Rob Lowe left the West Wing for this?
Okay, I have to admit that I was intrigued when I heard about TNT's miniseries Salem's Lot. First, it's about vampires and other supernatural beings. I used to scorn stories about such things until a few years ago when I realized that much deeper stories could be told through this medium when I discovered Buffy. Second, both Donald Sutherland and Rugtar Hauer are in it. They were both in Joss Whedon's movie version Buffy the Vampire Slayer years ago. There is a certain factor of humor in this if you've seen the movie, and read Joss's accounts of the nightmare it became. In fact, a lot of his comments about Rutgar were similar to those made by the Alias people in the Phase One commentary--you know, how he takes a long time circling before he comes in for a landing, etc.
But a half hour into the movie and I find that I can hardly get beyond the pretentiousness of the Rob Lowe voiceovers. They are so pedestrian and cliched, it's honestly quite painful to listen to. Yeah, I'm am remembering that I'm not that big of fan of Mr. Lowe's.
I'm getting the itch! The one I get after I've been out of school for a certain amount of time. I've officially been out of school for a month now, and I'm starting to go crazy. I reread in one day C.S. Lewis' Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold, which singlehandedly launched my growing obsession with mythology. I've been in front of my computer all damn day long researching the oringinal Cupid and Psyche myth that Lewis reworked. After beginning to understand the classic version of the myth I'm am coming to see what a fucking genius writer Lewis was. This is his best work, by far. I grew up reading The Chronicles of Narnia over and over again, but even that doesn't come close to the type of writing Lewis does in Faces. I want to write like that, dammit. Just how he reworked the elements of the myth to create such a metaphor about the different kinds of love: selfish love, jealous love, and pure love, while keeping the central impact of the classic myth makes me so amazed.
I started reading Macbeth again a few nights ago. Lord knows it's been at least two years since the last time I read it. I took a break from Shakespeare after too much crammed into too short of time at one point in my life. Ever since I read about James Marsters's supposed funding for his Macbeth film project, I've been eager to go back and refresh my memory of the original to compare to the vision he has talked about for how he wants to write his film. I have to go dig around and find that interview from a few years ago where he talks about it when I'm finished reading. Goodness knows he can carry off the acting part. Just watch the last seven minutes of Beneath Me: redemption, souls, sins, forgivness, and religious symbolism all acted on network television through Mr. Marster's sheer brilliance.