I got really tired of Robert Asprin's "Myth" books after the tenth one, but I never bothered to write any of them up after the third one, back in December.
I haven't really read much of anything since then--too tired, too bored. I've been falling asleep at random times of day, sitting up all night, always tired enough that reading just never mattered.
I suppose having a bad kidney and having surgery to remove it might be a good excuse :)
I won't promise much for the time being; I'm reading a novel, but slowly, in between naps and sleeping and whatever I can fit into those waking moments.
Showing posts with label Musings. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Musings. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Pareidolia Goes Global!
I've decided to expand the blog a bit. The BookBlog will stay put--same link and all that--but stuff like the blogs list will migrate over to the main site to get rid of some of the clutter.
The main site will be devoted to the standard blogger stuff--random thoughts, rants, and all that. But the main thing will be music: a Song of the Day, a Riff of the Day (bass or guitar, with TAB notation), a rip on some particularly stupid country song I heard at work. Bad jokes.
Get over there and have a look, you four!
The main site will be devoted to the standard blogger stuff--random thoughts, rants, and all that. But the main thing will be music: a Song of the Day, a Riff of the Day (bass or guitar, with TAB notation), a rip on some particularly stupid country song I heard at work. Bad jokes.
Get over there and have a look, you four!
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Quickie: Valdemar--the Shin'a'in and Tayledras
Now that I'm done with Foster for the time being, it's back to the grind with the next set of three Valdemar books. Time for a little history and a bit on the Shin'a'in and Tayledras, who will be figuring a good bit in the rest of the books.
It's about 200 years since the days of Lavan Firestorm (which, ironically, took about 200 years to read), about 1270 years since the Founding of Valdemar, and 2270 years since the Cataclysm.
The twin explosions of the great Cataclysm were centered on the strongholds of Urtho and his nemesis Ma'ar. Urtho was the more powerful mage, or at least had more power invested in his Tower, and upon his death the explosion carved a crater many miles across. Ma'ar's own end was brought about by a device Urtho sent to him in care of the Black Gryphon. This explosion was much smaller and its crater formed what later became Lake Evindem.
The explosions also did weird things to magical energy; in the two millenia since the Cataclysm, there are still wild lands where twisted magic makes for great danger to regular people. This area is known as the Pelagirs, a great forest along the western border of present-day Valdemar.
At some point after the fireworks faded, the remainder of Urtho's followers wandered back toward his Tower and found the crater instead. They were divided--some of the Clans wanted to keep using magic, the rest wanted no part of it. The magic-users went West, and were charged by their Goddess with using magic the cleanse the Pelagirs of wild magic (and bad mages and twisted creatures), taming it so regular folks could move in and live in peace. These are the Tale'edras or Tayledras, the "Hawkbrothers." They breed enormous birds of prey which are highly intelligent. The Hawkbrothers keep themselves hidden away from much of the rest of the world, living in luxurious man-made valleys--Vales--and storing the magic they gather in a Heartstone.
The remaining Clans were charged by the same Goddess with keeping the secret of Urtho's Tower: it wasn't completely destroyed and still contained powerful artifacts and weapons. She remade the entire crater into a vast grassland, the Dhorisha Plains, and set the people to guarding it against any who would intrude. These are the Shin'a'in, the "people of the plains." They breed horses that are the envy of riders everywhere and are known to be fierce warriors.
It's about 200 years since the days of Lavan Firestorm (which, ironically, took about 200 years to read), about 1270 years since the Founding of Valdemar, and 2270 years since the Cataclysm.
The twin explosions of the great Cataclysm were centered on the strongholds of Urtho and his nemesis Ma'ar. Urtho was the more powerful mage, or at least had more power invested in his Tower, and upon his death the explosion carved a crater many miles across. Ma'ar's own end was brought about by a device Urtho sent to him in care of the Black Gryphon. This explosion was much smaller and its crater formed what later became Lake Evindem.
The explosions also did weird things to magical energy; in the two millenia since the Cataclysm, there are still wild lands where twisted magic makes for great danger to regular people. This area is known as the Pelagirs, a great forest along the western border of present-day Valdemar.
