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

[underpope.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I heard about Charlotte's Web. Oy.

There was, in fact, a film version of The Phantom Tollbooth. It was directed by Chuck Jones. It stank.

[klingonpoo.livejournal.com]

I'm also afraid they ruined it but I'm trying to remain optimistic. They spent a whopping $160,000,000 to make it....unbelievable!

Julia Roberts as Charlotte? I hadn't heard. That is just wrong.

I love the movie version of The Black Stallion. Of course, that wasn't Disney though the sequel wasn't in the same class as the original.

[ex-saraswath377.livejournal.com]

I think I'm going to stick with my old BBC versions with the beavers as humans in suits.

[sharona1x2.livejournal.com]

I've never read Narnia. Somehow, my childhood was spent reading tons of other books, but not that series. Who knows, maybe it won't be so bad. I never would have thought Tom Cruise could be a convincing Lestat, and he was.

[petenshi.livejournal.com]

I'm rather scared they ruined it as well. The books themselves were so controversial when they were written (did he or did he not intend it to be a Christian allegory...)that the movie could go either way.

I'm anxious to see it though.

[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...

[kythiaranos.livejournal.com]

I've seen the trailer on TV a couple times, and it looks like, visually at least, it will be gorgeous.

But, Disney? "The Black Cauldron." Eww. 'Nuff said.

[theotherdigit.livejournal.com]

Regardless of whether it's Disney or not, I don't think I've seen a single book-based movie that was better than the book it was based on. So other than the shiny visuals? Chances are I'd be disappointed either way >_>.

[koyote19.livejournal.com]

I'm still planning to see it, in hopes that it's good. I had memorized the books long before I learned to read, so I would feel I was betraying my childhood if I didn't.

And I finally broke down and watched Constantine, despite the butchery of the Hellblazer comics... and while Keanu Reeves was not in any way (other than chainsmoking) even close to managing John Constantine's character, the rest of the movie didn't completely suck. It made me curious to see Tilda Swinton as the White Witch.

[atpolittlebit.livejournal.com]

While I have an abiding love of animation, and Disney animation is a large part of that, I now find I have to qualify that by limiting it to the shorts and films that are consistent with the vision of Walt Disney which pretty much eliminates just about all of the sequels to the classic features. The closing of the traditional animation division and the decisions right now to produce what is essentially nothing new or creative (i.e. sequel, sequel, sequel) is so completely opposite the philosophy of Walt, and simply reflects a company that has become driven solely by the bottom line on the annual report and not by creative vision.

Heh...sorry. Don't mean to get on a rant. As far as the "Narnia" movie goes, I'll wait and see how it turns out. Regarding the current crop of future animation offerings? I side with Walt and his legendary reply to the demand for "More pigs!"

"You can't top pigs with pigs."

[christeos-pir.livejournal.com]

Hilarious article, or I should say editorial. But now the good news: no matter how good or bad the movie is, MORE PEOPLE WILL READ THE BOOKS.

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

I keep thinking, what was wrong with the original (animated) version of Charlotte's Web? I rather liked that version, and the voices were excellent. Wilbur's voice, and Charlotte's voice, were just right. Then again, the fact that we can make Babe means that now all "stories with talking animals" can be done, and don't have to be animated -- as if animation, straight old-fashioned cel animation -- is somehow not-as-good.

Heh, maybe someone will do a good version of Animal Farm...

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

Eyecandy, it's all eyecandy when it's that much -- oh, and the salaries of the Big Names in the roles. Sheesh.

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the Witch's unrepetent screeching might be hard on the ears but it's a great part of the story when you're a kid. She's so obviously over the top, compared to Aslan being quiet and gentle -- it makes for a great contrast between his immense power being held in check, while hers just goes bonkers all over the place but collapses on itself in the end. Yes, that's rather simple, but it's a simple story at heart, and Lewis used some simpler, older patterns for it.

A restrained witch seems kinda... non-Lewis-ey.

[underpope.livejournal.com]

Heh, maybe someone will do a good version of Animal Farm...

*snort*

Yeah, right. I guarantee that if someone did, in Bush's America, they'd completely reverse the entire point that Orwell was making with that novel. "Some animals are more equal than others" would be presented as the defining principle of American democracy. You know it's true. ;-)

WRT Charlotte's Web... Well, it's just another example of how Hollywood has given up on any semblance of originality and innovation in favor of tepid remakes of past movies, in spite of overwhelming evidence that these are not what the movie goers want.

