Literature: recent adaptations
Mar. 20th, 2006 01:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rushthatspeaksI have been going through something of a non-writing phase in this journal, which is aggravating to me, but the last while has been busier than usual.
Thrud and I went with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
nineweaving last Wednesday to see Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story, and I have to say, I highly recommend it despite the fact that Tristram Shandy is unfilmable. The film is about the fact that the book is unfilmable. The actors, playing themselves, or slight variations on themselves, film the making of what is obviously going to be a thoroughly confused adaptation of Tristram Shandy, and manage to place both themselves and the adaptation just at the edge of self-parody. If you've seen too many adaptations of Great Novels, the very first scene inspires hysterics: the score from The Draughtsman's Contract has never sounded better. Honestly, though, this is one of the funniest movies I've seen in a very long time, and follows the good old comic tradition of cheerfully throwing jokes until something sticks, so I'd recommend it even if you've never read the book and don't watch Great Novel Adaptations, if only for the moment when the lead actor proudly informs an interviewer that Tristram Shandy was eighth on a recent list of the greatest novels of all time, and is deflatingly told that the list was, in fact, chronological.
Thrud said afterwards that she had very much liked the movie despite them leaving out Diderot's favorite chapter, which is the one that is a continuous squiggly line. This sort of remark, frankly, is one reason I live in our household. And it was very good to seenineweaving, and she liked the movie too.
On Friday, most of the household and a great deal of Harvard-Radcliffe Science Fiction Association folk went to V For Vendetta. I suspect that there is some sort of cosmic rule that Alan Moore's works Do Not Film Well. This was (mostly) an exception. I thought that it eliminated many of the structural weaknesses of the comic, refrained for the most part from adding structural weaknesses of its own, and played well as a movie, as a work of cinema intelligible whether or not one has read the book. I thought Hugo Weaving's voice work was brilliant, and that this is the first time I've ever seen Natalie Portman acting. And they kept the center of the story in my opinion, the thing that always breaks me, the unendurably powerful middle section. If I'd been in charge, I'd have taken out three lines of dialogue, kept the political emphasis a little more Moore-ian, and given both Stephen Rea and Stephen Fry a little more moral ambiguity; but I'm not saying it doesn't work as it is, and it's some of the best acting and casting in quite a while. Frankly, I think the film would be worth the price of admission simply for the joy of seeing Stephen Fry working at the top of his game. Which he is.
On Saturday, we had Ragnarok. Yes, the one you're thinking of, the Twilight of the Gods, the end of the world as we know it, the deaths of the Norse pantheon, etcetera, except that it was cleverly averted at the last moment. HRSFA has been running a live-action roleplay called City of the Gods for a while, in which Thrud is Loki andkhyros is Odin and a lot of other cool people are everyone from Hermes to the First Emperor of Japan. I'm not usually involved, but something somebody did last session had shattered Yggdrasil and caused the advent of Ragnarok, so the household geared up and went Norse so we could play the three hours before the start of the battle-- the recruiting, backstabbing and plotting, the defiance of Fate and the rewriting of myths. It went beautifully. I was Hela (Loki's daughter, Queen of the Underworld, pitch black on one side of her body and bone white on the other-- I've still got very odd-looking fingernail polish). weirdquark was the Fenris Wolf, in a cap with puppy-ears; lignota was a Valkyrie, Odin's assistant and liaison; gaudior was Baldur, wearing The Last Piece Of Plastic Mistletoe Commercially Available In Boston. Sadly we were all too tired to take pictures, but it's not like we don't own the costumes, so I'm sure we'll have a family portrait done at some point. HRSFA provided Surt, Loki's brother, in leather and blazer; the Midgard Serpent in snakeskin pantyhose; and a brilliant Heimdall stalking around with a bugle, dressed as a Man In Black and getting ready to sound the Last Trumpet.
It played as an odd combination of street theatre and chess, half scripted and all on the fly, plot and counterplot and assassination attempt and do-over, a labyrinthine tangle of unspoken motivations with Odin and Loki glaring at each other down the center of everything. It was magnificent, and decidedly the most fun I've ever had LARPing. I think there were seven or eight conflicting plans swirling around, and absolutely everything that got scripted had time to happen without the LARP going overtime, which, ask anybody, never happens. Eventually the end was averted: Persephone and Set (who are in a situation involving one another that is far too complicated to go into) made Odin and Loki mutually telepathic, which caused them to understand one another, which caused them to get married (Loki is any gender Loki wants to be). The game ended with the wedding, the designation of Loki as All-Mother, and the sacrifice by the Native American god Coyote of his own immortality to the World Tree, thereby restoring it. Coyote had previously been made a blood brother of Odin and Loki and so is now trying to find a place in the Norse pantheon: he's thinking of All-Brother, but I still say he should go with Sacred Coyote Of Doom.
Maybe you had to be there. Anyhow, it's been a really good weekend.