At some point after the fireworks faded, the remainder of Urtho's followers wandered back toward his Tower and found the crater instead. They were divided--some of the Clans wanted to keep using magic, the rest wanted no part of it. The magic-users went West, and were charged by their Goddess with using magic the cleanse the Pelagirs of wild magic (and bad mages and twisted creatures), taming it so regular folks could move in and live in peace. These are the Tale'edras or Tayledras, the "Hawkbrothers." They breed enormous birds of prey which are highly intelligent. The Hawkbrothers keep themselves hidden away from much of the rest of the world, living in luxurious man-made valleys--Vales--and storing the magic they gather in a Heartstone.
The remaining Clans were charged by the same Goddess with keeping the secret of Urtho's Tower: it wasn't completely destroyed and still contained powerful artifacts and weapons. She remade the entire crater into a vast grassland, the Dhorisha Plains, and set the people to guarding it against any who would intrude. These are the Shin'a'in, the "people of the plains." They breed horses that are the envy of riders everywhere and are known to be fierce warriors.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
The Blog's Got a Name!
I've been listening to early Skeptics' Guide to the Universe podcasts over the past few weeks. One word that seems to pop up is "pareidolia" (or "paradolia"), defined at Wikipedia as:
"...a psychological phenomenon involving a vague and random stimulus (often an image or sound) being perceived as significant." Examples of this would include that Mary-on-Toast a few years back. It seems like people are constantly finding Jesus in more than just the mundane religious manner.The old boy crops up in wood grain, reflections from shiny objects (including a car hubcap), you name it. Considering that the cold & flu season is just passing away, I'm surprised there's not a used Kleenex (tm) with such an image blown from someone's nose.
It obviously requires imagination. Can you find it here?
At any rate, I've been thinking that this blog needs a title, and it seems that there's a form of pareidolia in reading in that I form a mental image of scenes and people as I go. Or in music, for that matter, given that what I imagine from the lyrics and mood might not be anything like what the writers and players had in mind.
I dig the irony of a skeptic using the word in a more ironic sense. I don't buy the holy stuff, or the bigfoot stuff, or the UFO stuff, or ghosts (to name but a few of the many species of irrational junk to which people devote so much of their time.
It's given me some ideas for enlarging this Blog to include more than just book reviews and style analysis, including local restaurant reviews (could even tie it to the Book Blog--is there sufficient light for reading? Sufficient room for a laptop for reading e-books? Is it quiet enough?) and some other stuff. Maybe even bring in other people to share their own book, music, and restaurant reviews.
Hell, maybe I'll pick up another two or three readers! *snort*
"...a psychological phenomenon involving a vague and random stimulus (often an image or sound) being perceived as significant." Examples of this would include that Mary-on-Toast a few years back. It seems like people are constantly finding Jesus in more than just the mundane religious manner.The old boy crops up in wood grain, reflections from shiny objects (including a car hubcap), you name it. Considering that the cold & flu season is just passing away, I'm surprised there's not a used Kleenex (tm) with such an image blown from someone's nose.
It obviously requires imagination. Can you find it here?
At any rate, I've been thinking that this blog needs a title, and it seems that there's a form of pareidolia in reading in that I form a mental image of scenes and people as I go. Or in music, for that matter, given that what I imagine from the lyrics and mood might not be anything like what the writers and players had in mind.
I dig the irony of a skeptic using the word in a more ironic sense. I don't buy the holy stuff, or the bigfoot stuff, or the UFO stuff, or ghosts (to name but a few of the many species of irrational junk to which people devote so much of their time.
It's given me some ideas for enlarging this Blog to include more than just book reviews and style analysis, including local restaurant reviews (could even tie it to the Book Blog--is there sufficient light for reading? Sufficient room for a laptop for reading e-books? Is it quiet enough?) and some other stuff. Maybe even bring in other people to share their own book, music, and restaurant reviews.
Hell, maybe I'll pick up another two or three readers! *snort*
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Musings: Comparing Magic--Transportation
My first introduction to magical transportation was Zelazny's "Amber" series. There are two poles to reality: Amber, which represents Order; and the Courts of Chaos, representing Chaos. Each of these poles is represented as a kingdom in its own right, with a source of Power available to those who can use it. Amber has her Pattern. Chaos has its Logrus.
Between these two poles of reality are Shadows, which you can consider as an infinite continuum of worlds, more orderly toward the Amber end, more chaotic toward the Chaos end, and encompassing all that exists--including our own Earth. Each Shadow is separate from its neighbors, with its inhabitants normally unaware of any other reality but their own.
