venus Hottentot and they are all positively astonished I can use my silverware so adeptly. This is no mean feat, considering the intensity of my personal dorkiness. (They are, on average, essentially the figures depicted in American Gothic; when my father’s father was alive, my father’s sister asked my mother to keep me away from him because my blackness made him "uncomfortable.") (Really!) (I didn’t find that out until a couple of years ago, because naturally Mom was too awesome to let something so stupid affect me at the age of eight.) (She did keep me away from the weird old idiot for clearly related reasons, however.)
I'm not getting you down at all, am I? Don't take it personal. I was the designated excuse-generator on this particular excursion; I agreed to accompany my father (who hates his family, of course) specifically in order to feign illness and get everybody out several hours early. I am the very soul of self-sacrifice! Don't I know it.
I watched some things!
Should I cut? It's pretty long; I’ll cut.
First, I watched the Lord of the Rings movies, which were on the teevee (LEGOLAS ♥) , and then I watched Hogfather, which I bought last year and already reviewed. Then I watched:
THE GOLDEN COMPASS
The Golden Compass was nowhere near as bad as everybody said it was, although the effects were pretty horrible and the script was a bowdlerized mess. For me, it was on par — as a leaden, tone-deaf adaptation — with the Jackson's Lord of the Rings movies. The only difference between them, I think, is that Tolkien's message of strength in love and compassion and belonging can be interpreted as a populist cliché (although in the original text it was really no such thing), whereas Pullman's vision of the world is, by definition, exclusionary. It is built on the hatred of religion, and on dismantling the iconic shibboleths of sin and divinity; and, even neutered and cosmetically-pleasant as that was made to look in the film, I think Pullman still clears the room pretty efficiently. Not that I'm complaining! I agree wholeheartedly with Pullman, and I think that the His Dark Materials books are spectacular and wonderful and brilliant, all the way up to their horrible, stupid ending. I'm only sorry I wasn't able to read them when I was a child; they absolutely would have made an important difference in my life.
Having said that, though, I am not sure children have the tools to really appreciate this movie, even toothless as it is. Unless a child has been raped by a priest or a nun or something, I don't see how any kid could ever be capable of hating Catholicism, or of even understanding what it is about Catholicism that's legitimately hateful. Because the evilings in this movie aren't standard fantasy Nazis; they are clearly Catholics. They're draped in brocaded smugness and in the anonymous images of medieval saints, and they're determined to suppress the pursuit of scientific knowledge and to punish heretics. Worse, they are the unrepentant thieves of poor and aboriginal children, who torment the souls out of their conquests and then somehow dredge up the audacity to call them "orphans." If the Real Times Catholic Church itself wasn't a million times worse, that would've all read as overwrought cinematic melodrama. Eesh. Anyway! Nicole Kidman looked beautiful as Mrs. Coulter, and communicated the depths of the character's sinister heart very well despite being unable to move her face, but both she and the script failed at delivering the appropriate levels of Holy Mother-style high theatrics (possibly on purpose). Daniel Craig is hot, and luckily the character he played was not featured long enough to display his innate evil-prickishness. The kid was cute. The dæmons were very, very neat, if not particularly well-animated — my kingdom for a talking animal, especially if it has a British accent — and I was absolutely in love with Iorek Byrnison, who is a polar bear that sounds like Ian McKellen when he talks (scientists agree that this is pretty much the ideal exemplar of your Talking Animal Character). But, again, I think that adult viewers would see the disgraced Iorek as he first appears in the movie and recognize him as the symbol of an ancient, blood-soaked, Edda-edged world, tragically debauched by whiskey, self-hatred, and institutionalized discrimination — which is a deep and affecting statement, given that that very thing actually fucking happened to all kinds of real human people, all over the world and in all kinds of circumstances — but would a kid be able to identify him? (No.)
Um. The witches! Serafina Pekkala is one of my favorite characters ever, and I thought she came off beautifully (if far too quickly) in The Golden Compass. There's a part near the end of the movie when, with our heroes caught in the teeth of the final battle, the chances look small, the choices look grim, the end seems near, etc. and then all of a sudden — oh shit, oh shit! — the witches arrive, playing the part of the cavalry far better than the cavalry ever did. Wow, finally!
I liked the image of people's dæmons particle-izing into glowing stardust when they died. Scary!
I also really liked the epic ending single: WOOOOO SHE'S LYRA! SHE HAS A DÆMON AND IT'S BROOOOOOWN!!! SHE'LL GO TO TOOOOOOOWN AND STOP THOSE CATHOLIC PRIESTS GETTING EVERYBODY DOOOOOOOOOOWN! Brilliant! Who wrote that? A cat?
