Oscars, HP Directors!

[roleplayer_m_uk]

--- In HPFGU-Movie at y..., Schlobin1 at a... wrote:> 
> Certainly, the members of the HP list are not so stupid as to say 
that LOTR 
> books are ordinary. Have you read them? If  not, please do not 
express an 
> opinion (no more than I can tolerate people who say that HP is 
devil 
> worshipping and has not read them).
> 
> I do not agree that this is the consensus of the list..because most 
people on 
> the list have at least a room temperature iq.

once again, i agree entirely with shannon. but i just wanted to make 
some additions.

i have read the book and am in possession of an oven temperature iq 
(yeah, yeah, it depends how high you set the oven. still and all, my 
iq would bake a nice potato!) but i stand by my comments.

imo the lord of the rings is a great story poorly told and the movie 
fixes many of those problems. and despite what you might think many 
people do agree with me. read around some literary criticism and see.

for example, from the london review of books:
"Obviously there is a problem with the elves and so on. Obviously 
there is a problem with the prose. Obviously there are problems to do 
with women, and race and racism, and the general matchstick-cathedral 
labour-of-madness nature of the project."

and later:

"But The Lord of the Rings isn't just a novel, with a plot and a 
dreadful prose style."

now those quotes come from an article DEFENDING tolkien 
(http://www.lrb.co.uk/v23/n22/turn2322.htm), written in a one of the 
world's most respected publications about books by a writer whose iq 
comfortably bests room temperature. and yet still she acknowledges 
problems with the book.

when it comes to the movie you only have to look at the shower of 
awards (and nominations) to see that the wealth of critical opinion 
supports the movie.

whereas, in the case of hp (just to drag myself back on-topic!), the 
reverse seems to be true. the critics love the books but, as the lack 
of awards show, are somewhat lukewarm on the movie.

hence my initial assertion:

hp: excellent books, ordinary movie
lotr: ordinary book, excellent movie

(incidentally, there is a school of thought which suggests that bad 
books make good movies and good books make bad ones but i won't go 
into that here.)

none of which means people shouldn't enjoy tolkien's book or 
columbus' movie. to each their own and all that....