To those with the ability to use (or be used by) those Powers are accorded the ability to move through and amongst those worlds at will in three different ways. One can begin in Amber and simply walk or ride a horse (for example), using their will to change aspects of the world around them until they've arrived at their destination. This takes the longest of the three, but might be the only way to get somewhere.
A much-more grueling version of Shadow-walking is the Hellride, where one's concentration must be complete. It gets you where you want to go more quickly than a Shadow-Walk.
The next way is by use of a Trump, something along the lines of a Tarot card. If you've been to a place or know a person well enough to draw them on a blank card, you can make a Trump for that place or person. Then you look at it, concentrate on it, exert your will to make it real, and if you've done it right you get a little window onto that place or person, and can step through (or bring the other person to you). In the first five Amber books, the Trumps are treated as something exclusive to the Royal Families of Amber and Chaos, but in the second set we find all sorts of people using them.
The third way is the hardest, and seems to be used more by those initiated into the Pattern. You must walk along the Pattern to reach its center (I'll discuss this in a later entry, but it's a horribly grueling contest of your Will against ever-increasing resistance); then you imagine where you want to be and command the Pattern to send you there.
The next series to come along was Robert Asprin's "Myth" books. Like Zelazny, Asprin's universe is a continuum of parallel worlds, but he calls them Dimensions. Just about any reality you can imagine is out there, somewhere--and all you need is a way of getting around.
If you can use magic and know your way around, you can cast a spell for shifting from your current Dimension to another one. You've got to know your target Dimension well enough, though, or you might end up somewhere else--and it might be a world where magic or Demons (Dimension travelers) aren't welcome.
The other method is mechanical--a pre-spelled ring, for example, or something called a D-Hopper, which I still think is pretty cool. It's a rod, maybe a foot long, and with several dials along its length. Set the dials for your destination, press the button, and *ZAM* you're there.
The most-recent series I've really gotten into is Mercedes Lackey's "Valdemar." Her approach to magic is by far the most complex of the three, but there's only one way of using magic to get around (not including the levitated barges some of her characters use, since the barges are still pulled by horses or mules). We only ever see the one world--no parallel realities to speak of, unlike the other two authors' works.
A Gate is a quick, but energy-expensive, portal between two places. To cast a Gate, the mage must know their destination well enough to form a mental image of the place, and only the highest class of mage can summon and use the Power needed to invoke the Gate's spell and hold the construct open long enough to use it.
One really neat aspect of Lackey's approach is that magic energy affects the world around it--for example, opening a Gate can trigger spectacular and violent thunderstorms.
Between these two poles of reality are Shadows, which you can consider as an infinite continuum of worlds, more orderly toward the Amber end, more chaotic toward the Chaos end, and encompassing all that exists--including our own Earth. Each Shadow is separate from its neighbors, with its inhabitants normally unaware of any other reality but their own.
To those with the ability to use (or be used by) those Powers are accorded the ability to move through and amongst those worlds at will in three different ways. One can begin in Amber and simply walk or ride a horse (for example), using their will to change aspects of the world around them until they've arrived at their destination. This takes the longest of the three, but might be the only way to get somewhere.
A much-more grueling version of Shadow-walking is the Hellride, where one's concentration must be complete. It gets you where you want to go more quickly than a Shadow-Walk.
The next way is by use of a Trump, something along the lines of a Tarot card. If you've been to a place or know a person well enough to draw them on a blank card, you can make a Trump for that place or person. Then you look at it, concentrate on it, exert your will to make it real, and if you've done it right you get a little window onto that place or person, and can step through (or bring the other person to you). In the first five Amber books, the Trumps are treated as something exclusive to the Royal Families of Amber and Chaos, but in the second set we find all sorts of people using them.
The third way is the hardest, and seems to be used more by those initiated into the Pattern. You must walk along the Pattern to reach its center (I'll discuss this in a later entry, but it's a horribly grueling contest of your Will against ever-increasing resistance); then you imagine where you want to be and command the Pattern to send you there.
The next series to come along was Robert Asprin's "Myth" books. Like Zelazny, Asprin's universe is a continuum of parallel worlds, but he calls them Dimensions. Just about any reality you can imagine is out there, somewhere--and all you need is a way of getting around.
If you can use magic and know your way around, you can cast a spell for shifting from your current Dimension to another one. You've got to know your target Dimension well enough, though, or you might end up somewhere else--and it might be a world where magic or Demons (Dimension travelers) aren't welcome.
