Two Views of the 70s

[inamac]

Reviews as promised.

Watchmen was better than I expected. Which is to say that I didn't fall asleep (Matrix Reloaded, Ang Lee's Hulk) with boredom or walk out in fury (Mr and Mrs Smith), but it was a close run thing.

Comments

[inamac]

One to rent rather than buy then. When it does end up on TV I expect it'll be late night fodder. It is the sort of film that is very much designed for the big screen though.

[lil_shepherd]

I recently saw a review - I forget where - that suggested that Ozzie was not all that smart, just very, very good at marketing. (i.e. The Smartest Marketing Man on Earth.)

[inamac]

Worries about the concept of Max Clifford with superpowers...

[bite_me_luv]

See, I got used to finding you on my LJ f-list *snickers*

This comment here is no use, really. It's just to inform you that you mentioning The Voice (I love your icon, btw!) made me turn on the spot to hunt down a recording of the 'Wine is sunlight' scene. Then I listened to it for several times. And then some.

They way this man says the word 'sunlight'.. honestly. Must be illegal. Same goes for 'senses' in the Potions scene. Ah, whenever he starts to speak I'm reduced to shivers. Isn't there some sort of award out there for voices? Sexiest Voice Alive? I'll vote!

Uhm... yeah... I got carried away.. *blushes* Blame him! See IJ icon! *slinks off*

[inamac]

It was a toss-up whether this went under 'reviews' on LJ or 'squee' on IJ. *sigh* So many decisions.

Lovely icon.

From time to time the press did run Sexiest Voice Alive competitions, but the results got to be too predictable.

Goes and finds the sonnet 130 recitation

Comics transformed into movies

[ms_anthrophy]

I have not seen the Watchmen movie and probably will not because I adore the graphic novel and that does not sound promising. Movies based on good comics tend to fail rather badly for the original idea is so often sacrificed on the filthy altar of reaching more audience and gain more profit.

For example, I liked The Crow movie until I read the comic and realized how terribly the spirit of the story was mutilated. It could have been darkly poetic. It should have been.

Then again, there are exceptions. Sin City is awesome and I like the X-Men movies because the spirit of the comic is IMO presented very well even though they changed old plotlines so much.

(I hope that Hollywood will never get interested in The Invisibles -my absolute favourite- because the only possible result could be an epic failure, no post-modern occultism but just bad action scenes, some tits and some kind of D&D spells.)

Re: Comics transformed into movies

[inamac]

lil_shepherd's review covers more of the comic-book aspects of the film (she's the household comics expert) and you might also find saxonb's take on it interesting. Watchmen is certainly the best of the 'Alan Moore' material-based adaptations - but really that's not saying much. On the whole movie adaptations of comic books (like comics themselves) fall into two categories - the 'superhero blockbuster (Dark Knight, Iron Man) and the 'social document' (Sin City, Road To Perdition, A History of Violence). What Alan Moore (and a number of other mostly British writers) do in their work is to blur the lines between the two. Comics readers have got used to this, but the movie world, being (as usual where fantasy and SF is concerned) 30 years behind the times has yet to find a vocabulary to convey this. As a film, Watchmen comes close, in that its faults are mostly the faults of the original, compounded by the use of cinematic tropes where the comic book ones would confuse a film-savvy audience

Re: Comics transformed into movies

[ms_anthrophy]

"the movie world, being (as usual where fantasy and SF is concerned) 30 years behind this times"

Excellent summary. Oh, and thanks for recs, ravenna_c_tan' Malfoycest is awesome.

[inamac]

You're welcome.

I hope you've told Ravenna that - even the awesome writers need encouragement ;0)