it's not the same moon in the sky

Things have been complicated, but I notice a couple of people have added me recently and wanted to post something to reassure you that this journal isn't abandoned!

Historic, beautiful moment here today, folks. Absolutely overwhelmed. <3

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/jul/09/mps-vote-to-extend-same-sex-marriage-to-northern-ireland

The only way it can be stopped is for the DUP and Sinn Fein to return to government in Stormont - you know, the thing they've refused to do for the last two and a half years. And even if the DUP were to pettily go back for a week just to thwart this progress, they can't do that unless Sinn Fein also go back. And I don't think Sinn Fein are about to let them do that.

For the first time in my life, I'm an honest-to-god real human being with more legal rights than a bundle of cells. Everyone I know can get married. And it feels pretty damn good.

Finally, belatedly watched the film adaptation of The Dark Tower - really a mashup of bits from various novels, plus some stuff that IIRC never happened in the books, presumably needed to hold the rest together. I was relaxed about it being a rather free adaptation, and only began to worry a bit when I heard that they'd gutted it in editing; it seemed like one of those productions where people can't agree what it's about and, as R put it earlier, they settle that by making sure there's as little of it as possible. I've often advocated for shorter running times (behold the economy of a good 1940s film, and imagine it being applied to much of today's output), but an hour and a half was both more of this than I wanted and far less than it would have needed for us to actually care about the characters.

The biggest problem is that this needed to be a TV series, and fortunately there is an Amazon series in the works. Currently IMDb lists it for 2020, but that must be when production begins rather than an airdate, because all the news stories that reference it are "It's not dead!" ones. (I'm giving this fandom a tag in the hope that we will end up with a TV series worth discussing, and because it would be fun to re-read the books and talk about them.) Anyway, TDT is clearly a book series that is made for TV rather than film: like Game of Thrones before it, it needs and deserves time to spread out and appreciate its expansive world, deep charactersation and accumulation of lore, much of which echoes Stephen King's other work. Also, I think that the appeal of his writing lies very much in his style: he can be breathtakingly crude, colloquial in a way that rings true, and touching, sometimes all on the same page. Tone is a hard thing to translate to the screen when long passages of the books have Roland alone, but I believe it can be done.

The film is trying, in both senses. Idris Elba is a good choice for Roland; he's a man who can convey a wearying personal history with a look. But what we get of that history is so slim that even the litany of gunslingers, though moving in the books, rings as cheesy here when used to tie together the fact that our two barely-known protagonists have shit to work through re: their dead fathers. Though I have to say that even as a fan of the books who weirdly enjoyed that aspect of the books, it's also a very unfortunate cultural moment for an American film to have a man handing a boy a gun and telling him that working with it will make him feel better. A lot of emotional work has to be done by that scene, and the one where Roland comforts Jake about his mother's violent death. Otherwise, it all feels like it's on fast-forward. We don't get any visceral sense of why we should care about the Tower - yes, we're told our world is threatened along with the multiverse, but they tell us that in every other SFF film.

A TV series will have the chance to let the story breathe, and above all to develop the sense of Roland's absolute obsession with the Tower, and the sense of looming existential threat. It can slowly unfold the sense of a world that has "moved on"; a post-apocalyptic society grinding to a halt, where everyone has some degree of radiation poisoning (one enigmatic hint the film didn't have time to explore), where scarcity is absolute. The film shows Roland with a belt full of bullets, but part of the genius of the books was to make every bullet count, because it has been scavenged for, and because firing it now will mean not having it later, and having no way of knowing when or if there'll be more. And that's why Roland can be so staggered by simple things like Coca Cola, or aspirin; his body has never known refined sugar or modern medicine.

I think that shows like Preacher, Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones all have qualities of atmosphere, tone, worldbuilding and production values that would make for a really good adaptation of The Dark Tower. It doesn't have to be identical to the books, but it does need to import what made them compelling.

