[HPFGU-Movie] Re: Oscars, HP Directors!

[Shannon]

At 03:12 PM 3/11/2002 -0000, Naama wrote:

>I hope I'm not going to sound too horribly snobbish, but have you 
>never tried reading Kafka or Dostoyevsky? Tolstoy? Faulkner? 
>Steinbeck? Thomas Mann? Conrad? Virginia Wolf? Joyce (Ulysess is 
>still sitting hopefully on my book shelf)? Shakespeare?

Yes to all the above except for Dostoyevsky, Mann and Tolstoy. I've read a
lot of things, actually.  I loved Conrad and absolutely worship
Shakespeare.  Joyce is iffy.  Wonderful sometimes, worthless others.  Kafka
is ridiculous (granted, of his works I've only really read The Trial, which
was such a pointless exercise that I still resent it and won't read
anything else he's written <g>). Woolf, I've read a few things. I prefer
her shorter works to her novels (To The Lighthouse put me to sleep more
than once). Generally, I tend to read things that look interesting to me
though,  not just things that are written by names who are on the
"Important Authors" list.  Perhaps it's terribly unfashionable of me, but I
like books wherein something actually happens. Possibly that's why I prefer
sf/fantasy over mainstream literature.

>I have to say that I find it somewhat ridiculous that people here 
>describe Tolkien as difficult. I have read LOTR goodness knows how 
>many times and for me it's definitely under the category of fun 
>reading.

He's difficult because he's tedious.  He made a great story rather
uninteresting for me.  I read through Fellowship the first time about five
years ago, and found that I had absolutely no reaction to Gandalf dying.
Tolkien spent more time talking about Middle Earth than he did about the
characters in it, and he didn't make me care what happened to them.
Thankfully, Peter Jackson *did* make me care and I can see past the things
in the book that obscured the story for me all those years.

>(Although it *is* much more intense than HP. In fact, my emotional 
>involvement with the story is so high it can become painful. The 
>amazing thing about the movie (for me) was that I reached the same 
>level of involvement as with the book. Fantastic.)

The amazing thing about the movie for me is that it did produce an
emotional involvement for me.  And now that I have that, I can read the
books and keep hold of it.  As a result, I'm better able to appreciate the
books.

>Naama, who also thinks that the HP movie was .. ummm .. <euphemism> 
>ordinary </euphemism>

It was entertaining, and very true to the book.  It moved a bit too quickly
though.  Which is odd because that's what some people complain of
Fellowship, that the pace was too relentless.  The difference, to me, was
that in HP, it wasn't that the pace was too fast, but that the scenes
seemed to end about 10 seconds too soon.  Made it just a bit choppy. But I
loved it all the same. :)

Shannon