Posts by webweaver
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Heheh - recordari I was somewhat conflicted when I wrote that post - should I call it the Trilogy as that's what it was originally - or the Quartet because that's what it became? Both are correct, I reckon.
How are you feeling? A little less shaky? How fortunate that you interrupted them before they could steal your books. Still horrible though.
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@Islander - no I don't have Where's my Cow? yet - it hasn't appeared on the bookshelves at Arty Bee's as yet - I'm sure it will pop up at some point though.
Oooh I have an old Penguin paperback copy of At Swim-Two-Birds sitting on my bookshelf, and have never read it. Should I give it a go, do you think?
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Ahh @JoJo thank you so much but I already have Jingo... very kind of you to offer, though!
And Good Omens is fabulous! I read it before I discovered the Discworld so it was my first introduction to Beings who SPEAK IN ALL-CAPS, and the little-known but completely true fact that any cassette tape left in the car for more than a fortnight metamorphoses into The Best of Queen. Tee hee.
Personal favourite Discworld characters - Granny Weatherwax, the librarian (sending an "ook" to Islander) Death and Sam Vimes. I just love Sam. I think Guards! Guards! is one of my favourites actually - and Mort.
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Awesome kids books (all English I'm afraid, as that was where I spent my childhood) - which I also re-read on a regular basis:
Definitely Swallows and Amazons - they're just so atmospheric and the adventures are fabulous.
The Borrowers series - magical indeed.
The Secret Garden - which I still absolutely love with a passion. I want to marry Dickon.
The Moomintroll books - charming and funny and very lovable.
The Weirdstone of Brisingamen and subsequent books by Alan Garner - fantasy, quite scary, very exciting, well-written.
The Earthsea Quartet by Ursula Le Guin (and other novels by her) - also fantasy, beautifully-written, wonderfully-realised other world.
I also agree with the Gerald Durrell recommendation - I loved his books at that age - started with My Family and Other Animals and never looked back!
And (of course!) Pooh, Paddington and everything ever written by Beatrix Potter. Goes without saying, really. And Dr Seuss!
oh - and a wonderful book by Norton Juster called The Phantom Tollbooth which is clever and funny and punny and just plain brilliant and wildly imaginative. I still want to conduct the sunrise someday.
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Ah yes I agree that the Discworld books need to be read and re-read cos they're just so GREAT.
I'm slowly collecting the full set via Wellington's second-hand book shops, which is fun because the order in which I find them is somewhat random. And once I get the full set I'll just have to re-re-read them all all over again in the right order :) It also just occurred to me that buying the books second-hand is not a good way to support Pterry financially. Damn!
For those of us worried that Pterry is fast losing the plot and that Unseen Academicals could be his last, here's a somewhat reassuring bit of video of him answering a question at The Guardian Book Club. I'm hoping it's recent video.
Terry Pratchett on religion: 'I'd rather be a rising ape than a fallen angel'
Other books I regularly re-read:
LOTR approximately once a year since I first read it at the age of 11.
The Clan of the Cave Bear series by Jean Auel - the first three being infinitely more fun to read than the most recent two. And yes I'm aware that they are not exactly "great literature" but who cares! Mammoths! Ancient herbal-lore! Ice-age sex, passion and jealousy! w00t!
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I went to see it again last night. Yes, I enjoyed it that much the first time (as if you don't notice).
I found the 3D-ness a bit off for the first third of the movie. I couldn't follow fast movements on-screen very well and my eyes felt slightly uncomfortable.
Then all of a sudden - at the point where Sully sees the jungle revealed in its night-time colours for the first time - the movie seemed to snap into focus and from that point on it was perfect. I wonder if the alignment had actually been off before that, and the projectionist fixed it.
A collective sigh of pleasure rippled through the audience at that moment (whether because of the beauty of the scenery or the fixing of the off-ness, I don't know) - but my friend Kurt said he experienced exactly the same thing as me at exactly the same moment, so there you go.
The night-time jungle truly is exactly like the trippiest black-light dance party ever...
I went to see it at Queensgate in the Hutt this time (the Reading being sold out until Xmas in 3D). It was interesting. I've never been to the Hutt before.
My friend Lou decided that all the avatars were based on Uma Thurman :)
Bill English was in the audience. I do not know what this signifies.
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I completely see what you're saying, Craig, and I wonder if there's a happy medium somewhere... surely there must be, although it would probably be different for every movie, and every author, and every director, and every film-goer....
I know that, for example, Audrey Niffenegger's manuscript for The Time Traveller's Wife is 600 pages, and one page of manuscript is approx equal to a minute of screentime, so obviously something had to give in terms of the adaptation, otherwise the movie would have been 10 hours long!
I suppose what bugs me about some movie adaptations is the removal of a really fundamental part of the story - and sometimes (as in the two examples I gave in my previous post) you might say it's the fundamental point of the story - at least as far as the characters are concerned. I'd rather something that important wasn't messed with. I'm rather less worried about the loss of a few peripheral characters and sub-plots, as you describe.
Interesting... perhaps we should make some RULES about this sort of thing ;) (joke!)
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Then I'd question why make the bloody film in the first place.
I think this comes down to the question of whether a director chooses to try and create a faithful rendition of the original book (which I think PJ did as well as he could for LOTR - and I agree that he would have been lynched if he had not done that) or whether he/she decides to use the book as an inspiration for a somewhat different story.
The film adaptations of The Vintner's Luck and The Color Purple spring to mind immediately - neither of which were received particularly well by the authors of said books because (as it happens) the gay relationship that is the core of each book was virtually ignored by the director of both those movies in favour of a more "mainstream" approach.
Neither movie was received particularly well by audience members who had read and loved the books either, because at least part of what they loved in the story did not appear in the film.
In both those cases I would ask exactly the same question as you did Gio - "why make the bloody film in the first place" - but for exactly the opposite reason. To my way of thinking, if you're going to make a film called The Vintner's Luck I would prefer it if you try and make it as true to the original book as possible, not mess about with it. Otherwise, what's the point?
If you're going to alter fundamentals of the book when you write the screenplay, call it "inspired by The Vintner's Luck" or something, but don't pretend you're making a film of the book, because you're clearly not.
Of course, this argument doesn't really relate back very well to Avatar because that's based on James Cameron's imagination, not on an original book - although as has been pointed out, the themes are somewhat universal and have been explored before in other stories.
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Ummmm - two? (Harry Potter and Avatar) and maybe a further 10 (if that) randomly on Sky throughout the year.
* slinks away in complete non-film-geek embarrassment *
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Yeah it's interesting that some critics seem to want the storyline to be Shakespeare or something - and are therefore finding it wanting. Seems to me you don't need Shakespeare in this context at all.
I didn't get sore eyes - and I wonder if, as Jack pointed out, it has something to do with the projection technology itself - and perhaps also to do with where you were sitting in relation to the screen. We were bang in the middle of the row, in the front row of the back section (so maybe 10 rows from the front).
The screen filled my field of vision perfectly, without having to look right and left in order to see the whole thing. Perhaps if the screen is wider/higher than your natural field of vision and you do have to keep looking from side to side to catch everything, your eyes do get tired and sore after such a long movie. I'd be interested to hear where the sore-eyed amongst us were sitting.
Maybe also it's related to one's normal eyesight. I need reading glasses these days, and I notice my eyes get tired when I'm working on my 'puter all day, especially if I'm not wearing my glasses. Perhaps my eyes were glad of the change from a small screen to a big one!