300, books, and other stuff
Mar. 17th, 2007 05:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatAm masochistically enjoying present job and workplace - it's a bit like being locked in a room with a series of increasingly difficult logical reasoning puzzels with a time clock and I happen to adore logical reasoning puzzels. In short - I'm being paid to analyze stuff and then explain the analysis in laymen's terms to people. Plus translate it in workable form in database or log. It's stressful, long hours, but also unpredictable, and fun in a weird inexplicable way.
The topic of conversation this week was the flick "300" which all the guys (the men at my company) were psyched to see. Saw it last night during the blizzard with CW. Was exactly what it was meant to be - a visual spectacle. Not everyone's cup of tea, certainly, but CW and I adored it. Surprised a bit that we did, considering.
Would you like it? Don't know. It's not politically correct. And apparently is pissing off the Iranians. Go figure. Yeah, I can see why a "Persian" might find it offensive. But honestly, it's based on a graphic novel, is told in a clearly "fantasical" manner, and is based on something that happened over 4,000 years ago. If anything - I thought the movie did a very good job of driving home the point that we tend to demonize the enemy and make them in-human and monsterous to justify going to war with them or decimating them. This does not mean the enemy is truly monsterous - just that in our point of view they are. The movie has a tight and strict pov that it never wavers from - it's the pov of the troubadour that Leonides, the Greek Spartan King, sends back to Greece to tell the tale. And the pov is emphasized with "voice" over narration. We see everything through his eyes. And the closing sequence - explains a lot of why he chooses the images he does. One of the best examples of a tight unwavering POV I've seen done on film. You have to remember when watching or reading a historical record, a film, a book, or a story - that it is important to know who the storyteller is - and what their goal or motivation is in telling the tale. In 300 the storyteller's goal (not the movie-maker, but the narrator, the pov of the person telling it)is to raise an army to defeat Persia, to convince men and women who hate war and are against going to war and whose priests have advised against going to war - that this is a great thing to do and the enemy is monsterous.
The movie does not tell us what to think necessarily. It tells us what the person telling the story believes and why they believe it. It depicts a specific pov.
The film is visually stunning. And is a nearly perfect adaptation of Frank Miller's graphic novel "300". CW who was friends with Miller while he was writing 300, remembers him giving word-by-word the same speech that Queen Gorgo gives in the flick - about how liberty and personal freedom is worth fighting for. She said, "that's Miller's typical rant - I can almost hear him saying it in the bar right now." It may be the most beautiful war film I've seen, which is an odd thing to say. Yet by the same token, it felt like an anti-war film.
Chilling. Depicting how we destroy each other for silly things like pride, vanity, hubris, and the desire to be gods.
Not at all what I'd expected. And in some ways, I liked it - visually speaking at least, a lot more than Lord of the Rings (also a war film - this one is prettier and visually speaking more fluid less jagged in places), and V is for Vendetta (a graphic novel film). Although all three are very different. This one has the prettiest men though, which is of course a huge plus or minus, if you don't like that sort of thing.
If you like graphic novels and enjoy visuals such as ahem half-naked men with pretty chests moving about and fighting - you'll like this film. If you don't - you won't. Wales would have hated it for instance, hence the reason I went with CW. Wales is my art-film/chick flick movie pal, CW is my fantasy/sci-fi/action film movie pal. My tastes are so eclectic I need more than one movie pal, or I just see a lot on my own or via netflix.
Speaking of eclectic tastes - I finally finished Pamela Dean's Tam Lin. Wary of saying too much about it, since Dean has an lj and a good percentage of the people on my flist seem to love her work. Suffice to say: I did not love the book.
I have read five books that deal with the same subject matter Dean's book does - three of which take place in a college setting. Of the five, Dean's is by far the weakest and least interesting. The five are:
"Waking the Moon by Elizabeth Hand" about three people who meet in undergrad, and keep crossing paths over the years - one is the "mother-goddess", one is her "sacrifice", and one is the girl in between the two, who loves them both. It starts out well, but gets muddled and somewhat melodramatic and silly at the end (a problem a lot of dark fantasy novelists have, which is why they aren't taken seriously and go out of print - Dean's book makes the opposite mistake - it's slow up until the last thirty or forty pages (at 300 and some pages, that's not a good thing) and at the end, you want more and wish the author had started the story with the last 30 pages and gone on from there. If I'd been her editor, that would have been my suggestion.)
