I previously explained why I will not be re-reading Watchmen before seeing the movie. For lots of interesting differing views, some Watchmen-specific and others generally applicable to anyone who often watches movies made from books/comics, see this recent Ask Metafilter question.
I’m not sure whether or not to bother rereading Watchmen before the movie, because I believe movies are always far more enjoyable if you haven’t read (or can hardly remember) the book. The book is substantially superior 90% of the time, so you might as well spare yourself some impotent huffing in the cinema, appreciate the movie on its own merits, and then savour the additional depth and luxury that lots and lots of words can offer.
I think it was fairly safe to read this Microsoft Paint condensed version though.
A little heads-up for any Singaporean readers who’re into graphic novels: if you borrow 4 books from the Orchard library, you can use your loan receipt to enter their contest to win a collector’s edition box set of Persepolis 1 and 2. Just look for the box in front of the main counter. (I don’t remember how much longer the contest is on though, so if you’re keen, drop by soon.) And if you win, please email me so I can curse at you.
Apologies to those hoping for more substantial content, this will just be a desperate catch-up list of quick notes on blogworthy things that I never found time to write properly about but don’t want to forget.
Books:
Films:
Events:
Random surfing led me to the following nuggets of information at Sci Fi Wire:
The Watchmen movie isn’t happening any more. Oh well. As I wrote a while ago (in response to a comment telling me that a Watchmen movie was in the works), I had my doubts about how well they could adapt it. I’m still not going to stop compiling my dream cast list when bored on the bus though. Recently, Dennis Hopper came to mind as The Comedian.
“We didn’t add anything that wasn’t there in the film. So, of course, we are faithful to the dialogue that’s there. But in the end, you just kind of have to trust your own instincts on a lot of things, and that’s apparently what Miyazaki [who did not respond to Docter’s questions] expects from us.”
I don’t know if the English dub of Spirited Away was done the same way, but if it was then I guess that might be one reason people don’t tend to be that satisfied with it. And unlike Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle is pretty damn incoherent to begin with. It seems a curious way to do things to me – certainly an interesting experiment in film interpretation, but not the best way of producing the only version of Howl’s Moving Castle most casual English-speaking viewers will ever see.
Much like my struggles with Life A User’s Manual a while back, the only thing that’s keeping me reading Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth (Chris Ware) is the paroxysms of joy it seems to inspire in its Amazon reviewers.
I remember picking the book up in Borders shortly after it won the Guardian First Book Award, and abandoning it soon after, stupefied, for The Wire. (Which, of course, can be stupefying in its own way eg. “Oh look, a critical re-appraisal of the Appalachian free jazz movement!”) I chanced upon it again in the Marine Parade library last week, so I decided to give it another try. So far, so blah. I’m finding the flow of the panels extremely non-intuitive, and I’m not getting the big deal about the quality of the drawing either. I’ll keep wading on though – Life A User’s Manual did pay off in the end. And at least it’s a good way to get me sleepy at night.
(The following passage is a fictional excerpt from an ornithological journal.)
“Is it possible, I wonder, to study a bird so closely, to observe and catalogue its peculiarities in such minute detail, that it becomes invisible? Is it possible that while fastidiously calibrating the span of its wings or the length of its tarsus, we somehow lose sight of its poetry? That in our pedestrian descriptions of a marbled or vermiculated plumage we forfeit a glimpse of living canvases, cascades of carefully toned browns and golds that would shame Kandinsky, misty explosions of colour to rival Monet? I believe that we do. I believe that in approaching our subject with the sensibilities of statisticians and dissectionists, we distance ourselves increasingly from the marvelous and spell-binding planet of imagination whose gravity drew us to our studies in the first place.
…
When we stare into the catatonic black bead of a Parakeet’s eye we must teach ourselves to glimpse the cold, alien madness that Max Ernst perceived when he chose to robe his naked brides in confections of scarlet feather and the transplanted monstrous heads of exotic birds. When some ocean-going Kite or Tern is captured in the sharp blue gaze of our Zeiss lenses, we must be able to see the stop motion flight of sepia gulls through the early kinetic photographs of Muybridge, beating white wings tracing a slow oscilloscope line through space and time.”
– Watchmen, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
Every now and then I read a Sinfest strip or fifty. Most can be bypassed but occasionally one does deserve to be highlighted. Well, maybe two or three.
Sometimes I wonder why I keep going back there. I think it’s because the chick has great hair.
Sometimes you think you’ve seen it all and no novelty websites can really amuse you any more. And then you find the Red Meat Construction Set.
I came up with a few, but don’t rate them highly at all, especially next to the utterly twisted brilliance other people have come up with. I think I have a new goal in life, though.
[Note: A good understanding of the Red Meat universe is necessary for full appreciation of the above links. It also helps if you’re a sick bastard.]