Lord Frederick Leighton (1830-1896)Study: At a Reading Desk Oil on canvas, 1877
Blog Criticism and Review
Right now, I am looking for criticism of my blog. I am asking for people to find fault with what I am doing so I can make it better for you to read what I am writing.
I have started by asking at Bookblogs on Ning for criticism of the design of this blog.
So far, the header has been changed, the font for the blog, some of the background colors, and a number of typos fixed. I am looking to do a little bit more. I have also identified a problem with Mozilla Firefox not reading the html line spacing commands for blogger. I am still not sure what to do about this. I contacted blogger help about this. Now, it seems to be working a tiny bit better. I also changed the number of posts visible on the page to five at a time. I had ten at a time. This should reduce the amount of time it takes to load my page considerably.
Read Or Die is an original short anime series. It consists of three episodes. The main character, Yomiko Readman is a bibliomaniac who loves to spend too much time in books. She is a supposedly a literature teacher. However, in the film she is Agent Paper, a superpowered secret agent for the British Library. In the movie, she forms a glider out of paper, makes a samurai sword out of paper, stops bullets with postcards, and many other neat tricks.
In this story, the British empire is still a superpower, their main spy agency is the "British Library" headed by "Joker" who is Agent Paper's handler. I happen to like the tongue in cheek literary references throughout this short series.
It is full of action. The evil I-Jin are trying to get books which will allow them to wipe out a large portion of the human race. It is up to Agent Paper to stop them. They are seeking a 19th century Beethoven symphony which causes people to committ suicide when they hear it.
Numerous fight scenes abound. Agent Paper fights giant mecha grasshoppers, electric powered samurai, ghost women, and a glider pilot. The opening is fantastic the white house in the United States is destroyed by Gennai Hiraga, a historical personage from ancient Japan who has been cloned brought into the future and given superpowers. Although, it is not in the scene, the Library of Congress is also destroyed. The I-Jin are stealing forbidden books.
I like the action in this film. It does a good job of combining far aways shots with close ups. One of my favorite scenes is where another agent, Miss Deep, who can turn into a ghost, falls through the Statue of Liberty. It is pure entertainment. I think it tries to bring tongue in cheek humor like Maxwell Smart, or James Bond.
This short series won the Anime Expo 2002 awards. There is also an original manga (Japanese comic book) which goes with the show. This goes with my interest as librarians as superheros.
Stardust was produced in three formats, a graphic novel, film, and a book. I am going to focus on two of them, the book and the film.
Neil Gaiman's Stardust was produced both as a film and a book. I liked the book far better than the film. There was a lot that was very different between the film and the book. Neil Gaiman apparently was inspired by Charles Vess's drawings to write Stardust.
The novel is far different than the film. There is much less violence in the novel and it is definitely more of a love story than an adventure story in the book. The ending where there is a huge battle between the three witches and the hero simply does not happen in the book. The witch cannot have the Star's heart because she has given it to Tristan Thorne because she loves him. It is no longer available for the Lilim to take.
Also the "Babylon Candle" is black magic in the film. I have no idea why they did this. Maybe they were appealing to people who believe all magic is evil. In the book, it's magic comes from the magic of nursery rhymes.
"How Many Miles to Babylon Three Score Miles and Ten, Can I get there by candlelight, Yes, there and back again. Yes, if your feet are nimble and light, You can get there by candlelight."
Also a little man gives Tristan Thorne his candle in the book. Maybe the little man is a leprechaun. A person who helps him in the land of fairy.
There is another nursery rhyme in the book which occurs, the lion and the unicorn. Here it might have made sense if Tristan Thorne helped save the unicorn from the lion. Here is the rhyme. It is not clearly explained how the unicorn appears in the film.
The Lion and the Unicorn Were Fighting for the Crown The Lion Beat the Unicorn All About the Town He beat him once, he beat him twice With All his might and main He beat him three times over His power to maintain
I rather like this hidden allusion to Tristan Thorne's royal blood. I also like how it describes Tristan Thorne and the Star riding the unicorn in the book. The unicorn is still a very beautiful animal in the film. This would not fit well with the theme of magic being mostly bad in the film.
The way magic was shown in the film was quite sinister. At points it became ridiculous. An old woman shooting flames at Septimus the lord of Stormhold in the final battle seemed overdone. It seemed like the final fight scenes were put in just for special effects.
Three was a lot removed from the film which I would have liked to see. I think, it would have been better if they had shown more of the "faery market" in its splendor. I thought they showed too little.
