it's not the same moon in the sky

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.

I saw the movie! I'm just going to bullet point everything that comes to mind because coherent reviews are some way beyond me at this point.

( spoilers spoiling for a fight )

ETA: Someone on FFA caught an interview with the writers. Again, SPOILERS: http://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/195638.html?thread=1072564278#cmt1072564278

The story of the women's history museum which mysteriously transformed (via the process, often contentious in British life, of getting planning permission) into a sensationalist-looking Jack the Ripper museum is making its way around the world. Here's a few interesting links:

- The Guardian: Jack the Ripper's victims deserve to be commemorated. But like this?
- jesuswasbatman: Fisking the Jack the Ripper Museum
- 38 Degrees petition to Tower Hamlets Council: Celebrate Suffragettes Not Serial Killers
- Protest at the museum opening on Tuesday 4th August! Women's history is not Jack the Ripper!

Other things:

- Jacqueline Wilson has written a new take on What Katy Did.
- Twitter, unable to grasp that endless growth might not be possible or desirable, considers being more like Facebook.
- arcadiaego informs me of the existence of a longstanding fan project at read_lotr_aloud, where a small group of fans have spent most of the last decade building up a chapter-by-chapter audiobook. Sean Astin even reads the first section! Is anyone aware of other projects like this?
- ladysisyphus has an epic post on The Blair Witch Project and the movies that tried to emulate its impact without really understanding it. So delicious to see a good chunk of horror meta on LJ!
- In other news, shoestring film production company Mansfield Dark have come up with a beautiful 12-minute shadow puppet version of Count Magnus by M.R. James. You can see the trailer here and also find a link to buy the DVD, which comes with a lovely piece of art on the slipcase. Mine arrived this morning, to my considerable delight. The Mansfield Dark guys are both talented and ingenious, making everything from this gorgeousness to comedy to LGBT thrillers, so go check them out.
- A friend recommended browser extension FB Purity as a solution to the man ways in which Facebook is annoying. I haven't installed it yet, but perhaps some of you feel like trying it too.

Okay, so here are some bullet-pointed thoughts in lieu of a coherent review. It's one of those weird movies where I really enjoyed the whole experience but still have a lot of criticisms, and on rewatching I'll probably still enjoy the character moments but feel it has mixed success as an entry in a series. Remember, I critque because I love...

( spoilers abound and will presumably abound in the comments )

I'm becoming a cliche of myself with all this "I'll post more often/*weeks of tumbleweeds*" stuff, but I've been both busy and run-down, which is always a sucky combination. In happier news, though, I've finally seen the last three Harry Potter movies. Yeah, I know, but better late than never. :P

I haven't read the books since Deathly Hallows was published, so I figure I'm not going to notice everything that changed/went missing, but there were certain character moments I was happy to see done justice (Dumbledore and Harry going after that Horcrux, for instance - one of the more disturbing moments in canon and very well played in the film), and others I was equally happy to see skipped (that business with the Dursleys at the start of HBP always struck me as mean; it's no loss). 

I did chafe (as I have since seeing OotP) at the lack of Snape flashbacks. It just doesn't work to have Snape go, "I'M the Half Blood Prince!" at the end, you know? Especially when it never gets explained what that means, and the reveal was a high point of the book. They just barely skimmed the thing with Lily and it would've been nice to see further into the origins of Snape's odd, resentful nature, and the connections between him and the Potters.

The other major omission, to my mind, was the backstory about Dumbledore. Maybe I missed something, but they seem to have barely mentioned Grindlewald/his life-defining relationship with Dumbledore, and the whole Dark Side of Dumbledore got reduced to a brief mention of his sister without really explaining how he could be said to have let her down. I did very much enjoy the argument between Snape and Dumbledore over the latter's "fattening Harry for slaughter"(?). Maybe the filmmakers felt this alone served the "Dumbledore should be seen to have flaws" need, but I felt this was more about his ruthlessness and less about the things from his past that were guilt-inducingly formative.

Anyway, I really want to re-watch the series again, and above all to re-read the books. I only had the full HP fandom experience in the run-up to/after the publication of OotP, and I feel a combination of that "OMG HARRY POTTER IS OVER AND I AM TEAR-STAINED" thing that swept fandom last year, and the desire to have HP discussions with more people. It seems like HP meta has pretty much died except for the odd thread on f-fa, but if there was a re-read going on, a la the vc_media Vampire Chronicles re-read, I'd love to be in on it.... 

There were lots of little funny (nice change after the grimness of OotP), sweet and badass character moments, and