The End is Nigh
I can't remember much about what I did for the latter half of this week. Little of import happened at work. I need to start documenting procedures before I leave, as well as implementing a load of audio that keeps getting delayed because I haven't had the facilities to implement it properly, but I really can't motivate myself. How can you care about a job that you haven't cared about for a long time when you know that you're leaving soon? It takes a better man than I.
Over the past five or so days, I read Watchmen, with the aim of finishing it before seeing the movie this weekend. I finished it off last night, and enjoyed it immensely, so I saw the movie today.
Obviously, I didn't enjoy it as much as the graphic novel. It's a strange situation, seeing a film adaptation of a book you have very recently read; everything becomes comparative. I did the same with the first Harry Potter movie, for some reason, and in the case of that, I was nit-picky about the characters and locations not being the same as I'd imagined them when I read the book. Not a lot that can be done about that, and it's stupid to hold it against a movie because it doesn't conform to how you thought it should look. In the case of Watchmen, it's based on a graphic novel, where everything is already visual, and it sticks to that visualisation pretty well. It still manages to deviate from my expectations, however; in this case, how I perceived the characters and the story is different from how Snyder portrays them. Often only subtly, but sometimes less so. What is definitely lost is the novel's political duality, a conflict between nationalism and liberalism, so what became a fairly strong statement about humanity becomes a movie about people in costumes hitting people and generally being a bit badass, which just happens to have a pretty intricate story. Nothing particularly wrong with that, and it would be remiss of me to say that I didn't enjoy it. I just feel that it stuck closely to the source material in some respects, but not in any of the important ones, so something is clearly missing. Plus, the slightly altered ending didn't sit particularly well with me. Sure, the book's ending is itself kind of absurd, but I can't see what was gained by changing it; the movie's ending is no more believable. Also: Really naff sex scene.
I'm almost finished a short track for a short game. Need to add the finishing touches tonight and get some feedback, and then I'll post it here. Next up is 15 minutes of noise, times four. I have no idea how I'm going to do this..
Over the past five or so days, I read Watchmen, with the aim of finishing it before seeing the movie this weekend. I finished it off last night, and enjoyed it immensely, so I saw the movie today.
Obviously, I didn't enjoy it as much as the graphic novel. It's a strange situation, seeing a film adaptation of a book you have very recently read; everything becomes comparative. I did the same with the first Harry Potter movie, for some reason, and in the case of that, I was nit-picky about the characters and locations not being the same as I'd imagined them when I read the book. Not a lot that can be done about that, and it's stupid to hold it against a movie because it doesn't conform to how you thought it should look. In the case of Watchmen, it's based on a graphic novel, where everything is already visual, and it sticks to that visualisation pretty well. It still manages to deviate from my expectations, however; in this case, how I perceived the characters and the story is different from how Snyder portrays them. Often only subtly, but sometimes less so. What is definitely lost is the novel's political duality, a conflict between nationalism and liberalism, so what became a fairly strong statement about humanity becomes a movie about people in costumes hitting people and generally being a bit badass, which just happens to have a pretty intricate story. Nothing particularly wrong with that, and it would be remiss of me to say that I didn't enjoy it. I just feel that it stuck closely to the source material in some respects, but not in any of the important ones, so something is clearly missing. Plus, the slightly altered ending didn't sit particularly well with me. Sure, the book's ending is itself kind of absurd, but I can't see what was gained by changing it; the movie's ending is no more believable. Also: Really naff sex scene.
I'm almost finished a short track for a short game. Need to add the finishing touches tonight and get some feedback, and then I'll post it here. Next up is 15 minutes of noise, times four. I have no idea how I'm going to do this..