Some random stuff
Jan. 18th, 2008 03:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
newnumber6I think we'll start off with some Book Foo.
Finished: The Best of Interzone (short story collection)
Started: Otherland, by Tad Williams (tentative choice, subject to change)
Thoughts behind the cut, not terribly spoilery becuase it's a short story collection. A decent collection of stories, with the usual mix of a few really enjoyable ones and a few that left me completely cold and a bunch that I enjoyed mildly but am unlikely to remember very long. Actually, most of the stories had a touch of familiarity to me, and I half suspect I bought and read this collection before. But it's more likely I've read individual stories in other collections, and many of the rest just touched on common themes. Speaking of, time travel and alternate history, and AI seemed to be the dominant themes in the collection. I like both of those, but for a collection that wasn't themed in that direction it did seem a bit overbalanced in those two areas.
Favorite was probably "Warmth" by Geoff Ryman, about a man's attachment to the AI nanny that raised him. Best title (and explanation for it) went to "The Unkindness of Ravens" by Brian Stableford, although the story itself was only okay.
Random rant. You know, if someone hasn't picked up their cell phone after you calling them for more than half an hour straight? They might not be there. Particularly if they're at work. But somebody uninvolved might be in the vicinity of the cell phone and not appreciate the words "I wanna lie dowwwwwn in a beeed of roses!" repeated on an endless loop every 3 seconds while you try. The rule is if you can't reach them in a minute, you try again every 5 (you can constant call a landline if you like, in an emergency)
Oh, and my childhood suffered a severe blow, as I watched the animated movie Dragonlance: Dragons of Autumn Twilight and it was... so bad. (not really any spoilers except in general how they differed from the books)
Okay, it wasn't _too_ bad in a couple areas. For example, it actually did stick remarkably close to the story of the books. I haven't read them in more than a decade, but I didn't notice any major deviations. Sure, they left a bit out here and there, which is expected. The only major changes is that there are times in the books where characters split up temporarily, and here that never happened. The group was together the whole time except occasionally when a few people wanted one on one conversations. Instead of being off alone with Fizban, Tas just hung around him more than the others.
Combined with that, they didn't skimp on death, either, as you might expect in a cartoon. People die, sometimes quickly and senselessly, sometimes violently and to an extent graphically (although the amount of graphic death varies quite a bit too. There are times when people get stabbed repeatedly and there's no blood, and others where it pools and splashes during the fight).
The problem? In an attempt to cram as much as they did into the movie, all sense of pacing is shot, and we barely get into any of the characters except in a few lines that are almost laughable. They rush from one encounter to the next, sometimes only with a few words of discussion. I don't think you'd ever feel like you know any of the characters if you hadn't read the book. Raistlin feels like a walking plot-explainer.
The movie really needed to be much longer, or perhaps even split into two for each book, to capture at least some of the subtlety and love for the characters and get around this problem.
And the animation, oh, how do I describe it. The basic animation is nothing spectacular, a bit slow and jerky, but okay. But for dragons, and draconians, they switch to CGI. Now, I want you to imagine times when you've seen real people interact with 2D cartoons. And I want you to imagine times when you've seen real people interact with CGI. Now, take the worst aspects of both of those situations, and that's what you've got here. They should have stuck to one or the other (probably traditional animation). Maybe if anything, use CGI for 'magic' effects, but probably not even that.
Beyond the rather mediocre level of the animation, the character designs for some of the characters kinda sucked too. Maybe it was too optimistic, but I was really hoping that they'd look something like the old Elmore covers of the novels. Most of them weren't _too_ bad, but Sturm just looked wrong, and Caramon was awful. He looked like he'd gone 5 rounds with a frying pan to the face.
Voice acting, gah. Almost everybody was wrong for their roles, save perhaps Flint, and maybe Riverwind. LEX LUTHOR/THE FLASH IS NOT TANIS HALF-ELVEN. Kiefer Sutherland whispering does not make Raistlin. Hell, make Kiefer Tanis, give him the chance to actually emote, and let somebody else whisper as Raistlin. Tas was an annoying smartass instead of childlike. In some cases I don't think it's the actor's fault, it's the fault of the direction which undoubtable required everybody to deliver their lines as quickly as possible so they could move on to the next scene, but there was way more than their share of miscasting. And you know, it might have been better if they didn't try
to cast celebrities at all, and just cast good voice actors.
I so wanted this to be good... all the bad signs were there in the production stages and with the previews, but I was hoping that somehow they would pull it off. I suppose, to some extent, it _was_ better than I expected, but only because I expected that in addition to making a miscast movie with substandard production values, they would _also_ mutilate the story beyond any recognition, and they didn't do that.
