I’ve written my Watchmen review. You can find it here. Obviously it is full of spoilers, because it assumes you have both read the graphic novel and seen the movie. Consider yourselves warned.
Movies
A Day Out
I spent much of today in London, much of it, in fact, in transit. The easy way to get from Farah’s house to central London is on the Victoria Line, but today it was closed for engineering work, so I had to take buses instead. Have I ever told you how much I hate buses? Especially in London. The Tube can be packed solid as well at times, but it runs on nice flat, straight rails. The buses are forever rolling over bumps, turning sharp corners, accelerating and braking. They go all around the houses, and get stuck in traffic. It is a horrible experience.
Not quite as horrible, however, as being a French supporter in London today. I saw the game from the comfort of a pub in Covent Garden, and a I have to say that if we hadn’t had the commentary (and known the players) we would all have assumed that the guys in blue were the leaden-footed, unimaginative English while the guys in white were the talented, creative French. There was no there there in the French side today, and England took full advantage of their good fortune.
Meanwhile I did some shopping. I have come back with a pile of books. The book porn posts are all on my Twitter feed if you want to know what I bought. Sadly it seems that Amberville won’t be out over here until August.
Due partly to my own slowness and partly to the slowness of the buses I didn’t have time to do any clothes shopping. I was also disappointed that Neal’s Yard Dairy isn’t open on Sundays. But of course I’m here for another week. I’m thinking of going to see Watchmen at the IMAX on Wednesday. Anyone else interested?
Wheeler on Coraline Variants
Andrew Wheeler has a blog post up reviewing a number of graphic novels, including the Coraline adaptation. He has some interesting points to make about how different mediums work:
That’s the great gulf between a novel and a movie, of course: a movie can only show what’s happening on the outside, though it can hint and imply mental states, while a novel can dive right into a stream of consciousness and make the reader know exactly why a character did something. Graphic novels, at their best, hybridize the two forms — they can’t be quite as visually exciting as movies, since they don’t move, but they can come very close. And they can show the inner life of a character just as fully and in as much detail as a novel can.
This is good stuff, but it’s actually a bit more complex than that. During the post-gig party in Dublin Neil was talking about Coraline, and about his discussions with Neil Jordan over The Graveyard Book. He made the point that when he creates something scary in a novel he can often leave much of its nature up to the imagination of the reader. He just has to hint at something awful being there. In a movie, however, the monster has to appear, if only partially, at some point. That’s a problem that a skilled director has to worry about.
It is also a more general problem. I remember, for example, people saying how disappointed they were when the Cloverfield monster finally put in an appearance. I wonder how one could ever film that non-Euclidian geometry that drives men crazy, or how one might go about filming House of Leaves. Prose, comics and movies are all different mediums, and in translating between them you have to make changes.
I am sure this will be lost on many of the people who write about Watchmen over the next few weeks.
March Clarkesworld Online
Issue #30 of Clarkesworld Magazine has just gone online. I haven’t had a chance to read it yet, but I see that it includes fiction from Ekaterina Sedia and an interview with Tobias Buckell. It also includes the first non-fiction article I have bought. Had you asked me when I took the job what that first article would be about I don’t think I would have even considered movie remakes, but I remembered Dan Kimmel from Emerald City so when he pitched me an idea I knew he could deliver. Given the debacle over The Day the Earth Stood Still, and the news yesterday that plans are afoot for remakes of Total Recall, Robocop and Never Ending Story, the subject is very topical. Why not pop over there and see what Dan has to say.
Nick Lowe on Hollywood
Over at the Locus blog, Graham Sleight is talking about his BSFA interview of Nick Lowe, the excellent Interzone film reviewer. Graham got Nick to talk about Hollywood and why their movies end up as they do. He has some interesting points to make as a result, but I’d like to go off at a tangent. This bit caught my eye:
Secondly, he argued, Hollywood has become wedded to a model of how narrative works that’s increasingly narrow and prescriptive. He called this the “protagonist” model, whereby a story has to centre on a single person whom the audience has to find sympathetic and who has to grow or learn something about themselves in the process of the film. And (to finish paraphrasing Nick’s point) we have to find them in some sense heroic by the end of things.
