Recs: Books that are movies/ Other stuff
We Need to Talk About Kevin
The movie is great and if you watch it for no other reason than Ezra Miller, I wouldn’t blame you because that’s what I did. But the movie is also good. Uncomfortable and disturbing, probably. I liked it. I can still say this after reading the book and finding it much better, which is saying something, I think. There are major events in the book that give more insight into the characters and are important to the story being told that the movie ignores--time constraints I would imagine. For the most part, the movie gives the definite impression that Kevin was just an evil little shit right out of the womb and did nothing from beginning to end but fuck with his mother just to see what would happen and what made her tick. Which is only sort of true. I’m surprised that, in spite of this obviously expressed opinion of the movie makers, the mother does not come off as more sympathetic than she does in the film. Before I read the book, I kinda hated her. After I read the book, I still didn’t like her, but I understood her, which is important to making a character sympathetic and something that was lacking in the movie. The father in the movie seems more rational about his attitude toward the mother’s fear and dislike of their son than he was in the book. In the book, the man wasn’t stupid really, but he deliberately ignored all evidence that his son was not normal. That there might be something wrong with him more than just everyone in the world is against him. Parents can be stupid in their love for their kids though, so I can see it. One constant in the movie and the book, which I think might not be most peoples’ reaction to it, is that the character Kevin was my favorite character. More so in the book because more fleshed out, which did not make him or his motives more clear, but did make him more interesting. I actually think that he loved his mother. That he may have even done some of the horrible things he did because he loved his mother. Which again, leaves me the odd one out there. Most readers of the book--and viewers of the movie--seem to be of two minds. Either the mother was an abusive, selfish bitch who should never have been a mother. Or her son was evil incarnate and nothing she ever did seemed to make a difference. I suggest that the two things are not mutually exclusive. I highly recommend the book and the movie, either for Ezra Miller or in spite of him.
Silence of the Lambs
I know, I know, it’s an old one. We’ve all seen it. I doubt we’ve all read it though, and I love that book. All of those books, in fact. Thomas Harris is a goddamn genius, end of. Hannibal Lecter is iconic and a character worthy of it. One of the few who is not one of the good guys. You’ve got to love that. I like it for all the reasons everyone else likes it, but I also like the love story. There is one, in case you’re wondering or you missed it. The movies--at least after Silence of the Lambs--make it seem obsessive and one-sided. Dr. Lecter, being crazy, is obsessed with Clarice Starling. We’re not sure if he wants to fuck her or eat her, possibly both, but we’re not willing to really think about in which order he would make that happen. Which is the same idea the books give you--I think a shrink even suggests as much in Hannibal (the book)--but unlike in the movies, where they pussed-out and dropped the ball in typical 21st century Hollywood fashion, the books follow through. The love is reciprocated, the relationship consummated. In short, the monster gets the girl. I think they might have even ridden off into the sunset together if Harris had continued for a few more pages. Feelings and desires that are only hinted at for most of The Silence of the Lambs and on into Hannibal actually come together at the end of Hannibal, which is to this day, no matter how many hundreds of novels I’ve read, my favorite ending of all time. I am also recommending that book, too, while I’m here. And anti-reccing the hell out of the movie. Even Anthony Hopkins, who is awesome and still pretty sexy for a guy knocking 80, couldn’t save that piece of shit. I could rant at length about everything wrong with it (and maybe someday I will), but that’s off-topic. Getting back on-topic for a moment, I just finished re-reading The Silence of the Lambs just for the sake of revisiting old friends (or frienemies; what would you call a man who might like to eat your liver?) and was so pleased with it I had to concoct an excuse for me to talk about it. And quote the second part of Hannibal Lecter’s letter to Clarice Starling at the end of it, after he’s escaped, because it is like a love letter, it’s just that smack-in-the-face obvious. So here goes:
“I have windows.
Orion is above the horizon now, and near it Jupiter, brighter than it will ever be again before the year 2000. (I have no intention of telling you the time and how high it is.) But I expect you can see it too. Some of our stars are the same.
Clarice.
Hannibal Lecter”
See what I mean? Uh-huh. He had just told her that he wouldn’t kill her if she kept her distance and didn’t try to find him. He pauses before he adds that part because he didn’t need to add that part. It was gratuitous. He couldn’t help himself, or didn’t want to, or whatever. But it’s awesome and I love the love story in it. Before anyone says anything, yes I’ve seen the new TV show. I like it so far but it also makes me anxious as a fangirl. I don’t like who they have playing Lecter, though he has the accent, sure, but still no. He’s missing something that makes me believe he’s Hannibal Lecter. Also, he’s ugly, which Lecter was not and I find to be petty. Will Graham’s cute, physically and just because he’s looney-tunes, but I watch it every week knowing that in the books, Lecter mutilated his face and he became a reclusive loony. So, it will be interesting to see where they go with it.
_______________________________________
So, that is what I’ve mostly been doing this week.