THE SECRET OF KELLS
I loved this movie so much that I ran out and bought it the day after Christmas. It is, of all things, a Western anime, which stands to reason: The Secret of Kells is a Tolkien-ized installation of Irish mythology, fitted like a book-jacket around a fictionalized account of the creation of the famous Book of Kells. The early middle ages represent the final (and only?) moment Western art organically converged with Chinese and Japanese aesthetic convention, and because The Secret of Kells is conceived in that medievalish style it carries the literary and visual weight usually associated only with modern manga and anime. WOW! (Shortly after the dark ages folded into the high medieval era, of course, the world of Western art invented foreshortening, and promptly became extremely boring and literal-minded.) This movie describes, in the curves and angles of the illuminated manuscripts it quotes, the desperate quest undertaken by early Christian monks to spread the light of literacy throughout the world — despite daunting and fatal opposition. I despise Christianity, as I'm sure you've gathered, but somehow The Secret of Kells transforms the story of early Catholicism from a parable of promiscuous, violent, atavistic myth-stomping to a paradox of genuine, fragile human righteousness. I'm not too sure how the movie accomplished that, but I suspect it had something to do with the fact that the script was cleansed entirely of any actual reference to Christian doctrine. One of the characters in The Secret of Kells is a fairy child — a real one — and without her otherwordly guidance and succor, the Kells manuscript would've stood no chance of achieving either completion or sanctity. Suck on that, Pope Boniface!
Visually, The Secret of Kells is possibly the most stunning Western animation ever created. Its character designs are spectacular, its transitions inspired, its backgrounds inhumanly lush and gorgeous. Truly, I've never seen anything like it. At one point, the main character (who grows up to be the dutiful monk who ultimately finishes the Book), a little boy named Brendan, does metaphysical battle with the wretchedest of the remaining Celtic gods, a terrifying death-monster called Crom Cruach — and defeats it with a stick of chalk. The battle is evocative of ancient epics that describe the mystical exploits of Celtic and British heroes, but it also evokes the ordinary crusades children wage daily against their own irrational fears. Amazing! I've seldom seen mythology, history, and fantasy conflated so elaborately — or so concisely and accessibly — in a film. Highly, highly recommended.
But, so, shorter: PRETTY PRETTY BEAUTIFUL REAL PRETTY WOO WOO WOW WOW SUPER-PRETTY REALLY PRETTY PRETTY I CREID :[
BRIGHT STAR
I saw this one with my mother, and I think she liked it quite a bit more than I did, because she watched it with that serious, narrow-eyed face grown-ups wear when they're seeing something that fascinates them, whereas I was thinking, Ooof! This movie would benefit greatly from the inclusion of some musical numbers. And possibly some Elves. Or a spaceship. Or a talking wombat. Or Alan Rickman. Then I went to sleep.
Bright Star is about Keats and some pretty lady in a fancy hat yearning to have, but never actually having, a romantic relationship. And then he dies. (I think?) (Well, I mean: homie is definitely dead. But I think in the movie his death specifically puts a quietus on the action.) (I don't really know, though.) (Don't look at me; I was asleep.)
THE A-TEAM
This show was one of my favorites (along with Scooby-Doo and the My Little Pony cartoon) when I was little, so I was really expecting to be entertained on at least a third-grade level. But this movie was very boring, somehow, and also quite loud and off-putting, and I lost the plot early. No one really wanted to finish it, so we fast-forwarded through to the Liam Neeson parts and then ejected it.
LEGEND OF THE GUARDIANS: THE OWLS OF GA'HOOLE
This is another talking-animal movie; I thought these were British animals again, but the story turned out to be set in Australia. Well, I mean, I'm pretty sure that some of the animals were British, and some were Australian, and the one really awful owl had a very terrible "American" accent, which was a nice touch. This was more a real children's movie than The Golden Compass was, though, and it was paced very quickly — the hero owl, Soren, is horribly betrayed by his brother, and then immediately afterward he meets his bff, and then a helpful avuncular henchowl gets killed, then there's a happy flying owl-family montage, and then an adorable baby owl gets brainwashed, and then the Owl City guy sings a goofy owl song, and then Soren's brother tries to kill him, and then there's another happy owl montage, and then there's a scary battle, and then Soren winks at a cute-girl owl, etc. Also it seemed as though it took the protagonists at least three weeks of hard flying to find the Tree of Ga'Hoole at the beginning, and in the end it was, like, two feet away. Whatever. I found it a little jarring, but probably actual children would've stayed engaged throughout the whole film without getting bored. Um, the movie is based on a series of novels published just after the turn of the century, and the plot was the same story that is the beating heart of basically every late-model fantasy novel ever: An iniquitous Hitler character is planning a terrible war against a coalition of kind-hearted but incredulous UN Security Council characters, and in the end everyone worth saving is rescued by a ragtag band of endearing misfits. Or, in this case, by an owl that has figured out how out make a Molotov cocktail. This movie, though, had some nice 'messages' — that war is "hell" instead of a fun thing heroes get to do because they're sexy, for example, and that adhering to idiotic notions of white supremacy in battle disqualifies a lot of good canon fodder, and that facial disfigurement can indicate nobility as well as wickedness, and that if you don't believe in fairy tales it means you are evil and you'll die in a fire and nobody will care :]
This movie was also a visually-stunning CGI spectacle, crest and feathers above almost anything I've ever seen in the medium. (You see? What I did there?) Also it was probably very meaningful re: Australian history proper, which has been like one appalling, racist, crass, eugenics-motivated, colonialist chess game after another played between the British Empire and reality, with reality always on the losing team. But I'm too lazy to look it up.