I recognize that narrative structure all too well. People occasionally blame it on Joseph Campbell, but he didn’t really invent it, he just codified it. And it isn’t just Hollywood that is wedded to that structure. You find it in a lot of fiction too, especially fantasy.
The reason you see so much of it is that it is very popular. It is the classic escapist formula: “give me a character that I can identify with, and have them make a huge success of their lives”. In essence it is the basis of all romance literature. Many readers lap this sort of thing up, and commercial entities such as Hollywood make sure that they provide it.
This also tends to be the sort of narrative that newbie reviewers castigate as a “Mary Sue” plot, because they assume that the author has created this character as a reflection of herself, rather than as someone for the reader to identify with.
I don’t think that there is anything we can do about this. There will probably always be more readers who want escapist literature than who want literature that will challenge them. All we can do is continue to promote more challenging works and hope that some people will give them a try.
Oscar Watching
I’m not going to stay up, and I’m not that much of a film fan anyway. Besides, Joe Gordon has already provided pretty much everything I wanted to see from the ceremony.
High Praise Indeed
The Coraline movie gets a rave review from Joe Hill. Interesting. What with that and the Newbery and being GoH at Worldcon, I think Mr. Neil is going to have a very good year.
(And yes, I know that the general public doesn’t give a stuff about Worldcon, but Neil does.)
A YouTube Classic
Darth Vader with a cautionary tale about the dangers of cell phones:
Hat tip to luckycreature.
Be Careful What You Wish For…
I’m a bit late with this due to being distracted by food, rugby and a support call from work, but just because everyone else has posted this doesn’t mean I can’t too. Mr. Neil, he wants you to share.
Coraline, the trailer.
Save Our Spike
Fortunately I don’t go to movies so I will be able to avoid it. Otherwise I’d have to start a campaign or something.
All You Need Is (G)Love
I spent much of the day at the SF in SF Unholiday Party (many thanks to Rina & Jacob for hosting it). It was a lot of fun, and there was a surprisingly large turnout given that it was a holiday. Marcus Ewert was still flushed with delight at having become a famous author. Charlie Jane Anders managed to escape from the Gawker slave pens long enough to come and say hello. And I acquired a new Sekrit Projekt, which you will doubtless hear more of later.
I haven’t seen Yellow Submarine all the way through since it came out in the theater. I went to see it with my grandmother, and at the time neither of us was of an age to understand just how trippy it was. Thankfully it works well on many levels. When I was a kid I wanted to be Lucy because she had great outfits and a horse, but I always had a soft spot for Jeremy Hilary Boob, Ph.D. because he had such fun with words. I guess I haven’t changed much.
I Iz Intellectual Snob
As you probably know by now, I don’t watch many movies, but I do know what I like, and what I like is superb visuals. I discovered last night at BASFA that the films of Akira Kurosawa are “masturbatory”, but being an intellectual snob I happen to like them, mainly because they look fabulous.
I liked Frank Miller’s Sin City too. There were certainly some rather dubious aspects to it, but it too looked fabulous. I haven’t seen 300, but I think I want to see The Spirit. Why? Here’s the trailer (thanks Nicola).
Babylon AD Update
Kim Newman has posted a review of Babylon AD on Facebook (which I probably can’t link to, sorry). Two things of note from the review. Firstly Charlotte Rampling looks that good at her age because of what Kim calls “cgi botox”. Not that she isn’t still amazing, but I feel less envious now. Also the short version of Kim’s review would be “it sucks”. That’s a shame, but I’m not surprised as Babylon Babies is a long and complex novel and therefore not well suited to movie adaption.