The other method is mechanical--a pre-spelled ring, for example, or something called a D-Hopper, which I still think is pretty cool. It's a rod, maybe a foot long, and with several dials along its length. Set the dials for your destination, press the button, and *ZAM* you're there.
The most-recent series I've really gotten into is Mercedes Lackey's "Valdemar." Her approach to magic is by far the most complex of the three, but there's only one way of using magic to get around (not including the levitated barges some of her characters use, since the barges are still pulled by horses or mules). We only ever see the one world--no parallel realities to speak of, unlike the other two authors' works.
A Gate is a quick, but energy-expensive, portal between two places. To cast a Gate, the mage must know their destination well enough to form a mental image of the place, and only the highest class of mage can summon and use the Power needed to invoke the Gate's spell and hold the construct open long enough to use it.
One really neat aspect of Lackey's approach is that magic energy affects the world around it--for example, opening a Gate can trigger spectacular and violent thunderstorms.
Musings: Comparing magic, etc. (start of a new series)
I've been hoping to do a series ever since my first ideas for the Bookblog several months ago. What I wanted to do was more than just reviews of books--I wanted to compare stuff like how each author uses magic, technology, or whatever. For something like that, "Star Wars" could be considered Fantasy rather than Science-Fiction, because the Force is essentially being used for the same sorts of things that magic does--reading thoughts, shielding against an attack, throwing people or things.
I wanted to gather such a comparison because of a series of books I want to write. I've got ideas for as many as four in the series, but only one book is complete--and I haven't really done anything with it since 1996. Much of my inspiration comes from the same authors and their worlds that I'll be reviewing in the blog--Roger Zelazny's "Amber," Mercedes Lackey's "Valdemar," Jim Butcher's "Dresden," and George R R Martin's "Song of Ice and Fire" being the big ones. Oh, and "Star Wars." I probably won't be discussing my own book(s) very much for some time. Currently that project's in deep limbo while figure out whether I'll even write it.
I wanted to gather such a comparison because of a series of books I want to write. I've got ideas for as many as four in the series, but only one book is complete--and I haven't really done anything with it since 1996. Much of my inspiration comes from the same authors and their worlds that I'll be reviewing in the blog--Roger Zelazny's "Amber," Mercedes Lackey's "Valdemar," Jim Butcher's "Dresden," and George R R Martin's "Song of Ice and Fire" being the big ones. Oh, and "Star Wars." I probably won't be discussing my own book(s) very much for some time. Currently that project's in deep limbo while figure out whether I'll even write it.
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Places to Go...
There's one very good site I'd recommend enough to write a post about it:
http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/
They have a short blurb about each author which includes known pen-names, a section of whatever's expected for release soon, and a main list of titles arranged by series. To the right side is a mosaic of book cover pictures.
Each picture or book title is linked to a separate page (if any) that goes a little more in-depth on that title.
And here's a short list of places to look for e-books:
Universary of Pennsylvania Online Books
Project Gutenberg
Brookings Institute Free Library
Electric Library
Internet Public Library
National Academy of Sciences Free Library
NetLibrary
MIT Free Course Library
I don't know much about the others, but Gutenberg has a massive amount of public-domain stuff, like the complete works of Mark Twain and Shakespeare. Everything's in plain-text.
Google recently started offering entire books and magazines available online:
http://books.google.com/bkshp?hl=en&tab=wp
Their interface is okay, but I seem to remember that it irritated me a few months back when I first checked it out. When you're still on dial-up in a high-speed world, it's easy to be irritated.
http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/
They have a short blurb about each author which includes known pen-names, a section of whatever's expected for release soon, and a main list of titles arranged by series. To the right side is a mosaic of book cover pictures.
Each picture or book title is linked to a separate page (if any) that goes a little more in-depth on that title.
And here's a short list of places to look for e-books:
Universary of Pennsylvania Online Books
Project Gutenberg
Brookings Institute Free Library
Electric Library
Internet Public Library
National Academy of Sciences Free Library
NetLibrary
MIT Free Course Library
I don't know much about the others, but Gutenberg has a massive amount of public-domain stuff, like the complete works of Mark Twain and Shakespeare. Everything's in plain-text.
Google recently started offering entire books and magazines available online:
http://books.google.com/bkshp?hl=en&tab=wp
Their interface is okay, but I seem to remember that it irritated me a few months back when I first checked it out. When you're still on dial-up in a high-speed world, it's easy to be irritated.
