dog and media update
I'm a lot less stressed today than yesterday, and the dog seems better as well. She may well be a sit around and watch stuff dog, rather than a play everywhere dog, although she does like our walks. But she's still recovering from the surgery and the cough, so we'll see. (I had to laugh; I was playing something on Netflix that had a young boy singing a high solo version of Ave Maria, and Daisy jerked back in surprise and staaaaaaaared at the tv for those seconds. Hee!)
Changing topics, adaptations are a tricky thing. Elementary has managed to make a compelling (for me) modern Sherlock Holmes AU using themes from the books. The key elements are the Watson/Holmes friendship, Holmes's canon addiction to drugs, and the serialized detective work. Conan Doyle wrote several books, so there's a lot to draw on for the show.
The Lizze Bennet Diaries is also a modern retelling, but there's only one book, and the plot is central to everything, rather than a general theme. We all know how it's going to end. (Spoiler: Lizzie Bennet ends up with William Darcy.) But with a plot-for-plot adaptation, and lots of fan speculation about how each piece of the story might go, there's a lot more 'noise' about all of it: what people like, what they don't. Some online fans really dislike what the LBD writers have done with Lydia's storyline, for example, and that's been a fairly controversial topic on Tumblr. (That fandom isn't the reason I'm avoiding Tumblr for the moment; I would find myself skimming the tags, because I'm not very attached to seeing every bit of love and/or criticism for the show.)
Expectations seem to play a key part in enjoyment, I guess. I'm not much of a guess-ahead sort of viewer, unless a show is THE show for me. But it really is easy to pick apart something where the outline is already in place than it is to figure out what is part of a longer, less-defined arc.
As for other media, I'm over halfway through with season three of Avatar: The Last Airbender, and I'm sad that it's almost done. Such a good show. (And to tie this into the adaptation thing, having watched the trailer for director M. Night Shyamalan's live-action version, I now get some of the furor over the movie as a very bad adaptation.)
Posted at Dreamwidth: http://rose-griffes.dreamwidth.org/267178.html. Comment where you wish.
Changing topics, adaptations are a tricky thing. Elementary has managed to make a compelling (for me) modern Sherlock Holmes AU using themes from the books. The key elements are the Watson/Holmes friendship, Holmes's canon addiction to drugs, and the serialized detective work. Conan Doyle wrote several books, so there's a lot to draw on for the show.
The Lizze Bennet Diaries is also a modern retelling, but there's only one book, and the plot is central to everything, rather than a general theme. We all know how it's going to end. (Spoiler: Lizzie Bennet ends up with William Darcy.) But with a plot-for-plot adaptation, and lots of fan speculation about how each piece of the story might go, there's a lot more 'noise' about all of it: what people like, what they don't. Some online fans really dislike what the LBD writers have done with Lydia's storyline, for example, and that's been a fairly controversial topic on Tumblr. (That fandom isn't the reason I'm avoiding Tumblr for the moment; I would find myself skimming the tags, because I'm not very attached to seeing every bit of love and/or criticism for the show.)
Expectations seem to play a key part in enjoyment, I guess. I'm not much of a guess-ahead sort of viewer, unless a show is THE show for me. But it really is easy to pick apart something where the outline is already in place than it is to figure out what is part of a longer, less-defined arc.
As for other media, I'm over halfway through with season three of Avatar: The Last Airbender, and I'm sad that it's almost done. Such a good show. (And to tie this into the adaptation thing, having watched the trailer for director M. Night Shyamalan's live-action version, I now get some of the furor over the movie as a very bad adaptation.)
Posted at Dreamwidth: http://rose-griffes.dreamwidth.org/267178.html. Comment where you wish.