BigWords
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Posts posted by BigWords
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The Avengers film has a rough release date, and that's about it. Oh, and Samuel L. Jackson is signed up for (I think) eight or nine films, so he should be popping up in just about every Marvel film until the release of Avengers to build some continuity. There is still no word on who major players will be - it's unlikely that any of the cast from Incredible Hulk will return, despite rumors which insists some of them will.
There's an actual Clash Of The Titans film in the pipeline, using CGI instead of stop-motion. I so want to see how they handle the effects.
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My problems with most vampire shows (and, for that matter, books) containing romance between vampires and humans still rests on the fact that it seems icky. The immortal guys wander the panet for decades (or centuries) then they decide to shack up with teenagers? True Blood managed to avoid some of the usual tropage, but there still seems something odd about them wanting to spend a lot of time with women who (to them, at least) are no more than children. The squick factor keeps me from getting involved enough to see their relationships as anything more than a passing fad for the immortal characters. And did I mention the ewww involved?
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Welcome to the BCF.
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Awesome story.
I, unfortunately, don't have anything to compare with The Wheel Of Time urge, but I do pick up a book now and again simply because of the cover.
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The level of insanity / paranoia / scheming etc. which in imbued into the character by performers varies. Some productions are very tight readings of the script, while others layer in the crazy aspects of the character with a ridiculous amount of hammy acting. The RSC tend (overall) to be good when it comes to the major plays, but smaller companies can be hit or miss.
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Iron Man rumors are increasing, but rather than focusing on Scarlet Johansson everyone seems intent on picking up on a possible War Machine spin-off. It would be the next step towards Marvel's ultimate goal of an Avengers film - we still need Captain America to hit cinemas first for that to happen. The casting for Captain America is taking place now, and a proper announcement should be made in the next couple of months hopefully.
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Welcome to the BCF.
Two floors stacked full of books... I wouldn't know where to begin.
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The film Hannibal Rising does stick pretty close to the book Univerze, only as usual, the book is better
IIRC the book was written because the films were so popular they wanted another film for the franchise.
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Once or twice last year I rolled a dice to help me choose. That was fun.
All major life decisions should be made by rolling dice, cutting a deck of cards or flipping a coin.
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And when some characters speak as though they're reciting an essay.
Sums up a lot of Ayn Rand's work. And some Heinlein. Oh, and lest we forget L. Ron Hubbard... That's more to do with authorial politicism of their work and a serious lack of editing, rather than merely bad writing. It's annoying either way, of course.
The most irritating stylistic tic I've picked up on in the last few months is the tendency for some books (both in and out of series work) to leave major plot points hanging mid-way, as if that is going to convince a publisher to greenlight a sequel. I'm not bothered by minor plot details being ignored, but when something which the story absolutely hinges on is disregarded it can feel as if the book is unfinished. Works by more than one author (co-written books from big publishers specifically) tend to do this more than was customary even a decade ago.
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And I think it's a very 'male' play. A good one for introducing boys and male theatre/Shakespeare phobics generally to the delights of a good play. What I mean by that is that the dynamics of power, the ambition, the doing what ever it takes are often seen as 'male' characteristics. And there are no sloppy love scenes either!
Actually, I would counter that by saying Titus Andronicus is the one (dubiously attributed) Shakespeare play which is the most likely to appeal to teenage boys.
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It has been a few years since I've seen a performance, but the one thing which has always bothered me about Macbeth is the relative speed in which the play unfolds. It feels like there is a scene missing, or at the very least several small bits and pieces which aren't there. Compared to Richard III (which feels epic) I never got the impression that there was as much space given over to all of the moments which build up to the ending - especially because of the way that Macbeth is depicted as either acting insane or actually insane (it isn't as clear cut as some adaptations play it out).
The old Penguin edition isn't bad, but the cover isn't entirely to my liking. Project Gutenberg at least had the decency to keep the spelling consistent with the original text (it's meant to contain weirdness - or wyrdness
- in the spelling), while the manga did nothing for me.Shakespeare works in the style Classics: Illustrated used, but the cuts made to the text are absolutely barbaric.So of course my big problem with Shakespeare is to understand all scenes and what actually happens in them. Sometimes it -
I can't speak for anyone else on this, but I have always been led by the text when it comes to the way a character speaks. You should be able to discern between regional variances and idiomatic speech patterns through the way the character is written, especially if there are clues within the dialogue to indicate the level of education and other details. My interpretation of some characters differs greatly from their use in, for example, film. There is a limit to this, especially in casts which are greater than six or seven characters, as overlaps between dialect can 'merge' characters in my mind. I had a horrendous time trying to wade through Lord Of The Rings despite Tolkien's hard work which went into creating it. I can easily visualize most of the locations now, but I'm still not entirely sure I agree 100% with the film.It's interesting to see how you all flesh out characters - whether it's visual, behaviour beyond the book or how they'd speak, for instance. -
Welcome to the BCF.
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Welcome to the BCF.
It's always good to meet (as it were) people who work in a magistrates court... Y'know... Just in case.
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For the Scottish day-to-day experience you will probably be best looking at the various books on coal mining, fishing, football, jam (Dundonians have something of a reputation there, along with the manufacture of jute), textiles (again, Scots were sent to India to assist in setting up and working the looms)... It really depends if you want books where you follow the life of an individual, or if you are interested in the larger social picture, as plenty of titles have been published which go into considerable detail on specific aspects of Scottish life. The museum nearest to me has some books of local interest, so asking a librarian (or someone in a museum bookshop) to find these kinds of titles should throw up a considerable list of appropriate books.