Monday, February 2, 2009
Valdemar (Mercedes Lackey)
Over the last couple of days I've been thinking of starting on Mercedes Lackey's "Valdemar" fantasy series. I'm kind of dreading it, because there are at least 26 novels, spanning some 2,000 years in the history of a nation. It'll take me about that long to finish off the 26 I've got.
It's a really impressive series, and Lackey is crazy prolific. But I have a feeling that I'm going to have some of the same problems with this series that I did with her Diana Tregarde books. She can tell a story, but at times she's shrill, overbearing, and fussy. If you're going through a break-up or you're in the aftermath of one, you need to read something else or some of the books will cut you to pieces with their love stories and lost loves.
Oh, and most of her point-of-view characters are women. There are a few male POV's, and some of them are straight, but many of her guys tend to be gay. In this Utopian fantasy world, most people don't seem to care about that, but those who do tend to be protrayed as the stereotypical homophobe.
As far as characterization, the entire series is strongly character-driven. Real people and their interactions are complicated, imperfect, fragile, petty, and irrational, and Lackey develops her stories with this in mind. These same ideas shape each character, too--they don't all have the same interests or abilities.
The series is broken down mostly into trilogy sets:
Mage Wars 1-3:
01 Black Gryphon, The (w/ Larry Dixon)
02 White Gryphon, The (w/ Larry Dixon)
03 Silver Gryphon, The (w/ Larry Dixon)
The Last Herald-Mage 1-3:
04 Magic's Pawn
05 Magic's Promise
06 Magic's Price
Lavan Firestorm:
07 Brightly Burning
Vows & Honor 1-3:
08 Oathbound, The
09 Oathbreakers
10 OathBlood (Short Story collection)
Alberich 1-2:
11 Exile's Honor
12 Exile's Valor
Skif:
13 Take A Thief
Talia 1-3:
14 Arrows of the Queen
15 Arrow's Flight
16 Arrow's Fall
Kerowyn:
17 By the Sword
Mage Winds 1-3:
18 Winds Of Fate
19 Winds of Change
20 Winds of Fury
Mage Storms 1-3:
21 Storm Warning
22 Storm Rising
23 Storm Breaking
Darian 1-3:
24 Owlflight
25 OwlSight
26 Owlknight
I don't know if I'm up for a cover-to-cover coverage of the whole set. For the blog's purposes, it'd be better if I broke it into the trilogies and singles, with something else in between to get me through the Lackey fatigue.
It's a really impressive series, and Lackey is crazy prolific. But I have a feeling that I'm going to have some of the same problems with this series that I did with her Diana Tregarde books. She can tell a story, but at times she's shrill, overbearing, and fussy. If you're going through a break-up or you're in the aftermath of one, you need to read something else or some of the books will cut you to pieces with their love stories and lost loves.
Oh, and most of her point-of-view characters are women. There are a few male POV's, and some of them are straight, but many of her guys tend to be gay. In this Utopian fantasy world, most people don't seem to care about that, but those who do tend to be protrayed as the stereotypical homophobe.
As far as characterization, the entire series is strongly character-driven. Real people and their interactions are complicated, imperfect, fragile, petty, and irrational, and Lackey develops her stories with this in mind. These same ideas shape each character, too--they don't all have the same interests or abilities.
The series is broken down mostly into trilogy sets:
Mage Wars 1-3:
01 Black Gryphon, The (w/ Larry Dixon)
02 White Gryphon, The (w/ Larry Dixon)
03 Silver Gryphon, The (w/ Larry Dixon)
The Last Herald-Mage 1-3:
04 Magic's Pawn
05 Magic's Promise
06 Magic's Price
Lavan Firestorm:
07 Brightly Burning
Vows & Honor 1-3:
08 Oathbound, The
09 Oathbreakers
10 OathBlood (Short Story collection)
Alberich 1-2:
11 Exile's Honor
12 Exile's Valor
Skif:
13 Take A Thief
Talia 1-3:
14 Arrows of the Queen
15 Arrow's Flight
16 Arrow's Fall
Kerowyn:
17 By the Sword
Mage Winds 1-3:
18 Winds Of Fate
19 Winds of Change
20 Winds of Fury
Mage Storms 1-3:
21 Storm Warning
22 Storm Rising
23 Storm Breaking
Darian 1-3:
24 Owlflight
25 OwlSight
26 Owlknight
I don't know if I'm up for a cover-to-cover coverage of the whole set. For the blog's purposes, it'd be better if I broke it into the trilogies and singles, with something else in between to get me through the Lackey fatigue.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Peter Jackson rules.
