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Aug. 12th, 2007 10:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
molly_oLet's see ...
Yesterday I saw Talk to Me. Don Cheadle and Chiwetel Ejiofor are both amazing actors, and almost every frame of the movie had one or the other of them in it. (And any scene *without* either of them probably featured either Martin Sheen or Taraji P. Henson.) I lived in DC for most of Petey Greene's career, but I was too young and too white to be aware of him. (I was actually born just six weeks after Martin Luther King's assassination and the ensuing riots; I grew up with my parents telling the story of how they fled across the river, my mom almost eight months pregnant, carrying only the vodka and the silver.) It was really [I can't find the right word; "interesting" is too tepid, "moving" isn't thinky enough, "fascinating" sounds like Spock] to see my city, within my lifetime, from a different POV. (Though, except for a couple of shots in front of the Capitol, the film was shot almost entirely in Toronto, so I actually saw very little of my city in the film.)
Also? This film was very, VERY slashy. OMG so very slashy! I kept thinking it was maybe kinda slashy, and then there'd be another scene of incredible slashiness.
Friday night I saw Stardust. I skimmed the book again this morning, just to remind myself where the two stories meet and where they diverge. Hardly any plot element was unchanged, but somehow the movie still *felt* like the book, and it was really *wonderful*. I missed a few elements that I particularly liked from the book, but the new additions in the movie were more than adequate compensation.
Previews during Stardust:
The Dark is Rising: I almost cried in the theater. It's a movie I'll probably have to see -- it has Ian McShane and Christopher Eccleston! -- but I think the only way I'll get through it is to pretend it's a completely unrelated movie that just happens to share the same name as the Susan Cooper series. I was having a hard time sleeping last night, and I pulled out my copy of The Dark is Rising and started skimming it -- and honestly, I could see it unfolding like a film just as written.
There was a hit song in the 1980s called "Life in a Northern Town," by The Dream Academy, which includes the lyric, "in winter 1963/it felt like the world would freeze." That's a reference to an actual historical event, a blizzard and record cold snap that hammered England between late December 1962 and March 1963.
Ever since I learned about that winter, I've always assumed it was the inspiration for the Christmas blizzard and subsequent melt that are so much a part of The Dark is Rising (which was published just a decade later). The weather in that book isn't just a backdrop for the action, it's a metaphor for everything else in the story. I just can't imagine a version of that story that *isn't* set in England in 1963.
Elizabeth: The Golden Age: Cate Blanchett is a phenomenal actress, but Clive Owen, with a beard in period garb, literally had my jaw dropping in the theater.
Last weekend I saw The Bourne Ultimatum. I *really* enjoyed it at the time, but I remember hardly anything from it now, except Matt Damon looking puffy-faced and tired.
I read some books, too -- Lucifer's Hammer and Plague Year. (Can you tell I *love* post-apocalyptic novels?) I didn't much like Plague Year -- I didn't like anyone in it, the climax was totally anti-climactic, and it didn't get into the "how do we rebuild civilization" that is my favorite part of post-apocalyptic novels. Lucifer's Hammer was MUCH more my speed, though it was awfully dated -- definitely a product of the '70s. The gender stuff was handled reasonably well -- not perfectly, but it was the '70s, I'll cut them some slack -- but the racial politics were frankly terrible. (The good, "civilized" people are menaced by a gang of black thugs -- *cannibalistic* black thugs! But it's not because they're *black*; there's a black astronaut, and all the white folks really like him. Ugh.).
Yesterday I saw Talk to Me. Don Cheadle and Chiwetel Ejiofor are both amazing actors, and almost every frame of the movie had one or the other of them in it. (And any scene *without* either of them probably featured either Martin Sheen or Taraji P. Henson.) I lived in DC for most of Petey Greene's career, but I was too young and too white to be aware of him. (I was actually born just six weeks after Martin Luther King's assassination and the ensuing riots; I grew up with my parents telling the story of how they fled across the river, my mom almost eight months pregnant, carrying only the vodka and the silver.) It was really [I can't find the right word; "interesting" is too tepid, "moving" isn't thinky enough, "fascinating" sounds like Spock] to see my city, within my lifetime, from a different POV. (Though, except for a couple of shots in front of the Capitol, the film was shot almost entirely in Toronto, so I actually saw very little of my city in the film.)
Also? This film was very, VERY slashy. OMG so very slashy! I kept thinking it was maybe kinda slashy, and then there'd be another scene of incredible slashiness.
Friday night I saw Stardust. I skimmed the book again this morning, just to remind myself where the two stories meet and where they diverge. Hardly any plot element was unchanged, but somehow the movie still *felt* like the book, and it was really *wonderful*. I missed a few elements that I particularly liked from the book, but the new additions in the movie were more than adequate compensation.
Previews during Stardust:
The Dark is Rising: I almost cried in the theater. It's a movie I'll probably have to see -- it has Ian McShane and Christopher Eccleston! -- but I think the only way I'll get through it is to pretend it's a completely unrelated movie that just happens to share the same name as the Susan Cooper series. I was having a hard time sleeping last night, and I pulled out my copy of The Dark is Rising and started skimming it -- and honestly, I could see it unfolding like a film just as written.
There was a hit song in the 1980s called "Life in a Northern Town," by The Dream Academy, which includes the lyric, "in winter 1963/it felt like the world would freeze." That's a reference to an actual historical event, a blizzard and record cold snap that hammered England between late December 1962 and March 1963.
Ever since I learned about that winter, I've always assumed it was the inspiration for the Christmas blizzard and subsequent melt that are so much a part of The Dark is Rising (which was published just a decade later). The weather in that book isn't just a backdrop for the action, it's a metaphor for everything else in the story. I just can't imagine a version of that story that *isn't* set in England in 1963.
Elizabeth: The Golden Age: Cate Blanchett is a phenomenal actress, but Clive Owen, with a beard in period garb, literally had my jaw dropping in the theater.
Last weekend I saw The Bourne Ultimatum. I *really* enjoyed it at the time, but I remember hardly anything from it now, except Matt Damon looking puffy-faced and tired.
I read some books, too -- Lucifer's Hammer and Plague Year. (Can you tell I *love* post-apocalyptic novels?) I didn't much like Plague Year -- I didn't like anyone in it, the climax was totally anti-climactic, and it didn't get into the "how do we rebuild civilization" that is my favorite part of post-apocalyptic novels. Lucifer's Hammer was MUCH more my speed, though it was awfully dated -- definitely a product of the '70s. The gender stuff was handled reasonably well -- not perfectly, but it was the '70s, I'll cut them some slack -- but the racial politics were frankly terrible. (The good, "civilized" people are menaced by a gang of black thugs -- *cannibalistic* black thugs! But it's not because they're *black*; there's a black astronaut, and all the white folks really like him. Ugh.).