BOTTLE SHOCK
This movie was really bad, and it is also an excellent reminder that even Alan Rickman cannot single-handedly save a sinking/boring filmship with the sheer buoyant force of his personal awesomeness. Bottle Shock was like an after-school special about wine. I think? It was kind of hard to tell, because only about three things happened and none of them were very interesting. At the end ❋ ~ ◦ SPOILER ◦ ~ ❋ the irritating Americans haphazardly transport their wine to the magical French wine-tasting contest which confers eternal legitimacy upon any wine that bests the palettes of the attendant company of super-picky French snobs, and it turns out that their icky American wine wins! It is much better than the icky French wine. Hooray for America! Or California! Or something! When they find out, all the French snobs are shocked! Shocked! CHOQUÉD! I think I was supposed to be charmed by the movie's quaint, prosaic ending, but by that time I wanted to kill all of the characters and dance on their freshly-cut graves, so I was in no mood to be charmed by anything, including Rickman speaking French. (That last part is obviously a blatant lie.) Throughout the whole movie, nobody even once mentioned that wine is very awful and it tastes like rotten grapes mixed with rubbing alcohol, or, if you are extremely lucky, it tastes like sweet Kool-Aid mixed with slightly less rubbing alcohol. I think that is a key point to make, in any movie about the world of winecraft. NOBODY WOULD EVER DRINK ANY OF THIS HORRIBLE SHIT UNLESS THEY WERE ALREADY VERY DRUNK OR HAD HAD THEIR TASTEBUDS DESTROYED BY LONG-TERM EXPOSURE TO NOUVELLE CUISINE, Alan Rickman should've said, in French, as a preface to the action. Perfect. Problem solved. Bottle Shock also features Bill Pullman, who is apparently a really horrible actor and I just now noticed, and also that semi-boring guy who played Star Trek Babies Captain Kirk, who was wearing my great-grandma Maudie's old wig, but in Buttercream Blonde instead of Glorious Ginger. And! And it also features sum hawt chix, one of whom averts an arrest for indecent exposure by flashing her tits at a cop. Haha, feminism! It was the 70s, you guys. Shit didn’t make sense on purpose.
This is the only good part of the whole movie. It is twenty-seven seconds long. Watch it a couple of times and then forget about it.
Hey, I am retarded and I like children's movies! I think that goes without saying, though. Adult movies are insultingly loud and misogynistic, or insufficiently full of Alan Rickman as Hwæt the pansermøøse, or boring pointless depressing love stories about long-dead dumb white people who wrote lovely poetry and made pretty hats but failed to notice that they were all going to die sooner or later anyway, so please stop crying already. I mean, come on, lady — what are you, a talking animal? Now, they have real problems.
I'm not getting you down at all, am I? Don't take it personal. I was the designated excuse-generator on this particular excursion; I agreed to accompany my father (who hates his family, of course) specifically in order to feign illness and get everybody out several hours early. I am the very soul of self-sacrifice! Don't I know it.
I watched some things!
Should I cut? It's pretty long; I’ll cut.
First, I watched the Lord of the Rings movies, which were on the teevee (LEGOLAS ♥) , and then I watched Hogfather, which I bought last year and already reviewed. Then I watched:
THE GOLDEN COMPASS
The Golden Compass was nowhere near as bad as everybody said it was, although the effects were pretty horrible and the script was a bowdlerized mess. For me, it was on par — as a leaden, tone-deaf adaptation — with the Jackson's Lord of the Rings movies. The only difference between them, I think, is that Tolkien's message of strength in love and compassion and belonging can be interpreted as a populist cliché (although in the original text it was really no such thing), whereas Pullman's vision of the world is, by definition, exclusionary. It is built on the hatred of religion, and on dismantling the iconic shibboleths of sin and divinity; and, even neutered and cosmetically-pleasant as that was made to look in the film, I think Pullman still clears the room pretty efficiently. Not that I'm complaining! I agree wholeheartedly with Pullman, and I think that the His Dark Materials books are spectacular and wonderful and brilliant, all the way up to their horrible, stupid ending. I'm only sorry I wasn't able to read them when I was a child; they absolutely would have made an important difference in my life.