I guess this would be a "Part II" to "George Lucas Sucks."
On the first weekend of the New Year, I got together over at this guy's place for a 3-night "Lord of the Rings" marathon. This was the first time seeing them consecutively since the Special Edition version of "Return of the King" came out, and the first time seeing them on the big-ass TeeVee at his pad. Yeah, there are plenty of issues, especially from a book purist's point of view, but I'm not going to get into a geek-fight about that.
No. Instead, I wanted to follow up on last night's rant about Lucas. Jackson's trilogy used plenty of the same cinematography concepts, specifically motion-capture of actors for controlling computer-generated characters and eye-popping, lavish computer-generated sets. But where Lucas seems to put the CGI art ahead of both the actor's and the storyteller's crafts, Jackson is there to tell the story first, and then make it pretty. You cannot fix bad direction or sub-par acting "in post," on the editing table.
Sure, there's a lot of stupid, silly, or pointless crap in "Rings," the equivalent to Lucas' fart jokes and bodily noises. Jackson's kids show up in all three films as the obligatory adorable kids. Gimli seems to be wandering around the second film with little more to do than be a caricature. Some good, funny moments, but I hurt my eyes rolling them with Gimli's standing behind the battlement of Helm's Deep, too short to see over it. Then there's the Elf's little skateboard-down-the-stairs bit. *cringe*
I can get around all that, because there's SUBSTANCE to the story. Jackson gets actual performances from his people. I cry when Boromir dies. I fucking bawl when Eomer finds his sister on the battlefield--what a hell of a scream! Hell, I'm choking up right now writing about it. How about the bit where Gandalf has fallen down the pit and the rest of the Fellowship runs out of Moria, standing on the rocks and crying. The music under this--a single voice lamenting the loss--is powerful. The Nazgul theme still scares me.
What did we get from Lucas? "I hate you!" */whine* For all his trying, Ewan McGregor couldn't hold the movie together. Look what he had to work with.
On the first weekend of the New Year, I got together over at this guy's place for a 3-night "Lord of the Rings" marathon. This was the first time seeing them consecutively since the Special Edition version of "Return of the King" came out, and the first time seeing them on the big-ass TeeVee at his pad. Yeah, there are plenty of issues, especially from a book purist's point of view, but I'm not going to get into a geek-fight about that.
No. Instead, I wanted to follow up on last night's rant about Lucas. Jackson's trilogy used plenty of the same cinematography concepts, specifically motion-capture of actors for controlling computer-generated characters and eye-popping, lavish computer-generated sets. But where Lucas seems to put the CGI art ahead of both the actor's and the storyteller's crafts, Jackson is there to tell the story first, and then make it pretty. You cannot fix bad direction or sub-par acting "in post," on the editing table.
Sure, there's a lot of stupid, silly, or pointless crap in "Rings," the equivalent to Lucas' fart jokes and bodily noises. Jackson's kids show up in all three films as the obligatory adorable kids. Gimli seems to be wandering around the second film with little more to do than be a caricature. Some good, funny moments, but I hurt my eyes rolling them with Gimli's standing behind the battlement of Helm's Deep, too short to see over it. Then there's the Elf's little skateboard-down-the-stairs bit. *cringe*
I can get around all that, because there's SUBSTANCE to the story. Jackson gets actual performances from his people. I cry when Boromir dies. I fucking bawl when Eomer finds his sister on the battlefield--what a hell of a scream! Hell, I'm choking up right now writing about it. How about the bit where Gandalf has fallen down the pit and the rest of the Fellowship runs out of Moria, standing on the rocks and crying. The music under this--a single voice lamenting the loss--is powerful. The Nazgul theme still scares me.
What did we get from Lucas? "I hate you!" */whine* For all his trying, Ewan McGregor couldn't hold the movie together. Look what he had to work with.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
George Lucas sucks.
Anyone who's read through this blog (well, basically it's just me) will have seen some sniping at George Lucas.
He sucks.
