orichalcum

Haiku Review:
Many battle scenes,
Susan and Lucy so rawk!
Very true to book.

Well, the diversity of official reviews seemed to suggest that either you would love or hate this movie. True enough, I loved it and cerebralpaladin hated it.

What did I love? How true it was to the book in many minor details, the immense coolness of both Susan and Lucy, my favorite Talking Animal of all time, Reepicheep (voiced by Eddie Izzard, folks! hca might want to see it for this alone, as Reepicheep seems like a very hcaish sort of character), and some gorgeous set and costume design work. You should keep in mind here that I'm probably a bigger fan of the Narnia books and world than of any other childhood series (maybe Prydain comes close, but both certainly beat Middleearth.) I think I read Prince Caspian at least 17 times (I stopped counting after I'd read all the books except Silver Chair and Last Battle 17 times), and so I'm the fangirl in the audience sitting there going, "Oh good, they've got the Brown Bear as one of the Heralds!" So for me, it really worked, in that it didn't tarnish any of my memories.

cerebralpaladin, while he liked the Narnia books as a kid, had virtually no memory of the plot. And well, he had some deep moral and tactical qualms with the way that Adamson chose to represent various scenes and choices. These really impaired his ability to enjoy the film.

So mostly, I would say, if you remember liking the book, you'll probably love the movie. If not - maybe less so.

And in an amusing non-spoilery note, they totally played on one of my major points of childhood confusion from the book - how exactly Edmund could have a _torch_ in his backpack.

N.B: cerebralpaladin has now listed his major objections in a spoilerific comment below; read at your own risk.

Is anyone actually going to go watch Seeker (formerly known as The Dark is Rising) and if so, can you tell me whether or not I should or whether it will just make me even more upset that they ruined the book so badly?

Apparently, there are Vikings.

Bads: Our landlords called to say that they'd be showing the apt at 11 AM tomorrow. This means, of course, that the apt needs to be clean. In most ways, this is no problem - our cleaning lady came yesterday, and I can keep things in order till tomorrow. But she doesn't clean our bedroom, because it's a disaster area that is desperately in need of several hours of sorting and many loads of laundry that we've kept putting off because it's Not Fun. So, guess what I'm doing today, when not working on my recalcitrant article and booking travel stuff for the NoCal trip?

Goods: OTOH, two packages arrived today. One was the Harry Potter Wii game, which I will let myself play at 6:30 today, after all the cleaning is done and Mac is asleep. The other was clothes from Chadwick's, which is having a massive clearance sale of fall and winter stuff, ladies. I got two dress skirts for $10 each, a nice tank top for $3, a new bathing suit for 15$, and new heels for $10. I was a bit nervous about buying shoes online; they wind up looking great but being a bit large, because they didn't have half sizes. Still, I suspect my feet will swell after planes anyhow, and better too large than too small. I had forgotten how much I hated 2-inch heels, but the new green dress really requires them, or I look like the footless wonder. So, a reward for hard work.

Weirds: Does it seem to anybody else like all the other 8 justices despise Kennedy? Conservative or liberal, they're all venting this week about his "hesitant" and "half-baked" rulings,

On the filming of Indy Jones IV:
"The filming will take place on June 28 through July 7. It will be a chase scene, set in 1957, in which black sedans will pursue Ford or his stunt double on a motorcycle east on Chapel Street, through Branford and Saybrook college courtyards, the Old Campus and a practice field in West Haven. Indiana also will roar through the Yale Commons dining hall. It will be set up to look like a study hall so it will be books and papers sent flying, not dishes and flatware."

See ladybird97's LJ for more.

OK, julianyap and havenstone and retsuko were totally right....and I don't always agree with their movie tastes, fond as I am of them. (Although we went to see it partially on the principle that when that many of your closest friends love a movie...) This movie has some of the best directing and cinematography I've seen in a decade. It's unbelievably intense, and shocking, and the vision of the future is so scarily plausible, apart from the central conceit. As a young parent, it's a particularly gripping movie. It's also one of the most Christian movies I've seen in a long time, something few people seem to be commenting on, and I mean that in a good, C.S. Lewisy kind of way.

Random comments: I love Cuaron's habit of visual motifs - in this case, the border collies. foldedfish and hokulea, there are tons of adorable border collies in this film; in general, the subtle use of pets is quite remarkable.

i love the little details that indicate "future" without drumming it into our heads, like the subtly wrong cars. They don't fly and they don't talk to you, but they are shaped just a little bit differently than 2006 cars - in the same way that 1970s cars look different.

The soundtrack rocks, particularly because of Cuaron's willingness to suddenly increase the volume to shock and startle the listener.

I almost didn't go to see this movie because I disliked the book so much; in particular, I found that there were no likable characters in the book. The movie fixes that problem without going overboard in a Hollywood Action Hero direction; Clive Owen is a terribly human, ordinary man who is tested by an extraordinary situation.

So, um, yeah, go see this film. It's a criminal shame Cuaron wasn't nominated for Best Director, at the least, and if it doesn't get Cinematography, I will cry.

So, I should say, I'm not a book-to-movie purist on principle. I cheered at the absence of Tom Bombadil from Fellowship and thought the elimination of the Scouring was regrettable but understandable.

But someone's leaked the casting call for the new Dark is Rising movie, tentatively scheduled for release in September '07, and it's pretty depressing.

One of the whole points of the book is that Will is fighting to save his lovable, sweet, normal, caring, _English_ family. Not to mention, he's the youngest. And who thought a September release of a movie that's _all about Christmas_ was a good idea?

In other, semi-related news, the APA (my classics convention) is putting on a big panel next year on Classics and Comics. I feel like I really ought to submit something. Two items mentioned where they're looking for papers are Classics and Sandman and Classical narratives in manga. Anyone got any good ideas or directions to point me towards on those topics? (We're looking for a 20 minute paper worth of idea, here.) Deadline is Feb 5th.