Guy Gavarial Kay's The Summer Tree - which follows a bunch of university students into a fantastical world where they deal with the mother goddess - male sacrificial rituals of the ancient Celts and Mabinogion myths (I preferred this series to both Dean's and Hand's takes on similar mythology and rituals - they are clearer, the characters developed more, and the story is tighter - that said, it too falls into cliche in places and at times gets a tad overwrought).
Donna Tartt's "The Secret History" - which is a lot like Dean's book, but much darker, and more ambigious. Tartt's is my favorite of the bunch and haunts me. I flew through it. Read it over five or six years ago. And remember it more vividly than Dean's book which I finished on Wed or Hand's or even Kay's for that matter. I also think Tartt's is the most realistic and shows the consequences the best - regarding both the college experience and the ritual mayhem. Tartt's novel takes place at a private college on the East Coast (which sounds a lot like Bennington College - which Tartt attended along with Bret Easton Ellis and that group of writers, she was the female in the group), where a bunch of Classic's major's go into the woods to practice a ritual and someone dies. It it told in flashbacks and is a bit of a mystery - we are never quite sure what happened in the wood. The ritual is kept vague and dreamlike - as if the students practicing it were all on a hallucenigic drug at the time.
The last is Tom Tyron's horror novel "Harvest Home" - which has the most in common with Hand's novel, except it's not fantasy, but horror. It is the most realistic and disturbing of the five and the most memorable. Also, possibly the best written next to Tartt's novel - in Tyron's novel, a man and his wife move to a remote community in Applachia. The community practices the ancient harvest rituals. The mother goddess ones. And the scene at the end is certain to freak one out, much the same way that the scene at the end of the first film version of The Wicker Man does. There was a mini-series done of Tyron's book entitled "Harvest Home" and starring Bette Davis back in the 1970s. (Good luck finding this one, since it is out of print. I got it at a used book store after lots of hunting.)
I recommend: Secret History, Harvest Home and the Guy Gaverial Kay novels.
Am currently reading S.M. Stirling's "Dies the Fires" - which I bought for my birthday. Will let you know how it goes. Am on a sci-fi/fantasy kick at the moment, obviously.
Oh in other news: Bought myself BTVS S2 DVD (was on sale at Borders - Slim Set - which by the way I prefer to the other version - it's easier to get the Discs out of and the artwork on the discs is better. I'd seen the other version - when I borrowed it briefly from a friend of mine over two years ago. The Slim Set is similar to the Firefly DVD set - each DVD has it's own container. Much better packaging.), and Casino Royale (because I'm shallow and like to look at Daniel Craig in ahem certain sequences.)
The topic of conversation this week was the flick "300" which all the guys (the men at my company) were psyched to see. Saw it last night during the blizzard with CW. Was exactly what it was meant to be - a visual spectacle. Not everyone's cup of tea, certainly, but CW and I adored it. Surprised a bit that we did, considering.
Would you like it? Don't know. It's not politically correct. And apparently is pissing off the Iranians. Go figure. Yeah, I can see why a "Persian" might find it offensive. But honestly, it's based on a graphic novel, is told in a clearly "fantasical" manner, and is based on something that happened over 4,000 years ago. If anything - I thought the movie did a very good job of driving home the point that we tend to demonize the enemy and make them in-human and monsterous to justify going to war with them or decimating them. This does not mean the enemy is truly monsterous - just that in our point of view they are. The movie has a tight and strict pov that it never wavers from - it's the pov of the troubadour that Leonides, the Greek Spartan King, sends back to Greece to tell the tale. And the pov is emphasized with "voice" over narration. We see everything through his eyes. And the closing sequence - explains a lot of why he chooses the images he does. One of the best examples of a tight unwavering POV I've seen done on film. You have to remember when watching or reading a historical record, a film, a book, or a story - that it is important to know who the storyteller is - and what their goal or motivation is in telling the tale. In 300 the storyteller's goal (not the movie-maker, but the narrator, the pov of the person telling it)is to raise an army to defeat Persia, to convince men and women who hate war and are against going to war and whose priests have advised against going to war - that this is a great thing to do and the enemy is monsterous.
