Author: katenepveu

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Tolkien, J.R.R.: (01) The Fellowship of the Ring (re-watch of movie)

After the King has recently been re-released as a trade paperback, which is unsurprising because it’s an anthology of stories “in honor of J.R.R. Tolkien,” and everything Tolkien is being re-released because of the movie. I did manage to see Fellowship for the second time over vacation; I got even more out of this viewing, but not all of it good. I continued to appreciate the quality of the acting, the evident care that had gone into everything, and the references to the books (“A shortcut to what?” “Mushrooms!”); the second viewing allowed me to notice more of the details that underlie these virtues of the film (and see the scene that I’d missed when I ran to the bathroom the first time).

But while I still enjoyed it greatly, a few things bothered me more. One of them, Gandalf & Saruman’s confrontation, seemed basically a one-shot deal, and so may not affect the next installments. But, upon reflection, my dissatisfaction with Galadriel’s portrayal (which bothered me right away) extends to all of Lothlorien’s treatment. I think something subtle but important is lost by the movie’s change in tone—though I’m not sure how much this will affect whatever parts of the story that make it into the second and third movies. At any rate, I still loved the movie, am deeply impressed and relieved at the quality of the adaptation, and can’t wait to see the next one (and the one after that); but now that I’ve got a little objectivity back, it’s not quite as fabulous as I’d thought, is all.

(Oh, and I nearly forgot: did I really say that the Harry Potter movie turned Dumbledore into a Gandalf clone by sucking all the whimsy out of the role? Shame on me. Gandalf, as Ian McKellen’s brilliant performance reminded me, has more whimsy—and sense, and power, and strength—in his big toe than Dumbledore has in his whole body.)

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Greenberg, Martin (ed.): After the King

After finishing The Last Hero, I picked up After the King, edited by Martin Greenberg; it has a Pratchett short story, “Troll Bridge,” that also features Cohen the Barbarian, though it’s not clear to me if it’s supposed to be canonical Discworld. It’s a great story and works with some themes similar to The Last Hero‘s.

Since After the King has some other very fine stories, and since anthologies are good for short-attention-span environments like hospital and airport waiting rooms (to pick two examples completely not at random), I ended up reading most of the rest of it over vacation. (There are a few stories that I have no interest in reading, and accordingly have never read; I don’t really know why.) Far and away my favorite is Emma Bull’s “Silver or Gold,” a beautiful and wise fairy tale that’s possibly the best thing Bull’s published to date (high praise; she’s one of my favorite writers). My second favorite is Patricia McKillip’s “The Fellowship of the Dragon,” which makes me wonder if I’m not best off reading her in short story form; the only novel of hers I’ve liked so far is The Forgotten Beasts of Eld (which I loved), but I thought “The Lion and the Lark” was great (published in The Armless Maiden and The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, Ninth Edition). Other stories I particuarly enjoyed were Peter Beagle’s “The Naga,” Jane Yolen’s “Winter’s King,” and Mike Resnick’s “Revolt of the Sugar Plum Fairies.”

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Pratchett, Terry: (27) The Last Hero

What an odd damn holiday. It was the sort of thing the phrase “mixed bag” was invented to describe, or to put it another way, it was rather like the little girl: when it was good, it was very good, but when it was bad, it was awful. Which, for these purposes, boils down to: I didn’t have much time to read. (I also didn’t have net access, so this is going to be a long entry [ed.: split up for import into MT].)

I did read one of my Christmas presents, Terry Pratchett’s The Last Hero, beautifully and richly illustrated by Paul Kidby (not to be confused with Josh Kirby, the recently-deceased artist who did many of the UK Discworld covers). This is a much better story than the other recent Discworld book, The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents, though I don’t think it’s because this one actually is about the end of the world (again). This time, the end is nigh because Cohen the Barbarian and the Silver Horde (a handful of very old, and therefore very skilled, heroes, last seen conquering the Agatean Empire), have decided that it’s time to return fire to the gods—with interest.

A mix of familiar characters from Ankh-Morpork are drafted to stop him, leading to such conversations as this one:

‘What is that on your badge, Captain Carrot?’

‘Mission motto, sir,’ said Carrot cheerfully. ‘Morituri Nolumus Mori. Rincewind suggested it.’

‘I imagine he did,’ said Lord Vetinari, observing the wizard coldly. ‘And would you care to give us a colloquial translation, Mr Rincewind?’

‘Err . . . ‘ Rincewind hestitated, but there really was no escape. ‘Er . . . roughly speaking, it means, “We who are about to die don’t want to,” sir.’