At Borderlands
So, having done the Lush thing, I headed out to Valencia Street and picked up a whole pile of books I wanted to buy: Little Brother, Lavinia, The Hidden World – you know the sort of stuff. But I had entirely forgotten that there was a reading due that afternoon. And that is how I made the acquaintance of Jeff Carlson. Now I’ve seen a fair few readings in my time, but I think this is the first time I have ever seen a writer on a signing tour just stand up and talking about writing and publishing for an hour or so, and be thoroughly entertaining. Jeff has a motormouth to rival that of Mr. Scalzi (though his blog is not yet in the same class). What’s more he lives in Walnut Creek. I pointed out to him that he ought to pop along to BASFA once in a while. I think he’d be very popular.
While I was in the shop I happened to notice a movie novelization and put two and two together. The forthcoming film, Babylon AD, is actually based on Babylon Babies by Maurice Dantec. Why is this important? Well, for two reasons. Firstly because the arch-cynic of movie reviewing, Lucius Shepard, thinks that the film has promise, despite the fact that it stars Vin Diesel. And secondly because the film is out this month, which makes it Hugo-eligible in Montreal. And M. Dantec makes his home in Canada these days because (apparently) he has had a falling out with France. Indeed, if the film is true to the book then much of the action will take place in Canada. Interesting.
Also while there I hooked up with the newly arrived Nick Mamatas (who is apparently in the Bay Area to do awesome things with some Japanese folks) and Alethea Kontis, and after the reading we headed off to SF in SF. Time for another post.
Breakthrough in Hair Animation
One of the easiest ways to tell if you are in a virtual environment or not (and we do wonder about that, don’t we) is that computer animation is useless at doing hair, until now. Researchers at UC San Diego’s Jacobs School of Engineering have developed new techniques that look very promising. There’s a write-up here, but for the full effect watch the video. It is quite a big download, but well worth it. Of course the current demo uses short-haired men. When they do long hair in the wind with the character in motion I’ll be seriously impressed, but for how this is very good. (And yes, it does mean an end to bald spots on male actors.)
Proof That Books Work
On the face if it, watching a movie ought to be a lot more intense than reading a book. After all, in a movie you can actually see things happen to people. When reading a book you have to imagine it. But human brains are wonderful things, and a recent experiment has shown that reading a description of an event in a book has very much the same effect on your brain as watching it happen in a movie.
Now here’s a modest proposal. What if you ran the experiment with a number of different stories, all describing the same thing, but written by different people. Would that prove which writer was the best? Oh my, can of worms.
Side Effects
However good or bad the Watchmen movie might turn out to be, there is no doubt that there will be knock-on effects. GalleyCat notes that showing the Watchmen trailer before Dark Knight has resulted in a huge surge in sales for the original graphic novel – so much so that the book got to #3 on the Amazon best seller list. That, I think, is something to be happy about (and that includes you, Lucius).
Watchmen
Oh my. This looks good.
Iron Man: An Alternate View
Just about everyone I know who has seen Iron Man has loved the film. It certain seems to be a cinematic triumph, and possibly a hot contender for next year’s Hugo. But pretty pictures are not the be all and end all of a movie. Those of you who think that political analysis of books and movies is “reading in things that aren’t there” will not be happy with this review of the film (and those of you allergic to spoilers and who haven’t seen the film should avoid it too). For everyone else, it is a very interesting analysis.
My own reaction, having read the piece, is that had the film been more politically daring then fans would have lambasted it for not being true to the comic. Tony Stark, after all, is not exactly your typical social crusader. It is also possibly hoping for a bit much for such a high profile Hollywood film to do things that would infuriate your average Republican voter. Much of America is still in denial about military adventurism. But comics (and therefore hopefully films about comic characters) can tackle big issues. The success of Iron Man has pretty much guaranteed that there will be a sequel. Here’s hoping that the producers are a bit braver next time around.
Pygar Goes to Heaven
Via John Coulthart I discover that John Philip Law has died. Actors, of course, tend to be easily forgotten, but Pygar the Angel was indelibly imprinted on my teenage imagination and will remain with me forever.