Thrud and I went with
nineweaving last Wednesday to see Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story, and I have to say, I highly recommend it despite the fact that Tristram Shandy is unfilmable. The film is about the fact that the book is unfilmable. The actors, playing themselves, or slight variations on themselves, film the making of what is obviously going to be a thoroughly confused adaptation of Tristram Shandy, and manage to place both themselves and the adaptation just at the edge of self-parody. If you've seen too many adaptations of Great Novels, the very first scene inspires hysterics: the score from The Draughtsman's Contract has never sounded better. Honestly, though, this is one of the funniest movies I've seen in a very long time, and follows the good old comic tradition of cheerfully throwing jokes until something sticks, so I'd recommend it even if you've never read the book and don't watch Great Novel Adaptations, if only for the moment when the lead actor proudly informs an interviewer that Tristram Shandy was eighth on a recent list of the greatest novels of all time, and is deflatingly told that the list was, in fact, chronological.Thrud said afterwards that she had very much liked the movie despite them leaving out Diderot's favorite chapter, which is the one that is a continuous squiggly line. This sort of remark, frankly, is one reason I live in our household. And it was very good to see
nineweaving, and she liked the movie too.On Friday, most of the household and a great deal of Harvard-Radcliffe Science Fiction Association folk went to V For Vendetta. I suspect that there is some sort of cosmic rule that Alan Moore's works Do Not Film Well. This was (mostly) an exception. I thought that it eliminated many of the structural weaknesses of the comic, refrained for the most part from adding structural weaknesses of its own, and played well as a movie, as a work of cinema intelligible whether or not one has read the book. I thought Hugo Weaving's voice work was brilliant, and that this is the first time I've ever seen Natalie Portman acting. And they kept the center of the story in my opinion, the thing that always breaks me, the unendurably powerful middle section. If I'd been in charge, I'd have taken out three lines of dialogue, kept the political emphasis a little more Moore-ian, and given both Stephen Rea and Stephen Fry a little more moral ambiguity; but I'm not saying it doesn't work as it is, and it's some of the best acting and casting in quite a while. Frankly, I think the film would be worth the price of admission simply for the joy of seeing Stephen Fry working at the top of his game. Which he is.
On Saturday, we had Ragnarok. Yes, the one you're thinking of, the Twilight of the Gods, the end of the world as we know it, the deaths of the Norse pantheon, etcetera, except that it was cleverly averted at the last moment. HRSFA has been running a live-action roleplay called City of the Gods for a while, in which Thrud is Loki and
khyros is Odin and a lot of other cool people are everyone from Hermes to the First Emperor of Japan. I'm not usually involved, but something somebody did last session had shattered Yggdrasil and caused the advent of Ragnarok, so the household geared up and went Norse so we could play the three hours before the start of the battle-- the recruiting, backstabbing and plotting, the defiance of Fate and the rewriting of myths. It went beautifully. I was Hela (Loki's daughter, Queen of the Underworld, pitch black on one side of her body and bone white on the other-- I've still got very odd-looking fingernail polish). weirdquark was the Fenris Wolf, in a cap with puppy-ears; lignota was a Valkyrie, Odin's assistant and liaison; gaudior was Baldur, wearing The Last Piece Of Plastic Mistletoe Commercially Available In Boston. Sadly we were all too tired to take pictures, but it's not like we don't own the costumes, so I'm sure we'll have a family portrait done at some point. HRSFA provided Surt, Loki's brother, in leather and blazer; the Midgard Serpent in snakeskin pantyhose; and a brilliant Heimdall stalking around with a bugle, dressed as a Man In Black and getting ready to sound the Last Trumpet.It played as an odd combination of street theatre and chess, half scripted and all on the fly, plot and counterplot and assassination attempt and do-over, a labyrinthine tangle of unspoken motivations with Odin and Loki glaring at each other down the center of everything. It was magnificent, and decidedly the most fun I've ever had LARPing. I think there were seven or eight conflicting plans swirling around, and absolutely everything that got scripted had time to happen without the LARP going overtime, which, ask anybody, never happens. Eventually the end was averted: Persephone and Set (who are in a situation involving one another that is far too complicated to go into) made Odin and Loki mutually telepathic, which caused them to understand one another, which caused them to get married (Loki is any gender Loki wants to be). The game ended with the wedding, the designation of Loki as All-Mother, and the sacrifice by the Native American god Coyote of his own immortality to the World Tree, thereby restoring it. Coyote had previously been made a blood brother of Odin and Loki and so is now trying to find a place in the Norse pantheon: he's thinking of All-Brother, but I still say he should go with Sacred Coyote Of Doom.
Maybe you had to be there. Anyhow, it's been a really good weekend.
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Date: 2006-03-20 07:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-20 07:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-20 08:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-20 07:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-20 08:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-21 12:43 am (UTC)Heh. I hadn't thought about that in some time. A woman from the Netherlands came & lectured on that to a group I was in my first time in NYC though...
no subject
Date: 2006-03-21 07:01 am (UTC)And ya know... I've tried to explain it to other people... I think you did kinda have to be there.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-21 07:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-21 02:16 pm (UTC)V for Vendetta was too much of an action movie to pull that off, but I enjoyed it more than I had any reason to expect. I was interested that you - I was about to say "liked Stephen Fry", but we all love Stephen Fry, so that won't do - thought Stephen Fry's part worked well. I didn't see the point of making him such a pale echo of V, and I couldn't believe that he thought he was going to get away with sending up the Chancellor: that undermined my whole understanding of what kind of society this was. Not Fry's fault, but it stopped me enjoying him as I might have done.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-22 05:26 am (UTC)