The best part of the film, I thought was the skyship, Perdida. I liked them catching lightning, dancing, and Tristan Thorne learning swordplay on the flying ship. It was really interesting watching a ship fly through the sky. Some people say that Robert DeNiro's playing a gay pirate was ridiculous. I thought it was funny. This was a very short piece in the book.
The countryside in the film was also very beautiful to look at. It had the feeling of green rolling hills where very few people live. Also the costumes were interesting to look at. They had a swashbuckling feel to them that you would see in historical romances.
There are also small differences in the book which did not appear in the book. Tristan's mother in the book had cat's ears and a tail. I guess this was a bit too odd for the film. In the book, the jewel which the Star wears is around her waist, not a necklace. It is also a topaz in the book, not a ruby. These little details changed the perception of the film ever so slightly.
Also, Victoria is in love with Mr. Monday, the shop owner, not the young fop in the movie. I rather like this a lot. It makes more sense in the book that there would be rivalry and loss of his job if Tristan Thorne worked for Mr. Monday. It is almost silly to see Tristan Thorne hit with a cane in the film.
The scene with the promise of love and following the star for Victoria is done right in both the film and the book. In the book, Tristan Thorne is let through the wall because they know he is part of faery. In the film, he has to fight an eighty year old man... This makes for a kind of silly inconsistency.
The film was enjoyable to watch with excellent cinematography, but it turned the story into a swashbuckling adventure film, rather than a fantasy romance.
Even the ending is different. Towards the end of the book, it is found out the star cannot bear children, yet lives on forever after Tristan Thorne dies. This is an allusion to the immortality of fairy. There is always a sadness which occurs when people with mortal blood love the fae. In the film, Tristan Thorne and the Star live happily ever after and have many children eventually becoming stars again.
I think Neil Gaiman created a different story for the film, one which would appeal to the swashbuckling fan. I would have preferred that he stick to the original story in the book which I enjoyed a lot more than the film. Still, the film was enjoyable enough to watch.
However, I wish they had not chosen to add unnecessary violence and chosen to portray the magic of faery as black magic or evil.
I get up very early in the morning and have quite a long commute to work. This gives me plenty of time to read in the morning. The same goes for at night. I enjoy reading on the train much more than driving. Usually I have two or three books in my bag, usually a hardcover and two smaller paperbacks.
Because I work as a librarian in the public setting, it leaves me with almost unlimited access to books. I read several review type magazines, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, and the New York Times Book Review whenever they come out. Also, I check locus magazine, science fiction site, and a few other places each day for things to read. Because I am in a library all the time, I can wait for holds to come in to read. The same goes for magazines and videos.
The main problem with being in a public library is the griping about salary. It really is not so bad once you get into a more senior position. There is a saying that librarians and booksellers survive on "books and chicken", in New York, you can add subways. So "trains, books, and chicken."
The internet pulls at me sometimes. There is a lot of technical magic and the promise of a higher salary, but you lose the magic of being constantly able to read and look at books. I have looked and looked to see if there was a magical solution combining the internet and books, but sadly internet bookstores pay just as much as real bookstores, close to nothing, even less than libraries.
Anyways, back to what I have been reading lately. I decided to look for paperbacks laying around the house. These books have some issues with them. The three of them are all extremely violent science fiction to the point where one of them, The Weapon by Michael Z. Williamson probably had trouble getting it reviewed. There is no specific dates for the three paperbacks. I couldn't find these at the library so I bought them from a bookstore. Yes, I wander around bookstores sometimes. I like the Strand in Manhattan a lot both for its mega szie and eclectic variety.
The first is Man Kzin Wars XI created by Larry Niven. This is part of the endless battles between the Kzin, giant cats, and humans. This book has several stories about the Protectors, alien super beings created by a root called tree of life. I liked the story set in the swamps of Wunderland, Catspaw. I am surprised at how long the series has gone on.
The second is Shadow Kingdoms, The Weird Works Robert E. Howard, Volume 1. This compiles many of Howard's tales from Weird Tales. It has several Solomon Kane stories in it, a kind of grim puritan warrior in it. I think of Solomon Kane as being the character that Robert E. Howard most wrote about. Howard didn't write that many stories with Conan in them. L. Sprague De Camp wrote most of the Conan stories.
The third is The Weapon by Michael Z. Williamson. It is the story of a special forces covert warrior from a planet called Freehold. Freehold is a kind of libertarian paradise. It sends the main character, Kenneth Chinran through several military adventures, and finally to earth where he ends up destroying large swaths of cities on earth as part of a war between Earth and Freehold. Some of the philosophy is quite far right with a strong libertarian independent streak. It is not something you would see reviewed in Locus Magazine or Science Fiction Site, and most public libraries don't carry it.