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

I only read the first book (LWaW). I just never really got into the rest, though my sister read the entire series. CP still bugs me every now and then that I won't read the rest, but then, I didn't read Alice in Wonderland or Wizard of Oz, either. Ah, yes, I had a strange childhood.

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

I actually liked LWaW better than some of the other childhood works, like L'Engle, who could do a fabulously scientific (or pseudo-scientific, or science fantasy, I suppose) story...but she always had to shoehorn xtianity into every bleedin' story. The story would start, and soon I got used to looking for the frickin' moral by chapter two, and I was only in fourth grade!

Lewis, as much as he wanted the allegory in there, got away from it sometimes (or it got away from him), and the fantastical could show up and just consume the story. I enjoyed that a great deal more than someone who could so strictly hold to the xtian influence, like L'Engle. Her books just haven't stood the test of time for me, not like Lewis, or Cooper, or Kipling.

[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...

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

Oi. Mulan II. Adventures of Sinbad, both the first and the sequel. Hell, all of their sequels! Are there no new stories out there, anywhere? *wails*

Yeah, I suppose the eyecandy is a big part. Hopefully not the only part but... it just bothers me that this director has, well, no experience. I know you have to start somewhere, but come on. It's not like Jackson was a nobody when he did LotR -- he might not have had a list of fantasy/scifi stories under his belt, but he had at least directed real people before...

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

No, you're being realistic. The visual medium is completely different from the (mental?) book medium. The dialogue is different, the pacing, the way things are described -- in a book, I could take a paragraph to describe A's reluctance, B's fists clenching and shoulders hunching, A's sideways glances, then B relaxing and letting the issue go. In a movie, that lasts about two seconds...if that much.

Although there's a director...whose name escapes me...who did pay attention to pauses, like a book would. I can recognize his work, but I saw it first in Last of the Mohicans, which -- of all possible movies I could name -- is hardly one I'd peg ahead of time as having long, quiet, still camera shots. There are a number of them, where the camera simply rests on someone, for a good ten, fifteen seconds, and doesn't jump about, but lets the actor's face go through mobile changes, sometimes quite slowly.

Granted, that was a truly off-adaptation of a book, but then I read the original and YES I'm much happier with that version than the original's dressed-up version of outright racism. "You ain't bad for an Indian..." Gee, thanks, asshole. (Eh, well, product of his times.)

My point is that it's a rare scriptwriter who can really adapt a book to the movie medium and come up with something true to the spirit. But then, it's easier to see the two as completely different. At least that way if the movie sucks, it's independent -- in my head -- of the book.

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

I'm thinking I'll wait until I can rent it. I hate getting up and walking out of a movie theater, with the prices these days. But for all it'd be pretty on the big screen, I just don't know if I can stomach it if they lose that effervescence that so pervaded Lewis' story. *sigh*

[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]

No, I agree with your rant. Disney's nowhere near the powerhouse it was, once upon a time, and mostly because it seems to have run out of fairy tales and gone for sequels as a way to keep an audience...or something. I mean, really. A sequel to Sleeping Beauty? Shrek did it ten times better. A sequel to Mulan? Don't waste my time. What makes it worse is the production is always much, much lower on the sequels, too, which even if they were good stories, leaves a person feeling like they're watching something just churned out with no care for or attention to detail.

And from the animators I've met through my sister, working for Disney is pretty bad. It really is a horrible company, the way it treats its employees now -- even the skilled workers with animation degrees. (That is, the few ones left, after they ditched their animation studios.)

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

And what's more, hopefully more people will tell their kids to read The Good Xtian Story, only to have the kids' minds' warped into delightful shapes by the exposure to its creeping, insidious, beautifully-yet-not-so-hidden paganism. Welcome to C of E anglicanism, I suppose. All that Celtic past has to get in somewhere...

[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.

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

How does it go again? Good is Bad, Right is Wrong... I mean, spin is spin, but these days I really do feel like I'm trapped in 1984.

*grabs the macintosh and the sledgehammer*

[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.