I considered re-reading The Mists of Avalon to see if I still like it now that I’m not in the 8th grade. Decided I wouldn’t and canned that idea because it’s too damn long to waste that kind of time on. I don’t have the same anti-religious rebellious intellectual mindset I had when I was 14. Nor do I find hints of incest or reluctant threesomes to be all that titillating anymore. I’m probably jaded. It’s okay though, it saves time.
I also had an appointment last Friday to have the stent between my bladder and kidney removed, which was supposed to be my last procedure in all this. However, they found in the x-ray that the stone didn’t break up as it should have, so they gave me some more pills (which make me sick as hell) and made another appointment at the hospital for another operation to remove the kidney stone. Then maybe I can get the stent out. I had a bit of a breakdown today when an estimate of my hospital charges came in the mail and it has been over $5,000 so far, just at the hospital where they’ve been doing the operations. All of this for a fucking kidney stone. Granted, it nearly killed me, but it seems like a really insignificant thing for all the trouble it’s caused. I’m supposed to be getting financial assistance, which is nice because I have nothing and I lost my job when I got sick. I didn’t like the job anyway, but that is certainly not the point.
I really just want to go home. I’ve been told if I had been there, I would have died for sure, which I suppose is supposed to convince me that I really just want to stay here forever on the mountain. Yeah, no. If my current quality of life is anything to go on, death might be preferable (she said tongue-in-cheek). I think I’ll see if I can find Red Dragon while I’m at the library. More Hannibal Lecter might be just the thing to cheer me up. Better than Prozac.
Oh, and while I’m here, if you’ve made it this far, I should probably mention that I’ve made a fic community for The Following, which I have adopted like a puppy as my new fandom to play with. I told myself I wouldn’t, but then I did. I am sensing a pattern here with the sexy serial killers. It’s carrollism and if you’re interested, go join or watch it, ‘kay? At the moment--and for the foreseeable future--it will mostly be moderated and closely guarded by portraitofafool. She also took care of all the layout feng shui over there because she’s brilliant with Photo Shop and I am absolute rubbish at anything more strenuous than photo cropping and Paint. I haven’t seen The Following finale yet, but I’m excited. It’s been a long time since a story on TV excited me. I think I lost that somewhere around season 4 or 5 of Supernatural, which I don’t watch anymore. Wrote a fic already, which I like. Writing another one which is probably twice as long as that first one now and really not even close to being done. It’s nice to have something new, even if I’ll have to stick a pin in it for a while and finish my book after I get done being sick. Which I fully intend to do.
The movie is great and if you watch it for no other reason than Ezra Miller, I wouldn’t blame you because that’s what I did. But the movie is also good. Uncomfortable and disturbing, probably. I liked it. I can still say this after reading the book and finding it much better, which is saying something, I think. There are major events in the book that give more insight into the characters and are important to the story being told that the movie ignores--time constraints I would imagine. For the most part, the movie gives the definite impression that Kevin was just an evil little shit right out of the womb and did nothing from beginning to end but fuck with his mother just to see what would happen and what made her tick. Which is only sort of true. I’m surprised that, in spite of this obviously expressed opinion of the movie makers, the mother does not come off as more sympathetic than she does in the film. Before I read the book, I kinda hated her. After I read the book, I still didn’t like her, but I understood her, which is important to making a character sympathetic and something that was lacking in the movie. The father in the movie seems more rational about his attitude toward the mother’s fear and dislike of their son than he was in the book. In the book, the man wasn’t stupid really, but he deliberately ignored all evidence that his son was not normal. That there might be something wrong with him more than just everyone in the world is against him. Parents can be stupid in their love for their kids though, so I can see it. One constant in the movie and the book, which I think might not be most peoples’ reaction to it, is that the character Kevin was my favorite character. More so in the book because more fleshed out, which did not make him or his motives more clear, but did make him more interesting. I actually think that he loved his mother. That he may have even done some of the horrible things he did because he loved his mother. Which again, leaves me the odd one out there. Most readers of the book--and viewers of the movie--seem to be of two minds. Either the mother was an abusive, selfish bitch who should never have been a mother. Or her son was evil incarnate and nothing she ever did seemed to make a difference. I suggest that the two things are not mutually exclusive. I highly recommend the book and the movie, either for Ezra Miller or in spite of him.
