hooo.

[kaigou]

Kifed this link from Tiercel, who had it posted awhile back but I'd never followed it...damn, I should've. You want Narnia? You want Disney doing Narnia? Here's your response, babe.

Cripes, they're doing a live-action version of Charlotte's Web...with Julia Roberts as Charlotte? Yegawdz.

Comments

[ravensilver.livejournal.com]

I never read the Narnia books, don't really know why... ::ponders:: Maybe I'll pick them up after I've moved (need the new book-shelves first, you know). But I *did* read "Charlotte's Web". It was actually one of the first books that I read in English and I have very, very fond memories of it. It never occurred to me to see this as movie material. And I don't think it's gonna be on my list of movies to see... I mean, Julia Roberts!!! O.O

Interesting article you linked to up there. I think I agree with the author in the most part. It's sad to see really wonderful books being turned into really awful movies. I confess that it took me several viewings of Jackson's LoTR until I could warm up to the films. Because the movies in my head were very, very different from what he made of it. But after seeing them a few times, I've found some resonance between the books and the movies and can now actually enjoy watching them...

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

As an author, I think movies-on-books is one of those things I hope is done to me after I die, thanks. Because while it does get people to read the original book, sometimes it can just butcher a good story and make people shy away from the book (or dump it in confusion when its plot line deviates). I recall a friend mentioning this about, hrm, what was the movie? Something gadawful, classed as a 'chick flick' (I hate that label), and just butchered the story, while the original book was a delightful story where there weren't massive plotholes and character wackiness. Fortunately, as hte book's author commented to my friend, the movie title and book title were different; she was hoping this would mean her book sales wouldn't plummet by bad association.

LotR is a harder one. Tolkein wasn't the greatest storyteller in the modern sense -- pacing, dialogue, plotline -- so many things were written for an audience with different expectations. But he still had an astute sense of the balance in the oral tradition; for one person to do A, then another does B, as an echo/repetition. So the point where Faramir tries to steal the ring? No, no, no; that was supposed to be a folklore-like repetition of Faramir against both his brother and Galadriel, demonstrating that every race can be drawn (or not drawn). Jackson changing that made me want to spit nails.

That meant to watch the movies, I have to take a moment at times to repeat: this is Jackson's LotR, not Tolkein's. Five or six times, and I can handle it. But there are some points I just can't (like Faramir's twistedness) and I do my best to just block out the trauma. Alcohol seems to work, at least temporarily...

[ravensilver.livejournal.com]

That meant to watch the movies, I have to take a moment at times to repeat: this is Jackson's LotR, not Tolkein's. Five or six times, and I can handle it. But there are some points I just can't (like Faramir's twistedness) and I do my best to just block out the trauma. Alcohol seems to work, at least temporarily...

::hands you glass of red wine::

I had lots of problems with Jackson's interpretation of LotR, his choice of actors being one of them, his changing of parts of the story another. It just clashes horribly with my own visions of the books - which I re-read on an average of once a year, at least. Like, one of the things I couldn't get past was Aragorn - lanky hair, perpetually dirty fingernails, scraggly beard? This wasn't *my* Aragorn. Where was he of the noble brow, of the "looks foul but feels fair", of the descendant of Kings? Certainly not what I saw on screen.

I often read a book and think: this would be great as a movie! Then I go back and reconsider... no. I really don't want to see another person's vision of this great book - not only another vision, but one totally inconsistant with what the book is trying to convey.

I'm hoping that your books will *never* be turned into a movie - the movie in my head is good enough for me... ^^

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

I think the one actor that really, truly nailed it for me (and made the rest worthwhile) was Sam Gamgee. After that, it was Gandalf, who had both the rather scary element but at the same time, an immensely approachable air of conspiratorial absentmindedness, a flavor of characterization that stayed with me through the years (as I read LotR in fourth grade, and didn't reread until after the movies came out). Tolkein wasn't the best at characterization, so what he does have is very subtle, and it meant that characterizations had to be subtle, too, for it to strike true (for me). After those two, it'd be Pippin and Merry, though they had less to work with and were stuck in teh sidekick/comic relief.

As for my books, I dunno. I suppose if ever there were a possibility, I'd ask to write something entirely new, just for the screen, as a scriptwriter. Because at least then it'd be a) a story not seen before, so audiences aren't going, we know what happens next! and b) if it's screwed up, it doesn't impact the stories that already stand. That's my current idea of a compromise...err, assuming anyone ever did try to option a novel. Heh.

[sharona1x2.livejournal.com]

Like, one of the things I couldn't get past was Aragorn - lanky hair, perpetually dirty fingernails, scraggly beard? This wasn't *my* Aragorn.

Thank you for saying that. I never made it past the first movie. I didn't care for some of the casting, either, particularly Aragorn.

[ravensilver.livejournal.com]

He didn't even have clean fingernails when they were in Rivendell.

::shudders::

I mean, I know that living off the land is rough... but somehow he never got beyond... seedy.

I agree with Sol that the casting for Sam Gamgee was good and I did enjoy Gandalf. But it pretty much stopped there.

I can enjoy the movies if I put myself into the right mind-frame before-hand: this is not LotR, this is a nice fantasy series...

[atpolittlebit.livejournal.com]

I have to admit that for the most part I liked the LoTR movie trilogy. Not nearly as well as I liked the actual trilogy, but differently. Even though they took out one of my absolute favorite sections, the Scouring of the Shire and all that it meant to the overall story, but I could understand that in visual story-telling to have that much story coming after the Big Climactic scenes, as opposed to the light wrapping up that was done, makes sense. Besides which, I knew how it really went. Heh.

But there was one scene that would only have taken a minute on-screen that I would happily have traded for many other 60-second bits, and that would be one of Denethor with a palantir.
Otherwise he comes off as totally demented, rather than a tool of Sauron.

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

There are a lot of things in movies that change, that we don't have to decide on as writers: this two-second scene versus that one, that sort of thing. Then again, writers don't really control the pictures in the reader's head, and we can describe a character but if you got theh impression that so-and-so is blond, you're probably always going to think that, thank you, the writer can shut up now. It does happen. Just the way we perceive information and picture it.

In a movie, it's so much more controlled. Ah, well, so much less room for the imagination! I think the greatest damage (to me) of LotR (while it did have positives, like making people read the book) is the same damage Rowling said she was worried about with the HP movies: that, from now on, people won't see their Harry Potter or Frodo or whomever, but the actor on the screen. It's very, very hard to overcome that visual.

This is part of the reason I would never see the Cooper series as a movie. More than jsut about any other series, that one has such powerful imagery for me that I don't want someone else mucking about in my visual repetoire and turning Will into some snot-nosed American boy with a cowlick, or turning Jane into a strong-willed modern tomboy, when she really is a girl, and really does do girly things (while also being strong-willed, at the same time).

Actually, the only demented part that did better on second showing was Galadriel's temper tantrum. Seeing it again, it wasn't quite as jarring...then again, I saw it again after being exposed to the truly jarring moment of Faramir trying to take the ring. O.O