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If it could be guaranteed a degree of respect for the text, a decent budget, the actors to remain throughout the length of the project and for the cinematography to be top notch, then I would have to say the Flashman books. In chronological order, two hour long episodes, international filming (like the Sharpe series) and broadcast in HD. Not much to ask, is it?
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The only thing I can remember from trying to read the book is
the fact that Melanie was pregnant for nearly two years (going from the fighting which was taking place during the civil war as described)
. I've struggled with the text a couple of times, and it doesn't help that the film (which I watched to try and get into the story another way) ran on for hours.
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Like 30% off on all books in my case for being a loyal customer for the last 16 years
I get anything from 20% off up to 50% off depending on how long a book has been sitting around. I've even had books given to me, because the owner knew he would never be able to sell the title. Face it, nobody these days cares one iota about bound collections of obscure magazines, so passing them off to the geek who keeps bugging him for strange material is (in his eyes) a solid way of keeping someone coming back on a regular basis.
Another feature i have noticed in my local bookshop is a section where you can order books that are not in stock or rare.And the retro-futuristic computers which allegedly tell you which books are in stock, though spectacularly fail to get updated on anything remotely resembling a regular schedule. You have to admire the tenacity of the high street bookshop chains - they've survived the expansion of the internet into their core business model for a reason.
I've ordered books from a bricks and mortar bookshop before (several dozen times) precisely because I know the title won't arrive coverless / inkstained / chewed up / water-damaged. And if you are well-enough known by the guy who runs a small bookshop, you'll be updated on editions of books as well, and pointed in the direction of the best edition. It does mean I often get duplicates of a title, but in nearly every case it has been to upgrade my collection.
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Harry Potter, The Wheel of Time, The Belgariad, The Lord of The Rings, The Shannara books, A Song of Ice and Fire, Les Miserables, Brothers Karamazov are a few to give an example.
Handy that you mention HP, because that is the defining book I turn to when thinking of multiple characters being instantly familiar. JK Rowling, despite anything that her writing failed to accomplish in coherence of detail (there are no set rules for Quidditch, yet there are 'guides' to the game online, mangling the text to fit where needed) she does manage to make all the characters live and breathe on the page. I was surprised at how easily I managed to remember all of the characters, but I suppose that having a grounding in books with large casts from an early age prepared my brain to cope with that style of writing.
Similarly set, the Gem books - or Magnet books, I would have to check that (handily reprinting all of the Greyfriars stories) - have a large cast in comparison to most of the juvenile texts I have read (I'm using the word "juvenile" as a description, not an insult), though you should be able to pick out any character with ease. It helps that they have a limited setting, interact frequently, and have unique voices. That, more than anything, is the decider for me. I've read material which sounds sameish, no matter which character is speaking, and authorial intrusion into the narrative (where the voice of the character is used as propaganda) is a killer for large casts. It often comes across as blahblahblah.
Stephen King does large casts well. Frank Herbert... Not so much, though the Dune books span vast timeframes as well as having large casts of characters.
A question for those who find it hard to remember which characters are which - do you make use of Wiki's, or character biographies online? I've needed to check online whilst reading some books, and they are helpful at jogging my memory, though the errors which creep in are often perplexing in their nature.
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Has anyone noticed that coffee tables are getting smaller, while coffee table books are getting bigger?
In fact if you think about it, thicker books are probably cheaper to print because you need to buy larger quantities of paper thus giving you greater purchasing power...???!!! There must be a logic to it somewhere!I have several British comic books from the 1940s, and I can state with certainty that thickness and page count are two different things, so when you say "lager quantities of paper" you should really add "certain types of paper" - one hokey old Buck Jones comic I have is forty pages long, yet is thicker than this month's issue of Empire magazine. The cost of paper back in the forties was weighed heavily in favor of the woodpulp paper (which is why so few pulp magazines, annuals and storybooks survive in any condition) whilst higher quality printing (books, primarily) survives in relative abundance.
At the moment it is cheaper to buy certain paper stocks from virgin sources (for all sorts of reasons) than it is to use recycled paper, though a certain number of publishers do use recycled paper for their books. There is a difference in both feel and weight, mitigated somewhat when binding and hardcovers are added to the finished book... There are thousands of reasons why books are seemingly changing at the moment, and I'm certain that similar discussions to this were being held in smoking rooms and gentlemens clubs a hundred or so years ago.
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The official(?) Black Museum books (two I am aware of, maybe there were more) are big enough (and concise enough) to cover a lot of cases that aren't as well known as the massive news story cases - Jack the Ripper type murders are given space as well, but there are smaller, more intimate crimes discussed as well. The photographs are well laid out in the pages as well. There was a long running part-work magazine in the UK back in the seventies (True Murder Something? Real Crime?) which was collected into a few oversized volumes in the eighties. One book runs to about 1000 pages of crimes, so I have no idea how many issues of the magazine were printed.
Those types of books can be too bitty for some - reading condensed versions of the cases gives the erronious impression that a lot of them were easy to solve. They are useful if you are hunting for general, rather than specific, information from a time period.
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And nobody has suggested William Wordsworth? Strange imagery, complex thoughts, looong poems... He's one of the few poets whose work I return to with regularity. Not in the same category by any means, I do like Ogden Nash as well - both of those poets have crossed over to the wider reading public, and anyone who is unsure of reading poems would do well to look out for their work.
Book to film / TV...
in Music / TV / Films
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I had heard of Celtic Films, but they didn't seem to have enough financial clout to pull it off properly. It needs to be epic - if you have read the books you'll know there is a lot of big scenes which would need considerable cost management - and a (relatively) small outfit would be overwhelmed very, very quickly.
Raven, you're more likely to see a sequel to The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen than you are to see a period adap of War Of The Worlds. You can thank Stephen Spielberg and Tom Cruise for killing any hope we have of that.