He totally screwed over the whole "Star Wars" story with Episodes 1-3. I grew up with the originals. I really loved the darkness of "The Empire Strikes Back." But even with the Big Three, we see Lucas beginning his free-fall into suck with the half-crap "Return of the Jedi." The whole teddy-bears-defeating-armored-troops-with-sticks-and-stones thing.
Granted, a Stormtrooper's armor didn't do much for protection, given that a single blaster shot from a good guy would take 'em out. But the Ewok schtick made the ending of "Jedi" into one long, drawn-out Three Stooges pie fight.
He took a rest for a while. Then he brought suck to an entirely new low with "The Phantom Menace." I didn't have very high hopes for the movie to begin with...but I left the theater simply numb. The farting camel. That idiotic Jar Jar. The really bad acting from Liam Neeson and others--we know these people can act, so I'd have to blame Lucas, who apparently went with first takes during rehearsals, then stitched it all together as foreground for very flashy computer graphics, and sent it to John Williams to write music for it. He didn't really develop the Sith as a "phantom menace"...and then there's the midiclorians-as-microbe-causing-the-Force instead of the much tidier mystical energy field that controls people's destinies.
"Attack of the Clones" gave us Hayden Christiansen, probably the least-inspiring actor in the entire series. He didn't really seem to be an angst-ridden teenager so much as an always-angry ADHD victim. Considering that the Sith are supposed to be a phantom menace, there's really not a good thread showing Palpatine exerting influence so much as seeming like an indulgent grandfather. The most irritating element in this movie, though, is C-3P0 and his incessant punning through the entire droid factory sequence ("Oh no! I'm beside myself!" "What a drag.")
Phooey.
"Revenge of the Sith" is much better than the first pair, but it still falls far short of the promise of the original trilogy. The battles are spectacular! The acting is somewhat better, but we still have that horrid, embarassing ending with a newly-minted Darth Vader (entirely too skinny, compared to the tall and bulky Dave Prowse) pulling a Frankenstein and wailing "Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!" Bleah. He's turned the franchise into a modern-day version of the "Star Wars Holiday Special" without the snappy musical numbers.
But the crowning achievement of suck lies not with the Star Wars franchise...but with Indiana Jones, which suffered the same fate as the SW flicks. It started out serious ("Raiders of the Lost Ark") and got dark ("Temple of Doom"), with some appropriate bits of humor. Then it got silly. I had serious problems with "Last Crusade," which went out of its way to be irritating. Sean Connery did some good stuff--but by this point Indy is just a cartoon character. And Denholm Elliot and John Rhys-Davies (Brody and Sallah) should be ashamed. Their characters are just caricatures of the originals.
Which brings us to the utterly shitty "Crystal Skull." I have seen it only once and will never watch it willingly again. I started hating it within a few minutes, when Jones is blowed up in a noo-cue-lar explosion and rides a freaking refrigerator from launch to touchdown. How convenient that it was lead-lined. It was good to see Karen Allen, but she's just the Bitchy Ex-Wife for her entire set.
Cate Blanchett as the psychic Pinko was just...I don't know. The giant ants, the obligatory Tarzan moment...I don't see Spielberg or Lucas ever committing to film anything that's worth a shit for the remainder of their careers.
That said, Lucas is dead to me. I used to be a devoted "Star Wars" geek. I got the books, the toys, the first-run of "Star Wars: The Role-Playing Game." I even endured several months of reading the entire series of "New Jedi Order" novels. But that was then.
I skipped the animated "Clone Wars" flick. Knew it would suck. Apparently I was right.
Don't look anytime soon for any "Star Wars" book reviews.
He sucks.
He totally screwed over the whole "Star Wars" story with Episodes 1-3. I grew up with the originals. I really loved the darkness of "The Empire Strikes Back." But even with the Big Three, we see Lucas beginning his free-fall into suck with the half-crap "Return of the Jedi." The whole teddy-bears-defeating-armored-troops-with-sticks-and-stones thing.
Granted, a Stormtrooper's armor didn't do much for protection, given that a single blaster shot from a good guy would take 'em out. But the Ewok schtick made the ending of "Jedi" into one long, drawn-out Three Stooges pie fight.
