Tue 23 May 2006
Today, mrh posted the 1,000th comment on my blog. Holy crap. That seems like such a mammoth number for such a dusty corner of the webbertrons.
Also: this weekend The Boyf and I went to see The Da Vinci Code, where we ran into Joey and Carl. And I finished The Subtle Knife, the second book of His Dark Materials. I’m currently two chapters into the final novel, The Amber Spyglass. Thoughts below the fold, for spoiler-avoidance.
Seriously, if you’re going to read these books or see this movie and you don’t want spoilers, just know this: if you liked the book The Da Vinci Code, see the movie. If you thought the book TDVC was forgettable crap, guess what? The movie is forgettable crap. If you hated the book TDVC, don’t waste your money. If you haven’t read the book, but are curious about it, save yourself some time and watch the movie. Sir Ian McKellan is worth it, and you will have effectively just read the book because there is not a thing different between them.
Also, His Dark Materials rules us all, and you should read it.
OK, so TSK totally made me cry like a baby. I’ll be the first to say it. Lee Scoresby is my personal lord & savior. In discussing the novel with The Boyf, who has not yet read it, I referred to him as “my favorite character, Charisma McHottiePants.” Who doesn’t want to go pal around in the sky with a guy like that? I sobbed. I was so mad. It wasn’t a good few minutes. You have to love Hester, though: “It’d be a shame to die with one bullet left.” That’s a rabbit to respect.
That said, um, Eve? As the kids say, WTF? Also, how in the eighteen hells of Jupiter did the wingnuts fixate on Harry Frickin’ Potter when His Dark Materials was out there telling kids to run away with gypsies so they can (maybe – I’m still only 2 chapters into TAS) wind up fated to make direct war against God, fighting on the side of Satan, and that Satan’s side is all about individuality and freedom and honesty and honor and fate and God’s is just, like, shut up and obey, worms? Also, gay angels.
Gay. Angels.
I love this book. But I don’t understand how some freaky Christian nutjob hasn’t killed Phillip Pullman yet.
As for The Da Vinci Code… meh. I don’t regret having seen it, but that’s largely because at this point I am more interested in the cultural trainwreck that is TDVC than I am in the book itself. The book is an excellent example of meticulous research being draped over a very flimsy narrative framework. It is popcorn action, forgotten the moment you put the book down. The movie is popcorn action, just as easily forgotten the second you walk out the door. They try to cram in as much backstory as they can on people like The Monk, but it’s grainy flashbacks that try so hard to avoid the “as you know, I am your uncle” sort of expository monologues that they wind up telling you very little. Ultimately, you will think of the movie exactly the way you think of the book because it is an (almost) unaltered, word-perfect translation of the book to film. In that regard, I found it fascinating. A few touches here and there are different, yes, but overall it really was just straight-up here’s the book, filmed. Ron Howard is a total cheese-master, and the fact of the matter is that the edgy and funny and touching star of Philadelphia died on the cross of You’ve Got Mail a long time ago, meaning Tom Hanks does his thing and that’s pretty much that. In no way do they try to expand on the book, or improve upon it. They just show you the book. Period. Maybe that’s a good thing. The Boyf was pissed when the scourging of the Shire got axed in the movies of LotR, and I have frothed angrily for fifteen years every time I’ve talked about Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula because all that bullshit at the beginning about Wilhemina being Drac’s long-dead bride, reincarnated, is no-fucking-where in the novel and it completely destroys the whole point of the story, in my snooty opinion. So, maybe it’s a grand service to do such a direct, unblemished translation of book to screen. But maybe they could have… I don’t know. Done more. The novel does a crappy job of playing with a fascinating story hook. Since the movie is such a direct and literal translation of the novel, it suffers from the same criticisms. Tom Hanks does a fine job of playing Langdon, meaning he does a lot of self-righteous gasping and self-satisfied problem-solving, but that’s not Hanks’ fault, it’s Dan Brown’s for writing it that way in the first place.
The best part of the whole movie is Jean Reno playing Fache, because he’s who I kept picturing in my head when I read the novel last summer. Hey, Jean Reno getting a paycheck is a bonus in any circumstance, as far as I’m concerned.
W00t! 1001!
I completely agree with you about Philip Pullman. It’s only because HP is more popular that he is not the poster child for What Is Wrong With The World.
That said, the battle against the Authority is one of the most inspiring plotlines I’ve ever read. Just you wait until the end.
