January Meme: Books/media I find have aged really well
A day late, due to Darth Real Life. mssilverstar, I apologize. Well, first of all, this is highly subjective, and whenever I read other people's resplies to similar question, I'm reminded of that - what's aged for one person has remained fantastic for another, and vice versa. So, I make no claim to speak for anyone but myself. Also "has aged well" for me isn't the equivalent of "represents exactly the values I myself stick to today". And I'm drawing an arbitrary line at pre WWI media of all kinds. So, a selected but by no means exclusive number of media I find have aged well:
Media aimed at or marketed for primarily a young audience:
Book and film: The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle. As poetic and compelling to read and watch now as it was then. Morever, German kids lucked out in the film version because Christopher Lee dubs himself, speaking King Haggard in German as well as in the English original, which is why despite otherwise being usually a fiend for original versions I have a soft spot for the German dubbing. Christopher Lee speaking Haggard's lines in German = awesome.
Book: The Never-Ending Story by Michael Ende. Naturally, the original edition with the red and green letters and the illuminations at the start of each chapter. (There were some cheap editions around the late 90s, I think, in boring black print. Heresy!) I am fond of Michael Ende's work in general, but the Never-Ending Story, the book, is a particular favourite. (And the film was I think the first time I got really upset as a young reader because of the massive changes, including one that misses the entire point of the book. Not as upset as Michael Ende himself was, of course, but then if your wife while watching this has a stroke and dies, you won't be inclined to forgive the production team any time soon.) (At least poor Michael Ende himself didn't live to see Italian right wing extremists steal the name "Atreju" for their fascist enterprises. The man, a determined anti fascist and cosmopolitan, would have been horrified beyond belief. Given he invented the concept of the '"Nothing", which eats creatures of fantasy and transforms them into lies that poison our world, he might n ot have been completely surprised, though.)
TV Show: Jim Knopf und Lukas der Lokomotivführer, based on Michael Ende's novel, dramatised by the Augsburger Puppenkiste. I like the book, but I love the tv show, which I adored as a child and which is still adorable to me now. I find myself humming the Lummerland-Song even now. There's just something about those puppets playing out the story that live action cannot capture.
Media aimed at or market primarly for adults:
Film: The Kid, directed by Charlie Chaplin. Still my go to silent movie if I want to convince people who haven't seen one before of the greatness of the genre. It just works, even the surreal dream sequence, and I never get tired of it.
Book: Child of the Morning by Pauline Gedge. Research has marched on (i.e. now it's doubtful whether it was Thutmose III who tried his best to erase Hatshepsut from history), but this novel from the 1970s is still my favourite take on Hatshepsut, and one of my all time favourite novels set in Ancient Egypt, full stop. And I cry like a baby each time when our heroine's rule is ended.
Film: Lawrence of Arabia, directed by David Lean, script by Robert Bolt. Deserves all the accolades it ever got. Not just for the breathtaking cinematography but also for making its main character increasingly broken and neurotic and not a triumphant savior figure. Are there still things to complain about, from Omar Sharif being the only Arab actor playing a prominent Arab character onwards? Sure. But is the film stll gloriously shot ("moon shadows" included) and acted and scripted? You bet. (And Peter O'Toole should have gotten the damn Oscar.)
TV Show: Babylon 5. Since I did my most recent rewatch not that long ago, I can tell with some certainty. You can date the show, absolutely. (ISN is so a product of the 1990s, not just because of the CNN reference but because the entire human part of the galaxy seems to watch just the one news channel. Original Anna Sheridan's hairstyle is another case in point. And Ivanova/Talia never quite transgressing the line of deniability before she leaves, even though JMS went as far as he could in the day and age and we do get the unambigous "I loved Talia" later. And then there are the multiple "crazy lone bomber" plots, which at the time I did not realize must have been inspired by the Oklahoma bombing in the US.) But the overall show still holds up magnificently in its epic storytelling, with intersecting storylines and character developments. It really was, as promised, a "novel on television", and even decades later, I don't think I've seen something like the individual and the shared plotlines for Londo and G'Kar since. (BTW, I recently watched a retrospective on the show by a vidder on YouTube, which by and large I thought well done - though more human centric than I would have, but then that's my perspective on the show -, but what cracked me up was our narrator, when talking about the original pilot, The Gathering, saying: "The characters most different to their later selves in the show have to be the ambassadors. Londo is almost entirely comic relief, G'Kar is a villain, and Delenn is both ruthless and devious." Err. Ahem. Cough.) Anyway, it was the Third Age of Mankind, and I was there. The Name: Babylon 5.
