So in the last few days we’ve seen Sweeney Todd and the Golden Compass — both adaptations of works designed for another medium.
My personal opinion? Sweeney Todd was wonderful and entertaining and totally at home on the screen. The Golden Compass was annoyingly reminiscent of the fourth Harry Potter installment — short-shrift summary, like a visual cliff notes version of the original text.
Now, I’ve heard from folks who haven’t read the book, saw the movie, and really enjoyed it, so perhaps some of my impressions comes from having seen the whole cloth the shortpants suit was cut from, but that’s my impression — they could have done better than they did. I was particularly annoyed by an unnecessary inclusion toward the end of the movie that actually introduced a fairly obvious plot hole that doesn’t actually exist in the book it’s based on. That’s just sloppy.
Still: armored bears, Sam Elliot, and clockwork technology — there’s a lot to like in what you get. (Even with Nicole Kidman and her distracting plastic face getting in the way.)
3 Replies to “Movies? We’ve got movies.”
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As someone who’s in the “seen, not read” category … actually, Nicole Kidman was (as part of the movie) perfect in her disturbed-Mommy-dearest-automaton role.
A beautifully rendered mediocre movie. Every time someone new came on stage it was like, “Wow, I love that voice,” “Ooooh, I love that actor,” “Aaah, that’s gorgeous,” “Zowee, now I want to read the book to actually get more than a summary of what’s going on here.”
I preferred the book to the movie (despite the Pretty), but I wanted to see the movie with the impression of “There will be great disconnects.” I do NOT like the second and third books (rampant misogynism in “children’s literature” is a squick) but I expect the movies will be similar: great frosting, white cake.
Sweeney Todd, on the other hand, well, except for some minor quibbles that only an aficionado would enjoy, was definitely pleasant.
I was more disturbed, in the second book (I haven’t read the third) by the killing of one of the major characters. Um…if you’re going to have a majestic death scene (and, incidentally, make sure the main character has to Go It Alone for awhile), make sure the character really has to die. Pfft. But that was the same problem I had with one of his murder mystery books, killing off a main character just so the (female) main character could show how strong and determined she was (not that it was spelled out how that was different than being a spoilt brat as she was through most of the book). Bleah. The dog died, too. I hate it when problems are resolved by a deus ex machina cruentus.