The movie does not tell us what to think necessarily. It tells us what the person telling the story believes and why they believe it. It depicts a specific pov.
The film is visually stunning. And is a nearly perfect adaptation of Frank Miller's graphic novel "300". CW who was friends with Miller while he was writing 300, remembers him giving word-by-word the same speech that Queen Gorgo gives in the flick - about how liberty and personal freedom is worth fighting for. She said, "that's Miller's typical rant - I can almost hear him saying it in the bar right now." It may be the most beautiful war film I've seen, which is an odd thing to say. Yet by the same token, it felt like an anti-war film.
Chilling. Depicting how we destroy each other for silly things like pride, vanity, hubris, and the desire to be gods.
Not at all what I'd expected. And in some ways, I liked it - visually speaking at least, a lot more than Lord of the Rings (also a war film - this one is prettier and visually speaking more fluid less jagged in places), and V is for Vendetta (a graphic novel film). Although all three are very different. This one has the prettiest men though, which is of course a huge plus or minus, if you don't like that sort of thing.
If you like graphic novels and enjoy visuals such as ahem half-naked men with pretty chests moving about and fighting - you'll like this film. If you don't - you won't. Wales would have hated it for instance, hence the reason I went with CW. Wales is my art-film/chick flick movie pal, CW is my fantasy/sci-fi/action film movie pal. My tastes are so eclectic I need more than one movie pal, or I just see a lot on my own or via netflix.
Speaking of eclectic tastes - I finally finished Pamela Dean's Tam Lin. Wary of saying too much about it, since Dean has an lj and a good percentage of the people on my flist seem to love her work. Suffice to say: I did not love the book.
I have read five books that deal with the same subject matter Dean's book does - three of which take place in a college setting. Of the five, Dean's is by far the weakest and least interesting. The five are:
"Waking the Moon by Elizabeth Hand" about three people who meet in undergrad, and keep crossing paths over the years - one is the "mother-goddess", one is her "sacrifice", and one is the girl in between the two, who loves them both. It starts out well, but gets muddled and somewhat melodramatic and silly at the end (a problem a lot of dark fantasy novelists have, which is why they aren't taken seriously and go out of print - Dean's book makes the opposite mistake - it's slow up until the last thirty or forty pages (at 300 and some pages, that's not a good thing) and at the end, you want more and wish the author had started the story with the last 30 pages and gone on from there. If I'd been her editor, that would have been my suggestion.)
Guy Gavarial Kay's The Summer Tree - which follows a bunch of university students into a fantastical world where they deal with the mother goddess - male sacrificial rituals of the ancient Celts and Mabinogion myths (I preferred this series to both Dean's and Hand's takes on similar mythology and rituals - they are clearer, the characters developed more, and the story is tighter - that said, it too falls into cliche in places and at times gets a tad overwrought).
Donna Tartt's "The Secret History" - which is a lot like Dean's book, but much darker, and more ambigious. Tartt's is my favorite of the bunch and haunts me. I flew through it. Read it over five or six years ago. And remember it more vividly than Dean's book which I finished on Wed or Hand's or even Kay's for that matter. I also think Tartt's is the most realistic and shows the consequences the best - regarding both the college experience and the ritual mayhem. Tartt's novel takes place at a private college on the East Coast (which sounds a lot like Bennington College - which Tartt attended along with Bret Easton Ellis and that group of writers, she was the female in the group), where a bunch of Classic's major's go into the woods to practice a ritual and someone dies. It it told in flashbacks and is a bit of a mystery - we are never quite sure what happened in the wood. The ritual is kept vague and dreamlike - as if the students practicing it were all on a hallucenigic drug at the time.