Having said that, though, I am not sure children have the tools to really appreciate this movie, even toothless as it is. Unless a child has been raped by a priest or a nun or something, I don't see how any kid could ever be capable of hating Catholicism, or of even understanding what it is about Catholicism that's legitimately hateful. Because the evilings in this movie aren't standard fantasy Nazis; they are clearly Catholics. They're draped in brocaded smugness and in the anonymous images of medieval saints, and they're determined to suppress the pursuit of scientific knowledge and to punish heretics. Worse, they are the unrepentant thieves of poor and aboriginal children, who torment the souls out of their conquests and then somehow dredge up the audacity to call them "orphans." If the Real Times Catholic Church itself wasn't a million times worse, that would've all read as overwrought cinematic melodrama. Eesh. Anyway! Nicole Kidman looked beautiful as Mrs. Coulter, and communicated the depths of the character's sinister heart very well despite being unable to move her face, but both she and the script failed at delivering the appropriate levels of Holy Mother-style high theatrics (possibly on purpose). Daniel Craig is hot, and luckily the character he played was not featured long enough to display his innate evil-prickishness. The kid was cute. The dæmons were very, very neat, if not particularly well-animated — my kingdom for a talking animal, especially if it has a British accent — and I was absolutely in love with Iorek Byrnison, who is a polar bear that sounds like Ian McKellen when he talks (scientists agree that this is pretty much the ideal exemplar of your Talking Animal Character). But, again, I think that adult viewers would see the disgraced Iorek as he first appears in the movie and recognize him as the symbol of an ancient, blood-soaked, Edda-edged world, tragically debauched by whiskey, self-hatred, and institutionalized discrimination — which is a deep and affecting statement, given that that very thing actually fucking happened to all kinds of real human people, all over the world and in all kinds of circumstances — but would a kid be able to identify him? (No.)
Um. The witches! Serafina Pekkala is one of my favorite characters ever, and I thought she came off beautifully (if far too quickly) in The Golden Compass. There's a part near the end of the movie when, with our heroes caught in the teeth of the final battle, the chances look small, the choices look grim, the end seems near, etc. and then all of a sudden — oh shit, oh shit! — the witches arrive, playing the part of the cavalry far better than the cavalry ever did. Wow, finally!
I liked the image of people's dæmons particle-izing into glowing stardust when they died. Scary!
I also really liked the epic ending single: WOOOOO SHE'S LYRA! SHE HAS A DÆMON AND IT'S BROOOOOOWN!!! SHE'LL GO TO TOOOOOOOWN AND STOP THOSE CATHOLIC PRIESTS GETTING EVERYBODY DOOOOOOOOOOWN! Brilliant! Who wrote that? A cat?
THE SECRET OF KELLS
I loved this movie so much that I ran out and bought it the day after Christmas. It is, of all things, a Western anime, which stands to reason: The Secret of Kells is a Tolkien-ized installation of Irish mythology, fitted like a book-jacket around a fictionalized account of the creation of the famous Book of Kells. The early middle ages represent the final (and only?) moment Western art organically converged with Chinese and Japanese aesthetic convention, and because The Secret of Kells is conceived in that medievalish style it carries the literary and visual weight usually associated only with modern manga and anime. WOW! (Shortly after the dark ages folded into the high medieval era, of course, the world of Western art invented foreshortening, and promptly became extremely boring and literal-minded.) This movie describes, in the curves and angles of the illuminated manuscripts it quotes, the desperate quest undertaken by early Christian monks to spread the light of literacy throughout the world — despite daunting and fatal opposition. I despise Christianity, as I'm sure you've gathered, but somehow The Secret of Kells transforms the story of early Catholicism from a parable of promiscuous, violent, atavistic myth-stomping to a paradox of genuine, fragile human righteousness. I'm not too sure how the movie accomplished that, but I suspect it had something to do with the fact that the script was cleansed entirely of any actual reference to Christian doctrine. One of the characters in The Secret of Kells is a fairy child — a real one — and without her otherwordly guidance and succor, the Kells manuscript would've stood no chance of achieving either completion or sanctity. Suck on that, Pope Boniface!
Visually, The Secret of Kells is possibly the most stunning Western animation ever created. Its character designs are spectacular, its transitions inspired, its backgrounds inhumanly lush and gorgeous. Truly, I've never seen anything like it. At one point, the main character (who grows up to be the dutiful monk who ultimately finishes the Book), a little boy named Brendan, does metaphysical battle with the wretchedest of the remaining Celtic gods, a terrifying death-monster called Crom Cruach — and defeats it with a stick of chalk. The battle is evocative of ancient epics that describe the mystical exploits of Celtic and British heroes, but it also evokes the ordinary crusades children wage daily against their own irrational fears. Amazing! I've seldom seen mythology, history, and fantasy conflated so elaborately — or so concisely and accessibly — in a film. Highly, highly recommended.
But, so, shorter: PRETTY PRETTY BEAUTIFUL REAL PRETTY WOO WOO WOW WOW SUPER-PRETTY REALLY PRETTY PRETTY I CREID :[
BRIGHT STAR
I saw this one with my mother, and I think she liked it quite a bit more than I did, because she watched it with that serious, narrow-eyed face grown-ups wear when they're seeing something that fascinates them, whereas I was thinking, Ooof! This movie would benefit greatly from the inclusion of some musical numbers. And possibly some Elves. Or a spaceship. Or a talking wombat. Or Alan Rickman. Then I went to sleep.