Finished: The Best of Interzone (short story collection)
Started: Otherland, by Tad Williams (tentative choice, subject to change)
Thoughts behind the cut, not terribly spoilery becuase it's a short story collection. A decent collection of stories, with the usual mix of a few really enjoyable ones and a few that left me completely cold and a bunch that I enjoyed mildly but am unlikely to remember very long. Actually, most of the stories had a touch of familiarity to me, and I half suspect I bought and read this collection before. But it's more likely I've read individual stories in other collections, and many of the rest just touched on common themes. Speaking of, time travel and alternate history, and AI seemed to be the dominant themes in the collection. I like both of those, but for a collection that wasn't themed in that direction it did seem a bit overbalanced in those two areas.
Favorite was probably "Warmth" by Geoff Ryman, about a man's attachment to the AI nanny that raised him. Best title (and explanation for it) went to "The Unkindness of Ravens" by Brian Stableford, although the story itself was only okay.
Random rant. You know, if someone hasn't picked up their cell phone after you calling them for more than half an hour straight? They might not be there. Particularly if they're at work. But somebody uninvolved might be in the vicinity of the cell phone and not appreciate the words "I wanna lie dowwwwwn in a beeed of roses!" repeated on an endless loop every 3 seconds while you try. The rule is if you can't reach them in a minute, you try again every 5 (you can constant call a landline if you like, in an emergency)
Oh, and my childhood suffered a severe blow, as I watched the animated movie Dragonlance: Dragons of Autumn Twilight and it was... so bad. (not really any spoilers except in general how they differed from the books)
Okay, it wasn't _too_ bad in a couple areas. For example, it actually did stick remarkably close to the story of the books. I haven't read them in more than a decade, but I didn't notice any major deviations. Sure, they left a bit out here and there, which is expected. The only major changes is that there are times in the books where characters split up temporarily, and here that never happened. The group was together the whole time except occasionally when a few people wanted one on one conversations. Instead of being off alone with Fizban, Tas just hung around him more than the others.
Combined with that, they didn't skimp on death, either, as you might expect in a cartoon. People die, sometimes quickly and senselessly, sometimes violently and to an extent graphically (although the amount of graphic death varies quite a bit too. There are times when people get stabbed repeatedly and there's no blood, and others where it pools and splashes during the fight).
The problem? In an attempt to cram as much as they did into the movie, all sense of pacing is shot, and we barely get into any of the characters except in a few lines that are almost laughable. They rush from one encounter to the next, sometimes only with a few words of discussion. I don't think you'd ever feel like you know any of the characters if you hadn't read the book. Raistlin feels like a walking plot-explainer.
The movie really needed to be much longer, or perhaps even split into two for each book, to capture at least some of the subtlety and love for the characters and get around this problem.
And the animation, oh, how do I describe it. The basic animation is nothing spectacular, a bit slow and jerky, but okay. But for dragons, and draconians, they switch to CGI. Now, I want you to imagine times when you've seen real people interact with 2D cartoons. And I want you to imagine times when you've seen real people interact with CGI. Now, take the worst aspects of both of those situations, and that's what you've got here. They should have stuck to one or the other (probably traditional animation). Maybe if anything, use CGI for 'magic' effects, but probably not even that.
Beyond the rather mediocre level of the animation, the character designs for some of the characters kinda sucked too. Maybe it was too optimistic, but I was really hoping that they'd look something like the old Elmore covers of the novels. Most of them weren't _too_ bad, but Sturm just looked wrong, and Caramon was awful. He looked like he'd gone 5 rounds with a frying pan to the face.
Voice acting, gah. Almost everybody was wrong for their roles, save perhaps Flint, and maybe Riverwind. LEX LUTHOR/THE FLASH IS NOT TANIS HALF-ELVEN. Kiefer Sutherland whispering does not make Raistlin. Hell, make Kiefer Tanis, give him the chance to actually emote, and let somebody else whisper as Raistlin. Tas was an annoying smartass instead of childlike. In some cases I don't think it's the actor's fault, it's the fault of the direction which undoubtable required everybody to deliver their lines as quickly as possible so they could move on to the next scene, but there was way more than their share of miscasting. And you know, it might have been better if they didn't try
to cast celebrities at all, and just cast good voice actors.
I so wanted this to be good... all the bad signs were there in the production stages and with the previews, but I was hoping that somehow they would pull it off. I suppose, to some extent, it _was_ better than I expected, but only because I expected that in addition to making a miscast movie with substandard production values, they would _also_ mutilate the story beyond any recognition, and they didn't do that.