He took a rest for a while. Then he brought suck to an entirely new low with "The Phantom Menace." I didn't have very high hopes for the movie to begin with...but I left the theater simply numb. The farting camel. That idiotic Jar Jar. The really bad acting from Liam Neeson and others--we know these people can act, so I'd have to blame Lucas, who apparently went with first takes during rehearsals, then stitched it all together as foreground for very flashy computer graphics, and sent it to John Williams to write music for it. He didn't really develop the Sith as a "phantom menace"...and then there's the midiclorians-as-microbe-causing-the-Force instead of the much tidier mystical energy field that controls people's destinies.
"Attack of the Clones" gave us Hayden Christiansen, probably the least-inspiring actor in the entire series. He didn't really seem to be an angst-ridden teenager so much as an always-angry ADHD victim. Considering that the Sith are supposed to be a phantom menace, there's really not a good thread showing Palpatine exerting influence so much as seeming like an indulgent grandfather. The most irritating element in this movie, though, is C-3P0 and his incessant punning through the entire droid factory sequence ("Oh no! I'm beside myself!" "What a drag.")
Phooey.
"Revenge of the Sith" is much better than the first pair, but it still falls far short of the promise of the original trilogy. The battles are spectacular! The acting is somewhat better, but we still have that horrid, embarassing ending with a newly-minted Darth Vader (entirely too skinny, compared to the tall and bulky Dave Prowse) pulling a Frankenstein and wailing "Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!" Bleah. He's turned the franchise into a modern-day version of the "Star Wars Holiday Special" without the snappy musical numbers.
But the crowning achievement of suck lies not with the Star Wars franchise...but with Indiana Jones, which suffered the same fate as the SW flicks. It started out serious ("Raiders of the Lost Ark") and got dark ("Temple of Doom"), with some appropriate bits of humor. Then it got silly. I had serious problems with "Last Crusade," which went out of its way to be irritating. Sean Connery did some good stuff--but by this point Indy is just a cartoon character. And Denholm Elliot and John Rhys-Davies (Brody and Sallah) should be ashamed. Their characters are just caricatures of the originals.
Which brings us to the utterly shitty "Crystal Skull." I have seen it only once and will never watch it willingly again. I started hating it within a few minutes, when Jones is blowed up in a noo-cue-lar explosion and rides a freaking refrigerator from launch to touchdown. How convenient that it was lead-lined. It was good to see Karen Allen, but she's just the Bitchy Ex-Wife for her entire set.
Cate Blanchett as the psychic Pinko was just...I don't know. The giant ants, the obligatory Tarzan moment...I don't see Spielberg or Lucas ever committing to film anything that's worth a shit for the remainder of their careers.
That said, Lucas is dead to me. I used to be a devoted "Star Wars" geek. I got the books, the toys, the first-run of "Star Wars: The Role-Playing Game." I even endured several months of reading the entire series of "New Jedi Order" novels. But that was then.
I skipped the animated "Clone Wars" flick. Knew it would suck. Apparently I was right.
Don't look anytime soon for any "Star Wars" book reviews.
Monday, October 6, 2008
Another bleedin' blog?!
Yeah.
A friend of mine got me thinking about doing this, because of his own blog:
http://scorethefilm.blogspot.com/
He's a movie freak, in the truest sense of the term. He lives and breathes movies; has a database in his head of composers, directors, producers, and actors; and every weekend I'm over at his place watching stuff I'd never seen before. We've seen great, so-so, and utter crap all in the space of a weekend--and sometimes in one movie.
So. What he's doing with movies, I'd like to do with books. It'll span genres--horror, drama, spies, fantasy, sci-fi--and my favorite authors: Roger Zelazny, George R. R. Martin, Jim Butcher, Mercedes Lackey, Raymond Chandler, and more.
I don't want to just write about the books, though; I want to look at the worlds and "rules" their characters live in and with--how magic is treated, how it works, and like that.
A friend of mine got me thinking about doing this, because of his own blog:
http://scorethefilm.blogspot.com/
He's a movie freak, in the truest sense of the term. He lives and breathes movies; has a database in his head of composers, directors, producers, and actors; and every weekend I'm over at his place watching stuff I'd never seen before. We've seen great, so-so, and utter crap all in the space of a weekend--and sometimes in one movie.
So. What he's doing with movies, I'd like to do with books. It'll span genres--horror, drama, spies, fantasy, sci-fi--and my favorite authors: Roger Zelazny, George R. R. Martin, Jim Butcher, Mercedes Lackey, Raymond Chandler, and more.
I don't want to just write about the books, though; I want to look at the worlds and "rules" their characters live in and with--how magic is treated, how it works, and like that.
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