There are moving bits among the silliness, and a nice clean plot, too. The book is fairly short—160 lavishly-illustrated, coffee-table-sized pages—but just the right length for the story. What’s more, the detailed illustrations add another layer, one that could not adquately be conveyed by text alone; just the picture of Death with the kitten (link to postcard page [*]) is priceless, but the painting of the swamp dragons and the excerpts from Leonard’s notebooks are great, too (“Clothing of the Empty Void: Mk 1.0 Rincewind. Converted pearl Diving Helmet with Simple Pressure Gauge (if eyeholes turn red, head has exploded).”). This is great stuff, though probably not for those new to Discworld. (Try Small Gods for that.)

[*] If you go to “Originals,” you can see a few more pictures from the book. I didn’t link straight to that page because it, like much of the rest of the site, has annoying and unnecessary Java applets. (And I won’t link to the site’s front page because the navigation options from that end are truly terrible.)

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Westlake, Donald E.: (10) Bad News

One of the best ways to unwind is with one of Donald E. Westlake’s Dortmunder books. I finished a nice leisurely re-read of Bad News a few days ago, but haven’t had time to update this since.

I don’t have much to add to what Chad said about it, so I’ll just leave you with part of one of my favorite scenes from the book. It’s Thanksgiving dinner, and the gang is trying to figure out what scam they’ve stumbled into.

Dortmunder said to J.C., “I don’t think we got enough information yet.” To Kelp, he said, “There’s another partner, right?”

“That’s what he says,” Kelp said, and to Anne Marie, he said, “This stuff is really great, hon, we oughta eat like this every night.”

“We do, Andy,” Anne Marie said.

J.C. said, “So maybe the other partner is what’ll tell you.”

Dortmunder said to Anne Marie, “Great gravy, really great gravy, goes with the turkey like they were meant for each other.” Then he said to J.C., “We’ll find out tomorrow morning at eleven o’clock.”

“Speaking of which,” Tiny said, “that’s a very tight schedule, Kelp.”

“I didn’t want to give them a chance to booby-trap us.”

“Tight for us.”

Dortmunder said, “No, I think Andy’s right. We’re not trying to blow them up, just talk to them. Doesn’t take that much preparation.”

“Maybe,” Tiny said, and patted Anne Marie, to his right, on the arm—she flinched—and said, “This is a great meal, Anne Marie. Every bit of it. I’m gonna be around for seconds.”

“Good,” Anne Marie said, smiling at him and favoring her other arm.

Kelp said, “It would be nice if we had a car with a remote control. And a bomb, you know? Send it out there, see what happens. If nothing happens, then we go out there with the other car.”

J.C. said, “You’re going to have to give me the recipe for these creamed onions, Anne Marie. Isn’t she, Tiny?”

“Yes,” Tiny said, and turned to Kelp to say, “Hand grenade and duct tape.”

Kelp looked at him. “You’d be willing to do that?”

“I done it before,” Tiny said. “It always makes people switch over to Plan B, every time.”

“Okay, good,” Kelp said. “You got the grenade?”

“I know where to get it.”

Dortmunder said, “I think I should find us some guns, too.”

“Okay,” Kelp said. “And in the morning, I’ll go steal us a car.”

“You know,” Anne Marie said, “Thanksgiving dinner conversation in Lancaster, Kansas, wasn’t at all like this.” And she smiled happily around at her guests.

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Tolkien, J.R.R.: (01) The Fellowship of the Ring (movie)

In some ways, this is an anti-book log entry, because I deliberately did not re-read The Fellowship of the Ring before going to see the movie. I wanted to be able to see the movie on its own terms, at least as much as I could given its nature as an adaptation. I think this was the right decision; I knew in a general way what the sequence of events was, but since the book’s precise chronology wasn’t fresh in my mind, the narrative tension seemed to be enhanced. And while I couldn’t, and can’t, help but to compare the two, I didn’t realize that a lot of things were done differently until after the movie was over; much less distracting.

I loved the movie; I was bouncing up and down with joy for hours afterwards, and wanted to see the next two immediately—never mind this post-production stuff, just give me the raw footage. (I intend to see it again, and very soon; I think that I’ll be able to enjoy it on its own terms even more now that the questions of what’s been changed, how are the actors, etc., have been answered. Besides, I’m told I missed a few details—and it’s just so much fun.) I think, too, that it’s as good an adaptation of the book (ah, now we get into the book, justifying this entry into the book log) as one could have hoped for.

First, the actors are all excellent. Elijah Wood, Ian McKellen, and Viggo Mortensen are particularly wonderful realizations of the characters, but really, just about everybody fits beautifully. (The main exception, for me, was Liv Tyler as Arwen, but that may be because she was only on screen briefly, too briefly for me to sink into the character. Given my fears about Arwen Warrior Princess, I was pleased to not actually hate her, though, so overall I’m neutral on that.) Second, the look of the film is just astounding; the landscapes and buildings and scenery are all just as I’d imagined, or better (as I’m not so good on imagining landscapes). Third, much of the dialogue is lifted whole from the book and rendered wonderfully.