Silence of the Lambs
I know, I know, it’s an old one. We’ve all seen it. I doubt we’ve all read it though, and I love that book. All of those books, in fact. Thomas Harris is a goddamn genius, end of. Hannibal Lecter is iconic and a character worthy of it. One of the few who is not one of the good guys. You’ve got to love that. I like it for all the reasons everyone else likes it, but I also like the love story. There is one, in case you’re wondering or you missed it. The movies--at least after Silence of the Lambs--make it seem obsessive and one-sided. Dr. Lecter, being crazy, is obsessed with Clarice Starling. We’re not sure if he wants to fuck her or eat her, possibly both, but we’re not willing to really think about in which order he would make that happen. Which is the same idea the books give you--I think a shrink even suggests as much in Hannibal (the book)--but unlike in the movies, where they pussed-out and dropped the ball in typical 21st century Hollywood fashion, the books follow through. The love is reciprocated, the relationship consummated. In short, the monster gets the girl. I think they might have even ridden off into the sunset together if Harris had continued for a few more pages. Feelings and desires that are only hinted at for most of The Silence of the Lambs and on into Hannibal actually come together at the end of Hannibal, which is to this day, no matter how many hundreds of novels I’ve read, my favorite ending of all time. I am also recommending that book, too, while I’m here. And anti-reccing the hell out of the movie. Even Anthony Hopkins, who is awesome and still pretty sexy for a guy knocking 80, couldn’t save that piece of shit. I could rant at length about everything wrong with it (and maybe someday I will), but that’s off-topic. Getting back on-topic for a moment, I just finished re-reading The Silence of the Lambs just for the sake of revisiting old friends (or frienemies; what would you call a man who might like to eat your liver?) and was so pleased with it I had to concoct an excuse for me to talk about it. And quote the second part of Hannibal Lecter’s letter to Clarice Starling at the end of it, after he’s escaped, because it is like a love letter, it’s just that smack-in-the-face obvious. So here goes:
“I have windows.
Orion is above the horizon now, and near it Jupiter, brighter than it will ever be again before the year 2000. (I have no intention of telling you the time and how high it is.) But I expect you can see it too. Some of our stars are the same.
Clarice.
Hannibal Lecter”
See what I mean? Uh-huh. He had just told her that he wouldn’t kill her if she kept her distance and didn’t try to find him. He pauses before he adds that part because he didn’t need to add that part. It was gratuitous. He couldn’t help himself, or didn’t want to, or whatever. But it’s awesome and I love the love story in it. Before anyone says anything, yes I’ve seen the new TV show. I like it so far but it also makes me anxious as a fangirl. I don’t like who they have playing Lecter, though he has the accent, sure, but still no. He’s missing something that makes me believe he’s Hannibal Lecter. Also, he’s ugly, which Lecter was not and I find to be petty. Will Graham’s cute, physically and just because he’s looney-tunes, but I watch it every week knowing that in the books, Lecter mutilated his face and he became a reclusive loony. So, it will be interesting to see where they go with it.
_______________________________________
So, that is what I’ve mostly been doing this week.
I considered re-reading The Mists of Avalon to see if I still like it now that I’m not in the 8th grade. Decided I wouldn’t and canned that idea because it’s too damn long to waste that kind of time on. I don’t have the same anti-religious rebellious intellectual mindset I had when I was 14. Nor do I find hints of incest or reluctant threesomes to be all that titillating anymore. I’m probably jaded. It’s okay though, it saves time.
I also had an appointment last Friday to have the stent between my bladder and kidney removed, which was supposed to be my last procedure in all this. However, they found in the x-ray that the stone didn’t break up as it should have, so they gave me some more pills (which make me sick as hell) and made another appointment at the hospital for another operation to remove the kidney stone. Then maybe I can get the stent out. I had a bit of a breakdown today when an estimate of my hospital charges came in the mail and it has been over $5,000 so far, just at the hospital where they’ve been doing the operations. All of this for a fucking kidney stone. Granted, it nearly killed me, but it seems like a really insignificant thing for all the trouble it’s caused. I’m supposed to be getting financial assistance, which is nice because I have nothing and I lost my job when I got sick. I didn’t like the job anyway, but that is certainly not the point.
I really just want to go home. I’ve been told if I had been there, I would have died for sure, which I suppose is supposed to convince me that I really just want to stay here forever on the mountain. Yeah, no. If my current quality of life is anything to go on, death might be preferable (she said tongue-in-cheek). I think I’ll see if I can find Red Dragon while I’m at the library. More Hannibal Lecter might be just the thing to cheer me up. Better than Prozac.
Oh, and while I’m here, if you’ve made it this far, I should probably mention that I’ve made a fic community for The Following, which I have adopted like a puppy as my new fandom to play with. I told myself I wouldn’t, but then I did. I am sensing a pattern here with the sexy serial killers. It’s carrollism and if you’re interested, go join or watch it, ‘kay? At the moment--and for the foreseeable future--it will mostly be moderated and closely guarded by portraitofafool. She also took care of all the layout feng shui over there because she’s brilliant with Photo Shop and I am absolute rubbish at anything more strenuous than photo cropping and Paint. I haven’t seen The Following finale yet, but I’m excited. It’s been a long time since a story on TV excited me. I think I lost that somewhere around season 4 or 5 of Supernatural, which I don’t watch anymore. Wrote a fic already, which I like. Writing another one which is probably twice as long as that first one now and really not even close to being done. It’s nice to have something new, even if I’ll have to stick a pin in it for a while and finish my book after I get done being sick. Which I fully intend to do.