Bright Star is about Keats and some pretty lady in a fancy hat yearning to have, but never actually having, a romantic relationship. And then he dies. (I think?) (Well, I mean: homie is definitely dead. But I think in the movie his death specifically puts a quietus on the action.) (I don't really know, though.) (Don't look at me; I was asleep.)
THE A-TEAM
This show was one of my favorites (along with Scooby-Doo and the My Little Pony cartoon) when I was little, so I was really expecting to be entertained on at least a third-grade level. But this movie was very boring, somehow, and also quite loud and off-putting, and I lost the plot early. No one really wanted to finish it, so we fast-forwarded through to the Liam Neeson parts and then ejected it.
LEGEND OF THE GUARDIANS: THE OWLS OF GA'HOOLE
This is another talking-animal movie; I thought these were British animals again, but the story turned out to be set in Australia. Well, I mean, I'm pretty sure that some of the animals were British, and some were Australian, and the one really awful owl had a very terrible "American" accent, which was a nice touch. This was more a real children's movie than The Golden Compass was, though, and it was paced very quickly — the hero owl, Soren, is horribly betrayed by his brother, and then immediately afterward he meets his bff, and then a helpful avuncular henchowl gets killed, then there's a happy flying owl-family montage, and then an adorable baby owl gets brainwashed, and then the Owl City guy sings a goofy owl song, and then Soren's brother tries to kill him, and then there's another happy owl montage, and then there's a scary battle, and then Soren winks at a cute-girl owl, etc. Also it seemed as though it took the protagonists at least three weeks of hard flying to find the Tree of Ga'Hoole at the beginning, and in the end it was, like, two feet away. Whatever. I found it a little jarring, but probably actual children would've stayed engaged throughout the whole film without getting bored. Um, the movie is based on a series of novels published just after the turn of the century, and the plot was the same story that is the beating heart of basically every late-model fantasy novel ever: An iniquitous Hitler character is planning a terrible war against a coalition of kind-hearted but incredulous UN Security Council characters, and in the end everyone worth saving is rescued by a ragtag band of endearing misfits. Or, in this case, by an owl that has figured out how out make a Molotov cocktail. This movie, though, had some nice 'messages' — that war is "hell" instead of a fun thing heroes get to do because they're sexy, for example, and that adhering to idiotic notions of white supremacy in battle disqualifies a lot of good canon fodder, and that facial disfigurement can indicate nobility as well as wickedness, and that if you don't believe in fairy tales it means you are evil and you'll die in a fire and nobody will care :]
This movie was also a visually-stunning CGI spectacle, crest and feathers above almost anything I've ever seen in the medium. (You see? What I did there?) Also it was probably very meaningful re: Australian history proper, which has been like one appalling, racist, crass, eugenics-motivated, colonialist chess game after another played between the British Empire and reality, with reality always on the losing team. But I'm too lazy to look it up.
BOTTLE SHOCK
This movie was really bad, and it is also an excellent reminder that even Alan Rickman cannot single-handedly save a sinking/boring filmship with the sheer buoyant force of his personal awesomeness. Bottle Shock was like an after-school special about wine. I think? It was kind of hard to tell, because only about three things happened and none of them were very interesting. At the end ❋ ~ ◦ SPOILER ◦ ~ ❋ the irritating Americans haphazardly transport their wine to the magical French wine-tasting contest which confers eternal legitimacy upon any wine that bests the palettes of the attendant company of super-picky French snobs, and it turns out that their icky American wine wins! It is much better than the icky French wine. Hooray for America! Or California! Or something! When they find out, all the French snobs are shocked! Shocked! CHOQUÉD! I think I was supposed to be charmed by the movie's quaint, prosaic ending, but by that time I wanted to kill all of the characters and dance on their freshly-cut graves, so I was in no mood to be charmed by anything, including Rickman speaking French. (That last part is obviously a blatant lie.) Throughout the whole movie, nobody even once mentioned that wine is very awful and it tastes like rotten grapes mixed with rubbing alcohol, or, if you are extremely lucky, it tastes like sweet Kool-Aid mixed with slightly less rubbing alcohol. I think that is a key point to make, in any movie about the world of winecraft. NOBODY WOULD EVER DRINK ANY OF THIS HORRIBLE SHIT UNLESS THEY WERE ALREADY VERY DRUNK OR HAD HAD THEIR TASTEBUDS DESTROYED BY LONG-TERM EXPOSURE TO NOUVELLE CUISINE, Alan Rickman should've said, in French, as a preface to the action. Perfect. Problem solved. Bottle Shock also features Bill Pullman, who is apparently a really horrible actor and I just now noticed, and also that semi-boring guy who played Star Trek Babies Captain Kirk, who was wearing my great-grandma Maudie's old wig, but in Buttercream Blonde instead of Glorious Ginger. And! And it also features sum hawt chix, one of whom averts an arrest for indecent exposure by flashing her tits at a cop. Haha, feminism! It was the 70s, you guys. Shit didn’t make sense on purpose.