I cried at pretty much every available opportunity during HDM – and ESPECIALLY over Lee Scoresby. And kind of all through the second half of TAS, so you might want to keep some tissues nearby.
I am such a dork for those books (and a sucker for quizzes), I went and did the what’s your daemon quiz, and squealed when I got “hare.”
I also love Sir Ian McKellan, so I’m glad to hear TDVC isn’t total crap. I haven’t yet decided if I want to see it. Although I’m not surprised the movie is the book, filmed, because all of Dan Brown’s books strike me as if they were written with the hope/intent that they’d be turned into films, and read as if they were the novel of the film.
Kathy, you are so right. I say again, he should have named TDVC Maybe They’ll Option This One instead.
And mrh, I think you’re right: I think HP being such a runaway bestseller, it simply soaked up all the attention from the wingnuts. And, to be honest, I wonder if perhaps some of them, having read both series (in the interests of better knowing their enemies, I’m sure), decided HP was simply easier pickin’s. After all, the main point of HDM, so far, seems to be that the problem with the Authority is that it demands mindless obedience and that the ideal state of good little people is to be like the zombi or the severed children: dim, uninterested, uninteresting sheep. I like to imagine that some of them felt that bite just a little too deep, and they shied away from drawing others’ attention to the same point.
For that matter, from a certain fundie perspective, taking on Harry Potter has to seem like a win-win situation: an opportunity to decry heathen magic and, in the worst-case scenario, give a lot of free publicity to a series about a special boy with absent but mystically important parents, a boy fated to grow up to save the world from a great evil (assuming I’ve picked up the HP storyline correctly in the absence of having actually read most of them). If I were a fundie freakjob and my choice were between drawing attention to a story about gay angels and a war against Heaven to liberate the multiverse or to a story that could be twisted into a weird allegory for Jesus, I know which one I’d pick.
I adore HDM with a Passion…i think its time for a re-read…
Unfortunately, Hollywood is going to destroy it. Here’s the deal: they’re making it into a major motion picture…
…and leaving out the religious element of it.
Altogether now: WTF?!
Another fun fact about the movie: it’s being directed by the co-director of American Pie 2.
Wheeeeeeeee.
That’s one I’m skipping.
So how do they leave the religious stuff out? Do they do about fifteen minutes of the book and then run two hours of screen-saver?
WTF? How did I miss this? And why are they doing this to Philip Pullman? Damn.
And I love how religion is something we’re too scared to touch these days. But I won’t get started on that.
Hey, feel free to get started on that. Sometimes the ol’ spleen needs venting.
Well, I’m not as riled up today, so I’ll probably end up venting my spleen later. But my main complaints these days seem to be:
1. wondering what ever happened to the separation of church and state, usually followed by a weary sigh. And really, I’ve stopped wondering aloud because Greg just laughs at me when I do.
and/or 2. wondering when these yokels are going to realize that a fundamentalist is a fundamentalist is a fundamentalist – regardless of whether they’re a Muslim fundy or a Christian fundy. So, really, it seems to me that when we let all Bush’s corny Christian crap slide, and huddle around him, that we’re really just doing exactly what “them terrorists” would like us to do, except slightly different (in that we’re still capitalist Christian Americans, but really).
I’ll probably end up thinking harder about this shit, and how exactly to explain myself, and then post it on my blog. But that’s the short of it, pretty much. It’s not that I want only atheist presidents, I just want them to STFU about their religion nine times out of ten, and to remember that one of the premises this country was supposedly founded on was freedom from religious persecution. (And I realize that some of the pilgrims fleeing religious persecution were crazy strict, religion-wise, but I think “freedom from religious persecution” should apply to everyone, and can even be interpreted as “freedom from religion, period, if that’s what your particular inclination.”) And I’m down with a president (or whoever) showing their faith in times of trouble or whatever, but I’m not down with the whole “‘Merka’s Christian” crap. Tone it down a bit, is what I’m saying. Or actually, tone it down a lot.
And, really, I just wish everyone would read HDM and really get it, really understand what the problem with Authority is, and then apply that understanding to real life.
But I’d also like for everyone to take their heads out of their asses and stop being such jerks to each other, and learn to be tolerant, and I’m a big fat fucking hippy. Is pretty much it. Racism, sexism, age-ism, able-ism, classism, heterosexism and homophobia, fundamentalism, etc – that shit’s all for assholes, so let’s quit being assholes, people.
I know better than to hold my breath, though. Sigh.