More generally, and perhaps more importantly, the good parts of the the movie enhance my vision of the book, both the parts I loved and even some of the things in the book that I liked less—presenting them in a way that turns them into assets (and perhaps even making them more akin to what Tolkien intended, but that class and time and nationality and gender got between his intention and my reading). The movie streamlines the oddly-paced opening; presents Sam in a much less annoying fashion, and integrates the hobbits’ comic relief extremely smoothly and deftly; deepens some of the characterizations with a few small additions and the great work of the actors; and modifies the breaking of the Fellowship just enough to give a different, and to me slightly more plausible, reading of some of the characters’ motivations. (I regret that the Council of Elrond had to be changed, as it’s one of my favorite parts of the book, but I can understand that it wouldn’t translate well onto the screen.)

Of the bits of the movie that I didn’t like—which are very few—they won’t ruin the book for me, as they were overly-literal renderings of a couple of scenes that I will simply continue to use my own imagination for when I next re-read. Another may be cast in a slightly different light by subsequent installments, so I shall defer judgment. The movie is, manifestly, not the book; but it is a wonderful complement to the book, and as good I as ever hoped.

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Peters, Ellis: (00) A Rare Benedictine

Ellis Peters’ A Rare Benedictine was published after the eighteenth Brother Cadfael novel, meaning I really should not have read it for a long time if I was sticking to strict publication order. However, it’s a collection set at various times before the first novel, so I figured it was okay to read it now. Plus, it’s short, which is a Good Thing during paper hell week. It includes the story of how Brother Cadfael joined the monastery, “A Light on the Road to Woodstock,” and two others, all fairly low-key and enjoyable.

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Bishop, Anne: Pillars of the World, The

On the train yesterday, I couldn’t do most of the work I brought with me because it required precise and steady handwriting, which one cannot have on a train, really. So I read Anne Bishop’s The Pillars of the World instead. This is a shrug book: I finished it and shrugged. Bishop’s first books, the Black Jewels trilogy, were pure guilty pleasures; deeply unsubtle and rather icky in places, but enjoyable all the way through. Pillars has the same flaws, but lacks the distinctive characters that overcame these problems in the Black Jewels books. (It also starts a series, which is not indicated anywhere on the book that I can see; it’s possible that it won’t be a tightly-linked series, however.)

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Peters, Ellis: (02) One Corpse Too Many

Finished the second Brother Cadfael novel, One Corpse Too Many, yesterday over lunch. This shifts focus from the monastery’s politics and concerns to the siege of Shrewsbury in the 12th-century civil war between Stephen and Maud. Most of the book focuses on the plight of characters associated with the murder victim; the murder itself is not terribly mysterious, but that’s okay because I really like the characters. Maybe I’m reacting more to these books than I usually would because I’m particularly stressed out, but so far they give me an overall impression of sheer benevolence, which is as good as a hot bath for relaxing me.

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Peters, Ellis: (01) A Morbid Taste for Bones

I solved the what-to-read problem by deciding that I didn’t feel like reading anything sf, not anything at all, and starting a mystery novel that I’d bought a while ago. A Morbid Taste for Bones, Ellis Peters’ first “Brother Cadfael” novel, was purchased because I vaguely thought I’d heard good things about the series, it was two dollars, and it was the first of the series, my preferred starting point.

I’m very pleased; I’ve discovered what bids fair to be another comfort series with lots of books (twenty-odd, I think) to look forward to. I quite like Cadfael (even if I’m not sure how to say his name), and those around him are painted clearly but compassionately in a way I find very soothing. The 12th-century setting feels familiar, from lots of medievaloid fantasies, yet has enough interesting details about life in a monastery, Welsh culture, and so forth to stay interesting. The mystery works out pretty well, too, not excessively convoluted or cutesy, though I’m slightly dubious about an underlying detail of the solution. Overall, I’m quite looking forward to spending more time with Brother Cadfael—and having just brought a stack of books home from the library, I shall probably be doing so soon.

Brother Cadfael himself found nothing strange in his wide-ranging career, and had forgotten nothing and regretted nothing. He saw no contradiction in the delight he had taken in battle and adventure, and the keen pleasure he now found in quietude. Spiced, to be truthful, with more than a little mischief when he could get it, as he liked his victuals well-flavoured, but quietude all the same, a ship becalmed and enjoying it. . . .

When you have done everything else, perfecting a convent herb-garden is a fine and satisfying thing to do.

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