[underpope.livejournal.com]

War is Peace
Freedom is Slavery
Ignorance is Strength

A few years ago, a right-wing group started putting up fliers on the UC Davis campus with those slogans and supporting the Iraq War. I contacted the leader of the group to congratulate them on their brilliant satire, only to discover (to my horrified dismay) that (a) they were dead serious; and (b) they had no idea who this "George Orwell" person was.

[atpolittlebit.livejournal.com]

It's not even that they've run out of ideas, it's that the "story" is now being given to what's left of the creative team by people from the corporate side of the company. That legendary storyboarding process developed by Disney way back when—the one that regular live action directors are now using—is no longer part of the creative process at WDC because the 'suits' couldn't understand them, so now they use a script process and then the creative team can work out the visuals.

There was an excellent set of nine essays online under the title "Rise and Fall of Disney Animation" that was on the savedisney site, but seems to be offline now that the site is closed. (It closed when Eisner left Disney and Roy Disney was invited back on board). It described Eisner's desire to close the animation division from the beginning of his tenure, contending that animation was 'dead' and that it remained because Roy Disney asked to be given charge of it. It was never Eisner, nor even Jeffrey Katzenberg who revitalized the division, but rather Howard Ashman who knew what he and Alan Mencken could do with The Little Mermaid. And he was right about that, even though the test market drove the decision to change it to a happy ending. He convinced Eisner to let him produce it (he also produced Beauty and the Beast) as well as write the lyrics. Once Howard was gone, then Katzenberg and (even more to the point) Frank Wells, the creative side of Disney was in serious trouble. That included both the animation division and the imagineers.

As it stands now, Eisner finally succeeded in eliminating traditional animation as a division, what is left of 2-D animation is done overseas, and mostly to the standards for TV animation, thus the "direct-to-video" quality rather than feature film quality. New characters? What are they? New theme park concepts? Incorporate beloved characters, often in repetitious rides. (Any difference between the Dumbo ride and the Alladin ride is asthetic only). The 'newest attractions' for Disney World are one from Disneyland Paris and one from California Adventure. The brand new soon-to-be-opened Hong Kong Disney brings nothing new other than the location. There is no creativity within the company because that is rapidly squashed for the "branding" of the company name and the favorite characters. Which given Walt Disney's refusal to repeat himself and to keep pushing the envelope of what could be done, I fear his spinning might melt his cryogenic freeze. ;-)

Why yes, I do dislike Michael Eisner. Why do you ask?


(Deleted and reposted in the right thread. I blame LJ).

[sharona1x2.livejournal.com]

The main children's books I read in my teenage years were Lloyd Alexander's Prydain books. Believe it or not, my favorite author when I was in high school was Charles Dickens. I read a lot of his work (without being forced to for English class). Later, in college, I finally got around to reading Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising series.

I think I was the only high school student who voluntarily read T E Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom. I was fascinated with him back then, even if I don't think I really understood a lot of the politics going on in his lifetime.

I was a weird kid who grew up into a geeky adult. ^_^

[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...

[petenshi.livejournal.com]

I've actually only read LWaW as well. I'm not sure how much he hammers on the allegory in the later (earlier?) books. But if they tried to turn Cooper's books into a movie I think I'd cry. I loved that series as a kid, it was just so out there and yet so real at the same time.

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

Yeah. That would definitely be a case of "okay, please let your response be a joke..."

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

Hey, when the rest of the kids were reading Catcher in the Rye, I practiced civil disobediance and refused. I never did get past the second paragraph. Glancing through, nothing caught my eye. Just seemed so...done. (Well, it is, now, given its age.) So, bored in class, I picked up a book that looked cool, called Invisible Man...and yes, I really did spend the first two chapters wondering when the main character would turn invisible, just like that movie from the forties (and the book was set in 30s and 40s, so it seemed reasonable to me this was the book the movie was based on)... by the time i realized the point was that the character was invisible, for all intents and purposes, I was hooked. One of the most powerful books I read in high school, really.

[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

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

I knew a lot of RISD grads in animation (via my sister) who were summarily out of a job, with one of the top animation degrees in the world...and I hear they're working overseas now. I'm sure there's a logic in there, somewhere. (Mostly that overseas animation companies still use traditional cel and therefore want good artists to do the cel and inbetweens.)