This is the only good part of the whole movie. It is twenty-seven seconds long. Watch it a couple of times and then forget about it.
Hey, I am retarded and I like children's movies! I think that goes without saying, though. Adult movies are insultingly loud and misogynistic, or insufficiently full of Alan Rickman as Hwæt the pansermøøse, or boring pointless depressing love stories about long-dead dumb white people who wrote lovely poetry and made pretty hats but failed to notice that they were all going to die sooner or later anyway, so please stop crying already. I mean, come on, lady — what are you, a talking animal? Now, they have real problems.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-05 06:43 pm (UTC)Do you like your Kindle? I've been sort of stubbornly holding onto my paperbacks and eying the Kindle warily for a year now. Also, normally half my suitcase is packed with books when I go home for holidays.
THE SECRET OF KELLS! I saw your icon, but I didn't know if you had watched it or just thought it was pretty. Netflix had it as soon as it came out on DVD, so I snapped it up. It had been on my to-watch list since last summer, I think, when I first watched the scene in your icon on the Youtubes. So gorgeous! The transitions really were amazing! I thought the ending was a little anticlimactic (although fitting) given all the time that passes, but I can forgive that for everything else. Kitties! A fairy! Wolves! Magic! Art! Characterization and story! What more could you ask for? I recommended it to my nieces and nephews, but no one's shown it to them so far. : (
no subject
Date: 2011-01-06 12:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-06 01:15 am (UTC)Anyway, very funny post. I want to watch the kells movie.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-06 10:45 am (UTC)Well, I went for my dad. Everybody knows that I’ve been ill recently, so it was very easy for me to pretend, halfway through the 'festivities,' that I’d gotten sick and needed to be taken home. I am Jesus-like in my awesomeness, this I know.
Do you like your Kindle?
Ummmmm… I don’t really know. I am going to have to read the fucking manual in order to use it, which I find extremely traumatizing. I’m use to iDevices, which have pretty pictures on them that you push like buttons and things happen instantly. This "scrolling arrows" thing, this "keyboard" thing — they take some getting used to. I’ll make a post about it, if it turns out that I end up loving it.
Otherwise I would stick to the paperbacks, if I were you.
THE SECRET OF KELLS!
Eeeeeee! ♥
Kitties! A fairy! Wolves! Magic! Art! Characterization and story! What more could you ask for?
NOTHING.
I recommended it to my nieces and nephews, but no one's shown it to them so far. : (
My only regret is that I was not a child in a timely manner, and missed so many wonderful things. Which is not to say that adults can’t enjoy things like The Secret of Kells as much as kids can — but if I had seen that movie when I was 11 or 12, it probably would’ve saved me some wangst later on.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-06 10:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-06 11:04 am (UTC)You know, that’s very strange; I’d never thought about it like that before.
Even The Hobbit, which is as close to a children’s book as Tolkien ever managed to get, has a terrible, lame-ass ending.
Maybe it’s because epic children’s fantasy tries to deal with the spiritual substance of childhood itself, and so, when it comes time for the characters to begin to grow up, the whole thing fails miserably? Because there is no continuity between adulthood and childhood, nor is there any identifiable moment when people stop being children and become adults instead. It’s a very unmagical, painful, stupid, difficult, and classification-defying transition. And if we can’t really say what it is, we can’t write (or read) about it effectively.
Although I think the end of HDM suffered greatly from Pullman’s personal anti-Narnia hang-ups. Being an adult isn’t any better than being a kid; they’re only different. And both states of existence suck monstrously, might I add. Trying to prioritize one over the other is retarded and creepy, no matter which one you pick.
ALETHIOMETER ICON!! WANT. ♥
no subject
Date: 2011-01-06 11:09 am (UTC)Not that I know of? There was another movie out with the same cast called Nobel Son, though, which I haven’t gotten around to watching yet. I think it was supposed to be pretty bad? But this one got stellar reviews! You just can’t trust people who drink wine voluntarily.
I want to watch the kells movie.
I think you would absolutely love it, even unsentimental as you are. Netflix it!
♥
no subject
Date: 2011-01-06 03:27 pm (UTC)My basic problem with The Golden Compass was less that it was a "bad" movie, and more that it wasn't exactly how I wanted to make it. I'd had this planned out since I was in fourth grade. Give me a chance, Pullman!
Yaaaay Secret of Kells! The cat was my favorite.
Aaaand I haven't seen any of these other movies... but... does Alan Rickman really speak French in this Bottle Shock? Really really?