The last is Tom Tyron's horror novel "Harvest Home" - which has the most in common with Hand's novel, except it's not fantasy, but horror. It is the most realistic and disturbing of the five and the most memorable. Also, possibly the best written next to Tartt's novel - in Tyron's novel, a man and his wife move to a remote community in Applachia. The community practices the ancient harvest rituals. The mother goddess ones. And the scene at the end is certain to freak one out, much the same way that the scene at the end of the first film version of The Wicker Man does. There was a mini-series done of Tyron's book entitled "Harvest Home" and starring Bette Davis back in the 1970s. (Good luck finding this one, since it is out of print. I got it at a used book store after lots of hunting.)
I recommend: Secret History, Harvest Home and the Guy Gaverial Kay novels.
Am currently reading S.M. Stirling's "Dies the Fires" - which I bought for my birthday. Will let you know how it goes. Am on a sci-fi/fantasy kick at the moment, obviously.
Oh in other news: Bought myself BTVS S2 DVD (was on sale at Borders - Slim Set - which by the way I prefer to the other version - it's easier to get the Discs out of and the artwork on the discs is better. I'd seen the other version - when I borrowed it briefly from a friend of mine over two years ago. The Slim Set is similar to the Firefly DVD set - each DVD has it's own container. Much better packaging.), and Casino Royale (because I'm shallow and like to look at Daniel Craig in ahem certain sequences.)
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no subject
Date: 2007-03-18 12:24 am (UTC)I'm not terribly keen on gladiators and war and all.
Jon Stewart made some very funny comments about Iran's reaction to 'The 300': he felt that being portrayed as relentless killing machines was not really that far from Iran's stated goals, and beside they should pay more attention to the way they are portrayed in movies set in the current day (and then he showed some really bad clip that really was demeaning).
I actually wish I had the slip sets, they look great, but I already own all of BtVS in the big box sets.
Have you picked up the comic book yet?
no subject
Date: 2007-03-18 01:10 am (UTC)It's based on an old 1950's film starring Richard Egan - called 300 Spartans and of course Herodotus's history.
Yep, I picked up the comic today. Will write up a review in a separate post. The skinny? It's okay. Worth 3$ price tag. But I'm enjoying the Spike graphic novels from IDW more for some reason. (shrug)
no subject
Date: 2007-03-18 01:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-18 02:24 am (UTC)Lynch nailed Spike in Asylum. And I mean nailed. He also nailed Whedon's verse, the relationships, and did so in ways that kept with the noirish atmosphere. Peter David didn't do so well, his Spike: Old Wounds - just didn't jibe. It felt off somehow. This one - is on, Spike is the reluctant hero, the scamp, the roguish Sam Spade, and the guilt ridden soul all at once - he captures the ambiguity and complexity of the character - tough to do, as well as the characters flaws.
Would love, love, to see Whedon and Lynch do an Angel S6. (Fanfic is all well and good, but I have to admit, I'd rather read the original creator's takes than the fans fantasies/dreams of what the characters are doing. That of course does not mean I don't read fanfic. I just want both. ;-) ).
Where's Whedon's post?
no subject
Date: 2007-03-18 02:51 am (UTC)http://whedonesque.com/comments/12749
"Joss: I am talking to Brian Lynch who wrote Spike: Asylum about doing a sort of Season Six of Angel - a canon post-Angel story. I was really impressed with Asylum. Brian really got the humour and the rhythms and told a story really well. I though, "If they can do this, why shouldn't they?" It would be on a separate plane from Buffy, but having said that we are planning on having Spike and Angel appear in the BtVS arc. As far as the separate stories goes, we will resolve how they can both be going on. It might end up a little bit too much like X-Men, who are doing different things in every comic, but hopefully we will work out more continuity than that. I'm not going to make it so that you have to read both books from both companies. I don't think it's fair to people and I don't think it's fair in a single company. I hate it when a Spider-Man arc finishes in Iron Man. I get pissed off! There will be no Buffy "Civil War"! Well, maybe."
