freckles_and_doubt | why is it that...

...seeing a newspaper billboard with the headline "RANGERS LOOT CRASHED HELICOPTER" makes me think vaguely, "But I thought rangers had to be a Good alignment"? (Obviously, because I'm hopelessly D&D imprinted and have no truck with Third Ed. My first ever character was a half-elven Ranger. Does that make me a bad person?)
... the phrase "make this story more accessible to today's audience and introduce a new generation to her work", applied to the filming of Susan Cooper's amazing, incredible, brilliant YA Arthurian fantasy novel The Dark Is Rising, gives me a cold, sinking feeling? Will Stanton has "a bit more drama to deal with than in the book"? Additional special effects sequences involving snakes? A love interest? And the death-knell of adaptations: Will Stanton is now American. Not even the presence of Christopher Ecclestone can save this - it's going to be Earthsea all over again. Those of you who share my fondness for Cooper's dark, edgy, perfectly-balanced and beautifully controlled narratives may wish to join me in shunning this film like the plague-pit it is almost certain to be. I could cry. This is such an atmospheric novel, and so many of its events and elements would translate beautifully to screen in the hands of a half-way decent director, preferably British. The current director may claim that "the spine and spirit of the story remain", but he lies. It'll be gutted and its back broken, and then they'll make it dance. To hip-hop. Gah.
...the universe has to follow a post-glandular Bad Day of exhaustion and nausea by hitting me with a flat tyre on the way home? Three days before payday, which means I can't afford to have the damned thing fixed until Friday? Dramatically flat, too - loud "crump" noise and instantaneous bumpy limping from my poor Mermaid. On the upside, not only was it not actually raining at the time (a near miracle given the current weather), but an extremely nice man stopped and said "need a hand?" about two and a half seconds after I'd stomped round from the driver's side to survey the corpse and give vent to a heartfelt "Bollocks!" I'm perfectly capable of changing a wheel, but the initial nut-loosening bit tends to be a bit beyond my strength, particularly given my gimpy arm and current state of health. Yay chivalrous men.

Now I shall console myself by ignoring the pile of marking currently demanding my attention, and re-reading The Dark Is Rising while mentally plotting how I'd film it. Tchah. Amateurs.

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Oh noooo! Not Dark Is Rising being mucked with... (insert many sad emoticons here). I_love_ those books.

Hope you manage to get some rest to beat the gladular misbehaviour, btw.

Thak.

On a totally different topic, a student really annoyed me earlier, so I decided to surf the net to calm down. You've got lots of interesting links I've never followed, so I chosen Tom Cruise is Nuts. I laughed till I cried. Thanks :D

At last! an actual use for Tom Cruise! I hope you have overcome the student-rage and are feeling Better About Life.

It does seem particularly sacreligious. The Hollywood rule seems to be that the better a book is, the worse the adaptation will be. Or maybe it's just the contrast - all Hollywood adaptations are more or less crap, you just notice it more when the original is worthwhile.

Term ends this week. One more day of lectures! then There Shall Be Rest. Mostly, other than marking and mad bunny-threatening.

I feel a great disturbance in the force, as if a thousand voices cried out, and were just as suddenly silenced.

I always hoped DiR wouldn't be picked up because I couldn't bear the mutilation, but it looks worse than I'd feared.

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The Dark is, in fact, rising