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Date: 2011-01-06 04:03 pm (UTC)here
http://www.dreamwidth.org/userpic/711170/656912
and here
http://www.dreamwidth.org/userpic/711171/656912
I hope you can see them, I really don't know what I'm doing.
And I'm scared to sign out to see if the links work because I don't know my password to sign back in.
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Date: 2011-01-06 04:03 pm (UTC)I don't know. I think you're right that in some respects all these books are talking about childhood and adulthood--they have to be, with children/teenagers as narrators and pivotal characters in saving the world or the multiverse--but I think my question is simpler, why can't there be a happy ending? Why must there always be a further price paid, and nothing granted in return? I suspect Pullman would defend that as being characteristic of adulthood, that you have to make the hard choices willingly, but it's not all that adulthood is, either, not by a long shot. And Pullman comes closest to acknowledging that, with Will & Lyra's sexual awakening, but then they have to part forever.
I really liked The Secret of Kells, but I disliked the way they turned the Vikings into extra from Aku's army in Samurai Jack.
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Date: 2011-01-07 11:10 am (UTC)And I'm scared to sign out to see if the links work because I don't know my password to sign back in.
I did that in Formspring once. And then the reminder notice went in my spambox. You should just preemptively reset your password and save yourself some grief.
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Date: 2011-01-07 12:18 pm (UTC)Hm, might disagree there. Despite the common practice, I don’t think LotR could be even broadly classified as children’s literature, or even as YA literature — which is not to say that plenty of bright, precocious kids haven’t attempted it and succeeded. But, even assuming that some children were able to penetrate Tolkien’s heavy, mannered, faux-antique prose, I don’t think there’s any way a child of any age would have the background to parse the elaborate mélange of Tolkien’s genre-changing mythography, or to understand exactly how many sacred
cowsicons of "traditional" British and Western culture he directly imperils. I think kids would read LotR and see only the action, and nothing else — as they would when reading any significant, theatrical literary classic.Which maybe explains why the ending is perfectly appropriate? It wasn’t intended for consumption by children?
why can't there be a happy ending?
I really have no idea. But now I’m going to be thinking about it, and trying to remember if I’ve ever read a children’s fantasy novel that didn’t have an ending which sucked/depressed me. Off the top of my head? Can’t think of one. Maybe it’s just an effort on the part of fantasy authors to say, "Hey, kid. Don’t get your hopes up."
Will & Lyra's sexual awakening
That was one of the major problems I had with the ending of the Materials series. This may be my petty, bougie small-mindedness peeking out — but, while I’m all for sexual awakenings, I don’t want to think about them in the context of 12 or 13-year-olds. Totally grossed me out. Ick. Blargh! Yuck. I only have the dimmest memory of what happened after that in the novel, because I was seizing with desperate ew-ness.
I disliked the way they turned the Vikings into extra from Aku's army in Samurai Jack.
Well, for me, Vikings occupy the same fictional space as Nazis and antebellum Southern slave-owners, so I don’t usually get too upset when they’re represented unfavorably, or categorically. Although I’m sure, of course, that the historical reality of the Viking empire probably wasn’t so childishly simplistic. Also they were probably not all "Vikings," as such, now that I think about it. Also, I feel as though I’ve discharged my fictional responsibility to the Vikings by watching The 13th Warrior 834 times. Despite the source, it is a badass, pro-Viking movie. BEOWULF RULES OK.
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Date: 2011-01-07 12:25 pm (UTC)UGH. I MAY TREAT THIS AS A CONTRACTUAL OBLIGATION ON YOUR PART ONE DAY SOON, SO WATCH OUT.
it wasn't exactly how I wanted to make it. I'd had this planned out since I was in fourth grade. Give me a chance, Pullman!
I know, right? When it came out everybody was like, This are the worstest adaptation evar! Zero starz! and so I avoided it. But, now I’m wondering if any of those people who hated it ever actually managed to finish The Lord of the Rings novels. I’m thinking that if they loved Jackson’s LotR and hated The Golden Compass? Probably not.
The cat was my favorite.
I spent the last forty minutes of the movie chanting, "PLEASE DON’T KILL THE CAT PLEASE NO NOT THE CAT ANYBODY BUT THE CAT PLEASE NO NO" under my breath, so yeah. Me, too.
Alan Rickman really speak French in this Bottle Shock?
Yes! With his voice. French. Hurr.
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Date: 2011-01-07 06:00 pm (UTC)Bring it on!
I'm wondering if any of those people who hated it ever actually managed to finish The Lord of the Rings novels.
...this may not be the best time to tell you that I never finished them either. To be honest: I never even finished the first volume. My mom did read The Hobbit to me when I was six or seven. So... I sort of finished that. Kind of. (I didn't hate either the LotR or the Golden Compass movies, though, and I never thought I could really judge the LotR movies as adaptations, specifically. Which is maybe more your point.)