Along with the link to IDW's announcement about the planned series co-written by Joss & Brian Lynch.
Brian Lynch is a member of Whedonesque and he posted here:
http://whedonesque.com/comments/12723
Anyway it sounds like everyone really wants to do it, and I agree that Lynch really wrote the characters well, and he included a lot of imaginative twists to the story and a nice sense of humor. I'm definitely excited to see him continuing the canon tales of Angel's world.
no subject
Date: 2007-03-18 04:11 am (UTC)I loved Aslym. It really furthered the character in an interesting way.
I'm hoping if and when Whedon introduces Spike in his BTVS comics - it is the Spike after Lynch's Aslym. Not before it. The fact he read it and enjoyed, means it will influence his take on the character and he'll probably do something along those lines.
no subject
Date: 2007-03-18 04:41 am (UTC)"Still in very early stages. But who's psyched? I am psyched.
I'm just thrilled Mr. Whedon liked ASYLUM."
Every writer, as you know, will write a character a little differently. The Mutant Enemy writers worked so closely together that they seemed to talk with one voice (more or less) but I imagine we will see real differences in the comic books between one writer's take and another's. But I'm definitely up for it!
no subject
Date: 2007-03-18 02:41 pm (UTC)Lynch's take is really interesting. In Asylum - Spike surprises Lorne by agreeing to drive him home. Lorne is taken aback. it's one of my favorite scenes and happens at the very end:
Lorne: "Seriously, you're going to kick me out of the car halfway to Vegas aren't you? You can tell me, I'll think it's hilarious."
Spike:" I'm driving you to Vegas so you can make your show."
Lorne:"But...why? No offense, this isn't like you."
Spike:"Times change, Lorne. Don't be offended if I don't stay for the song and dance though. Vegas is filled to the brim with big bads, and a champion's work is never done."
He changes in the series, from a guy who can't be bothered and is kicking himself for having a weakness for women and acts the hero to one-up Angel, to a guy who realizes he genuinelly cares about others and it hurts him when he's the cause of their pain.
I have a weakness for that type of tale. It's my kink. The reluctant hero.
Who thinks of himself as a selfish git then realizes he's not.
Like Lynch - I'm also thrilled Whedon liked Asylum because that can only bode well for future issues. Whedon seems to like flawed, screwed up characters who will kick you one minute and love you the next - that's my kind of writer. And I don't mind that he's doing comics at the moment...although it is ironic, considering how I'd used Buffy to wean myself off the habit. I don't know what to do with boxes of comics I have.
Sell them on e-bay? Give them to the homeless? Ugh.
Tam Lin
Date: 2007-03-18 12:26 am (UTC)Re: Tam Lin
Date: 2007-03-18 01:18 am (UTC)Tam Linn reads like a bunch of summaries of someone's college experiences. My college experiences were more interesting than this, but I'm not egotistical enough to write them up and think someone else wants to read them.
Passive voice. Nothing happens until the last thirty pages. What does happen is cliche to the extreme. In short, I didn't care about anyone. And the author seemed to care more about discussing scholary works she'd read, then telling a story. But she discusses them vaguely.
Ugh. Really poorly written. Have no idea how it got published or why people love it. But what do I know?
Also agree about Hand.
no subject
Date: 2007-03-18 12:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-18 01:19 am (UTC)Casino Royale
Date: 2007-03-18 12:37 am (UTC)Re: Casino Royale
Date: 2007-03-18 01:06 am (UTC)Outside of Connery's Dr. No and possibly Moore's The Man with The Golden Gun, this is the only film that fits the flavor of the books.
no subject
Date: 2007-03-18 05:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-18 02:30 pm (UTC)LOL!
Anyhow - the publishing industry recruits people from colleges such as the one described in Dean's novel who share that experience. So that's probably how she got published. Getting published does not mean you are a good writer necessarily, just that some editor out there liked what you wrote. So much of it is subjective and just pure luck.
no subject
Date: 2007-03-18 06:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-18 02:20 pm (UTC)