Hey, Dreamwidth community mods: turns out DW supports a community guidelines entry: you can specify an URL where your comm rules are, and ensure that the URL is shown to people on joining! I know that on vc_media we've been concerned for a while that going to the profile to find out what's what isn't at all intuitive to people who've never been on LiveJournal/Dreamwidth before. I'm creating a sticky post at the moment, but being able to display it to new members is particularly useful.

You can find the option in your comm's Account Settings page, in the Community tab.

Aren't we all, in a way?

(source)

( The joy of it is that it's a Reader's Digest Condensed Book... )

Part I is here.

( Read more... )

Finally got around to seeing Macbeth (2015) and loved it. There are little things like the children singing to Duncan which don't add anything to the plot, and to the best of my recollection aren't in the play, but add enormously to it. It's very particular in its sense of location: not a specific place in Scotland, so much as the atmosphere and emotional sense of place. Actually, what it reminds me most of, in that way and in terms of the quality of the cinematography, is A Field in England.

Tried an episode of Taboo but it didn't grab either of us, but tomorrow I'll have to see the new episode of Sherlocl. Obviously I wasn't wild about last week's, but I am curious about what the writers are up to and I'd like to see if it's more engaging.

Quiet week post-wise because country slipping (hurtling joyfully, truth be told) into fascism. Always awkward when that happens. Shitposting on my new Tumblr created for the purpose of alternately venting and cheering myself up will continue until morale improves. And we made major headway with the application this week, which has kept us sane.

Meanwhile, I started the annual push to keep The October Country running smoothly for the duration of autumn and particularly October, and as usual Now Winter Comes Slowly is quietly ramping up as well. I'm always fascinated by trying to get under the skin of what works and what doesn't on there - sometimes you can feel like you have your finger on its pulse, other times, it's a mystery why something does or does not appeal.

It's getting me into the Hallowe'en mood, anyway, as is the fact that in the last couple of days I've actually been able to smell that it's autumn, which is no small thing when you're nearly always congested...

What's going to die out in the next twenty years because the younger generations simply have no attachment to it?

I've been reading this Reddit thread on and off for the past 48 hours; towards the end it repeats a lot as more people just come in going, "cursive" or "cable TV" over and over, but the first, say, 10 subthreads are fascinating. I think my favourite is the wedding china one (I never knew what its historical significance was re: women's personal assets being untouchable in the event of a bankruptcy), but I like the thing about dining rooms too. Certainly, our dining room's dining function is a long way behind the fact that it's also a library whose table is good for working on and using for jigsaws...

The thing with high school reunions is interesting too: increasingly, the difficulty is not in keeping up with people from your past, but avoiding them online...

Finished:
Oscar Wilde and the Candlelight Murders by Gyles Brandreth - This was very satisfying and fun: essentially, if you want to hang out with Oscar Wilde and his friends and solve mysteries, this is the book (and series) for you. And who doesn't want to do that? I'll continue to read these as I spot secondhand copies.

Doctor Occult - Dave Louapre, Dan Sweetman (Vertigo Visions, 1/1) - I hadn't come across Doctor Occult before (appallingly, I still haven't finished reading The Books of Magic; if he's an an issue I have read then I don't recall him), but it turns out he's another old DC character like the Sandman who was resurrected in a new form by Neil Gaiman. Doctor Occult and his partner Rose Psychic are, in this incarnation, aspects of the same being, and when Rose disappears, the Doctor must find her in a world of subconscious desires.

So it's a metaphysical, psychosexual journey where the plot is more character-driven than an ongoing series would demand - in other words, the sort of thing that Vertigo Visions one-shots were made for. The real-world background stuff shows its age a little, in that the gender fluidity of Occult/Rose is counterpointed by a trans interviewee on a TV talk show in a way that's played for 'extreme' value (they're a preacher and have transitioned more than once).

Overall, the comic's typical of Vertigo's attempts to push boundaries in storytelling at the time, and if you love 90s-style pencilling and colouring, the art will certainly be your bag. There's also a hilariously pithy summing up of the characters' adventures up to that point inside the front cover, which makes me want to dig around in our collection to see where else they show up.

Reading next:

A handful of DP7 comics we found in a charity shop.