I spent the last forty minutes of the movie chanting, "PLEASE DON’T KILL THE CAT PLEASE NO NOT THE CAT ANYBODY BUT THE CAT PLEASE NO NO"
This is me during, basically, any movie with an animal in it ever. I almost cannot watch disaster movies, because they always work in an animal character to heighten the suspense. Like, oh, is that dog going to be sucked up by that tornado? is that cat going to drown? better keep watching, just to make sure!
But I'd probably avoid disaster movies either way.
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Date: 2011-01-08 02:11 pm (UTC)I would definitely NOT EVER judge anyone for failing to finish LotR. The first volume is one of the only novels I have ever actually fallen asleep reading. There’s this part near the beginning when Gandalf explains the history of the Ring to Frodo, and Gollum’s past and connection to it, and I was like, auuuuu stoooooop okay enough already I get it big big bad let’s move on arrrrgh. (Incidentally, Jackson managed to sum up all 78 of those horrible pages in that two-minute "what must I do?" scene, which is in my opinion the only improvement he made to the text.) I also seem to remember lots of characters suddenly becoming tall and distinguished-looking in order to impart some sterling, ridiculous "lesson" to the reader, because Tolkien got a major boner for authoritative white people. If I hadn’t been in the grip of a brief but passionate love affair with elves, I probably wouldn’t have finished it either.
But yes: That’s my point. The nation’s moviegoers howled like monkeys when The Golden Compass came out, but adored LotR. Which leads me to believe they (reasonably enough) found Pullman’s prose more palatable than Tolkien’s.
But I'd probably avoid disaster movies either way.
I used to kind of like them? When I was a teenager? I don’t know. Let’s blame the surging hormones or something.
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Date: 2011-01-09 02:18 am (UTC)I don't know. I read the Tolkien books (The Hobbit, LotR, and the Silmarillion) in 3rd and 4th grade; I think Hobbit is probably the only one that would fall directly under the children's/YA fantasy rubric, and I agree that you're probably right that the others aren't, but at the same time I think most people read them well before high school, so…I don't know. It's only in retrospect that I can recognize the extreme Catholicism of Tolkien's views, and I'm still not sure whether I could parse everything that went into those books, but I don't think being able to parse all that is completely necessary to get a lot out of them.
Apparently the American edition of TAS actually censors a few sentences about Lyra's sexuality. I don't know, I read those books as they came out, and I was 17 or 18 when TAS was published, and it didn't seem particularly egregious to me for 13- or 14-year-olds. But that is definitely something on which people's mileages will vary.
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Date: 2011-01-09 02:22 pm (UTC)Yes! Good point. I liked them a lot, too. But there’s, like, this whole other series of L’Engle novels about Meg’s kids, and in those books Charles Wallace totally disappears for no reason. "Oh, he’s working on something top-secret for the government!," everybody says, and nobody really seems to care that he’s not around anymore. For that very reason, I stopped with A Ring of Pure and Endless Light, which was sort of like Judy Blume only lamer, and which dealt with some other boring not-special family. (I think.) (Also, I began to suspect that I wasn’t having the reaction to the nephilim in Many Waters that L’Engle wanted me to have.)
I read the Tolkien books (The Hobbit, LotR, and the Silmarillion) in 3rd and 4th grade
Wow! I am impressed. I remember picking up LotR when I was about 12 and reading the first few pages and thinking, BOOOOOOORING. I read them all when I was in my early twenties, and they still bored me to tears in some places.
but I don't think being able to parse all that is completely necessary to get a lot out of them.
Let’s hope not, for all our sakes.
Apparently the American edition of TAS actually censors a few sentences about Lyra's sexuality.
Gah! Again, I didn’t read these books until just a couple of years ago. Probably if I’d read them when I was younger it wouldn’t have bothered me as much.
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Date: 2011-01-09 07:17 pm (UTC)You know, I went to go see the book of Kells a couple of years ago. I was all kind of excited to see it, but when we got in the room where it was kept, I was shocked to find that there were two. Two books. What? It's not called 'the books of Kells' so... WHAT? I assume that one of the books was a facsimile, or that both books were facsimiles and the original was hidden away somewhere, or, I don't know. There were no signs to explain what was going on D: So, to this day, I'm still not sure if I saw the actual book of Kells or not.
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Date: 2011-01-09 07:58 pm (UTC)I think my deep love for LotR and all the backstory (oh man, I read the Appendices so many times) is in retrospect a clear sign that no one should be surprised that I wound up doing history.
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Date: 2011-01-10 09:00 pm (UTC)WOW. You’ve got all that history right there, where you can look at it! How amazing is that? Whereas if I want to look at history I have to get on a big scary plane and hunch over crying for three to eleven hours straight until we land and then I stagger off into the airport hoping there’s somebody coming to meet me before I collapse entirely. Which seems like a lot of trouble to go to for the book of Kells, awesome though it may be.
or that both books were facsimiles and the original was hidden away somewhere
The cat probably has it! (That will make sense once you see the movie.) (Sort of.)