So now then.
i don’t really have much to say at the moment. I still despise 95% of our culture, but at least we have Lost.
Not so much:
It’s really a shame that newspapers are dying, because blogging can’t fill that gap in real journalism, and having to rely on the AP, well…
…We’ll always have Yahoo! Front Page. Thanks to them, I know it’s a bad thing for a girl to call Benjamin “pal” in a flirtext.
I’m too lazy to link to anything today. Fuck it, it’s Friday. Do you have any idea how badly I want to kill you?
Addendum: Benjamin Light has consumed significant amounts of generic vodka. I was attending a screening of Star Trek last week with Occam Razor when, pre lens-flare-o-rama, the theater aired the trailer for the Night at the Museum sequel. At then end of this travesty of cinema, a girl behind and to the left of us declared: “I have to see it! I HAVE to see it! I HAVE TO SEE IT!”
… I don’t even know what to say to that. Judging by the demograph of the crowd, I can only assume she was sincere in her desire to view said movie. Is there a less significant film in the history of cinema? I don’t know. But it cements my feeling that Television (or, at least serialized narratives) is the future of motion pictures, and not film. Take one peak at the trailer to The Road and it becomes painfully clear that some stories should not be made into movies.
For instance, I would love to see certain scenes from Cryptonomicon realized on a big screen, especially the Bobby Shaftoe stuff, but you can take a step back and admit that, yes, some narratives were intended to be digested as books, not movies. And where movies fail to deliver the nuance of a novel, perhaps a serialized narrative in the format of a television show can succeed. I feel, lately, that too many properties are being converted into movies, despite the fact that the structure is incompatible: see The Watchmen. Somehow the motion picture has established itself as the high point of media saturation, so we get subpar “adaptations” of The Golden Compass and the like.
Note to hollywood: if you want to make a movie, make a movie, but not all stories should be adapted so. Most people love books not for the plot, but for the personality of the narrator, and the intimate connection between reader and storyteller. In short, if Hollywood can’t duplicate that in Script Form a la Fight Club, then it’s probably not worth the money to make a film of it. In other words: hire better screenwriters or make better tv shows. Not every property can be condensed into a 105-minute feature.
I have no doubt in my mind that the Night at the Museum sequel will make shitloads of money. I don’t fully understand it, but I know better that to vote against it. Although I’d love to see bits of The Baroque Cycle on the big screen, if only to expose the material to a wider audience, there’s a kind of comfort in the knowledge that only the truly committed will appreciate the nuances of literature.
