W

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	From: mordicai	Date: July 2nd, 2007 08:43 pm (UTC)		(link)

oh, phew, for a second i thought you were talking about the subtle knife & i was like....THEY MUST BE GOOD.

	From: scythrop	Date: July 3rd, 2007 02:09 am (UTC)		(link)

Oh who cares about those books, these are sacred scriptures we're talking about!

	From: mordicai	Date: July 3rd, 2007 12:09 pm (UTC)		(link)

i read the one with the greenman on the cover?

	From: scythrop	Date: July 3rd, 2007 01:31 pm (UTC)		(link)

Green Witch. That one holds the sequence together and ties up a few loose ends before the finale (she didn't write the first one with a series in mind) but it's probably the weakest one. Please read The Dark is Rising or The Grey King. Did Jenny read them?

	From: mordicai	Date: July 3rd, 2007 03:50 pm (UTC)		(link)

I don't think so?

	From: pravda	Date: July 3rd, 2007 09:31 pm (UTC)		(link)

no, i haven't.

	From: scribble	Date: July 3rd, 2007 12:47 am (UTC)		(link)

omg big guy- i am so with you. this is fucking fucked up right here.

	From: scythrop	Date: July 3rd, 2007 02:08 am (UTC)		(link)

Majorly, dude. Majorly.

	From: kellianne	Date: July 3rd, 2007 01:22 am (UTC)		(link)

that is completely ridiculous. how can they change the entire book like that? that book was the first i had ever heard of the Thames!!! it's impossible that it be american! good grief.

	From: kellianne	Date: July 3rd, 2007 01:25 am (UTC)		(link)

ah. he's a AMERICAN living in ENGLAND. why?

	From: scythrop	Date: July 3rd, 2007 02:07 am (UTC)		(link)

Noooo clue. At first I was like, BUT IT'S THE MATTER OF BRITAIN, and then I read that they just, oh, tossed out the Arthurian aspects—i.e., the ultimate theme/unifying element/cosmic magicalness—altogether, which is just beyond imaginable.

My only thought is that Susan Cooper must have realized how directionless this project was and sabotaged it, with the intention of making it the right way some other time. (I'm sure she sold the film rights long ago, but a boy can dream.)

	From: puzzled_anwen	Date: July 3rd, 2007 12:25 pm (UTC)		(link)

While that is indeed ALL KINDS OF WRONG, it is preferable to some dreadful American actorlet doing a simpering fake British accent (hint to American film/telly program makers, there's no British accent any more than there's an American one!!) which is what could have happened... (NB, this is just as awful the other way round, but I probably wouldn't notice quite so much).

	From: hollowuvula	Date: July 3rd, 2007 03:23 am (UTC)		(link)

That's pretty much how I felt too when I saw the teaser last month. And it didn't even show anything except some hills and some dramatic music.

	From: scythrop	Date: July 3rd, 2007 05:20 am (UTC)		(link)

There's a teaser? I am so out of the loop, obviously. And in this case, happily.

BETRAYED! THIRTY PIECES OF SILVER AND A COLD KISS!

From: ganatronic	Date: July 3rd, 2007 06:43 am (UTC)		(link)

I'm out of the loop. I didn't know this was happening.
I first read this when I was eleven, and I related to Will completely. I was fourteen the third time I read them, and I still imagined myself to be him. So I don't think the age thing to be such a problem. But an American in England? That doesn't work at all. And taking out the "Arthurian" elements will change the substance entirely.

	From: scythrop	Date: July 3rd, 2007 02:09 pm (UTC)		(link)

I think eleven is a more appropriate age for an "awakening," but if that had been the only change I guess I wouldn't have much of a problem with it. But I had heard about the American angle a couple of weeks ago and pretty much dismissed it as an absurd rumor. Completely unfathomable. Removing the Arthurian heart of the sequence just shows they have no intention whatsoever of honoring the books, which makes it easier for me to simply dismiss this whole affair.

	From: i_portrait	Date: July 3rd, 2007 07:31 pm (UTC)		(link)

I can see I have a new series to read!

This is exactly how I felt about the film version of Possession, which is one of my most adored novels ever. Neil LaBute’s deciding to make Roland into a “brash American” just so he could cast his homey Aaron Eckhart ignored not only EVERYTHING about one of the major characters but also how much of the narrative drive of the story came from Roland’s not just being English, but being the SORT of Englishman he was. It also guaranteed that I’d never bother to see something so compromised. And Neil LaBute. Neil LaBute! Possession! WTF??!! Ironically, I thought Eckhart would have made a decent-enough Fergus Wolfe.

Thank you for adding me, BTW.

	From: scythrop	Date: July 3rd, 2007 11:12 pm (UTC)		(link)

Yeah, I remember S____ banning any discussion of that Possession film. We never saw it.

If the "film version" of TDIR gets more people to read the books, then maybe it is a good thing? Somehow? Anyway, I bet you would love them.

	From: hazel_rah	Date: July 3rd, 2007 07:43 pm (UTC)		(link)

what a drag, since it has both lovejoy AND doctor who in it. i can't say i'm surprised though... filming a version of the dark is rising that is true to the book would be nearly impossible these days. the aspects of the story that make it so great are completely anathema to today's concept of a children's fantasy movie. the lion the witch and the wardrobe was far more amenable to that concept and they couldn't even manage to make a passable film out of that, so there was just no chance with the dark is rising.

	From: scythrop	Date: July 3rd, 2007 11:16 pm (UTC)		(link)

What, kids today don't appreciate epic tension, slowly-revealed symbols, sense of place, and interior turmoil? Must there be a CGI talking stump in every frame?

You're right, of course. Some books were never meant to become films.