[sharm.livejournal.com]

I was an avid reader, and I didn't read most of those until I was in my mid to late teens. I had this thing against reading books at my "age level" when I was young though. So I guess we both had a strange childhood. ^_^

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

I was reading Shogun under my desk in fifth grade. Somehow, reading any of the children's classics seems a bit...anti-climactic, y'know? Although I did discover Kipling in high school, and tore through everything but, oddly, the Jungle Book. Someday I'll read that. Eventually.

*eyes piles of books-to-be-read lying around the house*

[sharm.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it was a bit anti-climatic, but I was desperate for reading material at that age. (More to the point, reading material that my mom wasn't going to catch me reading and decide I needed more parental input in that department. I read way too much at that age, and it actually got to the point where being banned from all but school books until my grades got better was a real possibility.)

[morgan-idril.livejournal.com]

Wow, i just love it when the literary explodes! I am looking forwards to seeing Narnia, but then I hadn't read anything about it up until this time.

So, yeah the the Christians...been reading the series since Jr High and yes that was a while ago. And you know even tho I was introduced to it in church I never ever saw it as Christian. Ever, folks. Not until a friend pointed it out to me while in college. Feh. So yes I can see that but for me Narnia is all ways magical and celtic yes, and nothing can beat Aslan singing Narnia into existence from the Magician's Nephew. Still gives me the chills and I cry at the beauty I see in my mind.

Which brings me to LotR, I got lucky and read it when it first came to the States. Had a great uncle and aunt who sent us all the new fantastic reading at the times. And since then I and my husband have read 5 or 6 sets of paperbacks into shreds. I was not pleased with Aragorn at first, but I did like Aragorn after awhile... but I too separate the movie verse from the true verse. But I will confess to liking the dirt under his nails.

And Samwise was wonderful...seems like the secondary characters like the hobbits were the ones that caught the book the best.

Which brings me to Cooper and Alexander, may the attempt at the Black Cauldron be for ever banished. I so hope and cross my fingers that none of the books catch the eye of some producer. I agree I so do not wish to to see Will americanised, or watch the destruction of ancient rites because the PTB can't wrap their minds around it so no one else could either. Feh...*not gonna rant, not gonna rant*

There are so many good people out there with ideas that just beg for exploration in film form. I just wish that the idiots would take a chance and jump in. To hell with what the Hollyweirds think. It just occurred to me that Hollywood suffers from the same problem as DC does. Neither can manage to look beyond the Belt.

Live action Charlotte's Webb...faints.

I always enjoy your LJ, you kick start my sleeping creative center.

[dogmatix-san.livejournal.com]

Actually, The Magician's Nephew is the first in the Narnia series - it's where a boy and a girl fall into a completely empty universe and witness its birth. Actually, it was a whole lot of worlds, where the nexus between them was a flat plain with pools of water, each pool being the enterance to a different world. They also saw a world die, I think..... I remember it had an old sun, or something.

The kids actually bring the lamppost and/or the Witch into Narnia in the first place, I think. Which is probably why they didn't choose to adapt the first one. Well, that and it probably has a slower pace/more settings than the second.

It was one of the series that really, really stuck with me - I haven't read it in years and years. Especially liked the bit in Voyage of the Dawn Treader where the one boy, err.... spoiler for future movies?

Never read the other two books you mentioned either. Alice in Wonderland always give me the heebie jeebies anyhow >_o;;; I went from Enid Blyton to (whoever wrote)Nancy Drew to Anne McCaffrey and Terry Prattchet and Tanya Huff and never looked back *g* Though now my bookworm tendencies have to share space with my anime addiction.

< / random comment >

[dogmatix-san.livejournal.com]

>_o I remember being really ticked off when Lewis started working the 'Son of Adam' and 'Daughter of Eve' angle for the kids in Narnia. Can't remember specifically how much that shows up though.

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

I can only recall find L'Engle on the shelves at the church reading library. I seem to recall it was right next to "I'm Okay You're Okay" which sounded interesting but turned out to be some boring self-help book. Oh, and "Slouching Toward Bethlehem" which was a great title but just a tad too old for my fourth grade sensibilities. (I read it more thoroughly as a junior in HS and got it.)

I'll join you in the whole Cooper reaction moment: *not gonna rant, not gonna rant* because it would be just too, too easy to 're-envision' Cooper as a way to 'update it' and 'make it relevant' and I can so see corporate dimwits arguing for exactly that... *sigh*