As mentioned, this is just a selection, there are others, but these were the ones coming immediately to mind.
The other days
Media aimed at or marketed for primarily a young audience:
Book and film: The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle. As poetic and compelling to read and watch now as it was then. Morever, German kids lucked out in the film version because Christopher Lee dubs himself, speaking King Haggard in German as well as in the English original, which is why despite otherwise being usually a fiend for original versions I have a soft spot for the German dubbing. Christopher Lee speaking Haggard's lines in German = awesome.
Book: The Never-Ending Story by Michael Ende. Naturally, the original edition with the red and green letters and the illuminations at the start of each chapter. (There were some cheap editions around the late 90s, I think, in boring black print. Heresy!) I am fond of Michael Ende's work in general, but the Never-Ending Story, the book, is a particular favourite. (And the film was I think the first time I got really upset as a young reader because of the massive changes, including one that misses the entire point of the book. Not as upset as Michael Ende himself was, of course, but then if your wife while watching this has a stroke and dies, you won't be inclined to forgive the production team any time soon.) (At least poor Michael Ende himself didn't live to see Italian right wing extremists steal the name "Atreju" for their fascist enterprises. The man, a determined anti fascist and cosmopolitan, would have been horrified beyond belief. Given he invented the concept of the '"Nothing", which eats creatures of fantasy and transforms them into lies that poison our world, he might n ot have been completely surprised, though.)
TV Show: Jim Knopf und Lukas der Lokomotivführer, based on Michael Ende's novel, dramatised by the Augsburger Puppenkiste. I like the book, but I love the tv show, which I adored as a child and which is still adorable to me now. I find myself humming the Lummerland-Song even now. There's just something about those puppets playing out the story that live action cannot capture.
Media aimed at or market primarly for adults:
Film: The Kid, directed by Charlie Chaplin. Still my go to silent movie if I want to convince people who haven't seen one before of the greatness of the genre. It just works, even the surreal dream sequence, and I never get tired of it.
Book: Child of the Morning by Pauline Gedge. Research has marched on (i.e. now it's doubtful whether it was Thutmose III who tried his best to erase Hatshepsut from history), but this novel from the 1970s is still my favourite take on Hatshepsut, and one of my all time favourite novels set in Ancient Egypt, full stop. And I cry like a baby each time when our heroine's rule is ended.
Film: Lawrence of Arabia, directed by David Lean, script by Robert Bolt. Deserves all the accolades it ever got. Not just for the breathtaking cinematography but also for making its main character increasingly broken and neurotic and not a triumphant savior figure. Are there still things to complain about, from Omar Sharif being the only Arab actor playing a prominent Arab character onwards? Sure. But is the film stll gloriously shot ("moon shadows" included) and acted and scripted? You bet. (And Peter O'Toole should have gotten the damn Oscar.)
TV Show: Babylon 5. Since I did my most recent rewatch not that long ago, I can tell with some certainty. You can date the show, absolutely. (ISN is so a product of the 1990s, not just because of the CNN reference but because the entire human part of the galaxy seems to watch just the one news channel. Original Anna Sheridan's hairstyle is another case in point. And Ivanova/Talia never quite transgressing the line of deniability before she leaves, even though JMS went as far as he could in the day and age and we do get the unambigous "I loved Talia" later. And then there are the multiple "crazy lone bomber" plots, which at the time I did not realize must have been inspired by the Oklahoma bombing in the US.) But the overall show still holds up magnificently in its epic storytelling, with intersecting storylines and character developments. It really was, as promised, a "novel on television", and even decades later, I don't think I've seen something like the individual and the shared plotlines for Londo and G'Kar since. (BTW, I recently watched a retrospective on the show by a vidder on YouTube, which by and large I thought well done - though more human centric than I would have, but then that's my perspective on the show -, but what cracked me up was our narrator, when talking about the original pilot, The Gathering, saying: "The characters most different to their later selves in the show have to be the ambassadors. Londo is almost entirely comic relief, G'Kar is a villain, and Delenn is both ruthless and devious." Err. Ahem. Cough.) Anyway, it was the Third Age of Mankind, and I was there. The Name: Babylon 5.
As mentioned, this is just a selection, there are others, but these were the ones coming immediately to mind.
The other days