End of the school year crazies

My home in that disgusting state that happens every year at this time. It seems like there is only enough time to fly in the door, drop everything, scoop up the stuff you need for the next event/duty/crisis and fly back out the door.

Enough. Today I am rolling up the carpets, moving the furniture and I am locked in hand to hand combat with dust bunnies and other assorted scary household boogies. I am reminded of a comment Scott Westerfeld made about revising and rewriting. He said it is like cleaning out a closet. It gets worse before it gets better.

That is the place where I am now.

I look at the nice shiny floor but my heart sinks at the piles covering every surface. Stacks of books, stacks of newspapers, magazines, the paper flotsom and jetsom of school life, finals schedules, study materials, a recipe I printed out from the Food Network website. If I wanted to collapse into a chair to take a break, I couldn't. There is no place to sit.

GAhhhhhhhhh!

The one pleasant part of the day has been the movie I watched as I began the destruction...er...that is...cleaning and tidying. I have found watching a DVD while I am doing something I do not enjoy, helps me stick to it.



I recommend: Her Majesty, 2001, rated PG -- filmed entirely in New Zealand

Parts of the soundtrack sounded like Howard Shore's music, even though it was not. (Maybe the New Zealand landscape just inspires composers.)

Set in the 1950s, a young girl named Elizabeth is enthralled by the recent coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. She daydreams about meeting the Queen and begins a letter writing campaign to invite Elizabeth II to visit. The town is thrown into a frenzy when the news comes that the Queen has placed Middleton on her itinerary for the upcoming royal visit to New Zealand.

An old Maori tribeswoman soon becomes the target of many of the leading citizens' rage because they consider her ramshackle house, a blight on the parade route.

Elizabeth befriends the old woman and learns about the history and culture of the Maori people which puts her at odds with the rest of the town and even her own family.

A very sweet story with one of the most odious older brothers I've ever encountered in a story.

Books at the movies

mitali's fire escape links to an interview with Katherine Paterson about her work and the upcoming movie of her classic, Bridge to Terabithia.

One of the first things I heard about the Terabithia movie was that it was going to be a "sprawling fantasy adventure," and they had hired a big special effects team for it, and my initial reaction was to sort of recoil at this—

Paterson: Your initial reaction? (laughs) What do you think mine was?

I don't know, you tell me!

Paterson: Well, that was the thing I was most afraid of. And if you've seen the trailer, my word. I'm just telling everybody I know, "Don't see the trailer, don't see the trailer." Because it's exactly what the trailer ends up making you think, is that it's this glorified fantasy adventure with nothing but special effects, and that's not what we ended up with in this movie.
The story is ultimately about friendship ... and loss

We've ended up with a movie about a friendship between a boy and a girl who develop an imaginary kingdom, and the girl dies, and the boy has to deal with his loss, which is the story of the book. Now of course, because it is currently 2007 and not 1977, when you make a certain type of movie, people expect special effects—and so they've got some special effects. But I don't think they've ruined the movie. (laughs)

The one good thing that they managed to convey to me—and I can't guarantee that this will be conveyed to everyone who sees it—was that Terabithia is not another land, that Terabithia is absolutely coming out of the children's imaginations. It leads into the Terabithian scenes in such a way that I was convinced that they were creating this other land, which to me was masterful.

From the Sublime to the mundane now:

A Fuse #8 points me towards Lady, That's My Skull who comments on the new Nancy Drew movie and the horrific news that Tom Cruise and Ben Stiller are really going to team up for Hardy Men, an updated Hardy Boys adventure. Hijinks ensue, no doubt.

Both these guys stepped into the empty elevator shaft of my attention span a long time ago. Nothing to see here, move along please.

Movie: Inkheart

There is almost daily traffic and discussion is on this blog about the casting of the movie, Inkheart. Old posts on the topic attract comments on a regular basis. The most controversial casting choice so far, and the role girls seem to be the most exercised over, is the henchman, "Basta." Apparently, Jamie Foreman is not young/sexy enough. I read the book several years ago and have not taken up Inkspell yet so I confess my memories of some of the peripheral characters are somewhat dimmed.

J.L. Bell at Oz and Ends had a thoughtful post about the movie's casting last year. I have always thought it was interesting that Cornelia Funke herself had Brendan Fraser in her mind as she wrote the character Mo. Since they spend so much time with characters as they create them, is is common for authors to "cast" a book with familiar faces in their mind's eye? I wonder.

My own interest in the book/movie brought this report and interview from the Inkheart movie set to my attention.

Fun facts: Mirren is using Edith Sitwell as her inspiration for Elinor. Paul Bettany is kind to ferrets.

Brendan Fraser (Mo), Eliza Bennett (Meggie), Paul Bettany (Dustfinger) and Andy Serkis (Capricorn)

UPDATE: There is a real PR press going on right now making the actors and director available for interviews.
Brendan Fraser, Paul Bettany, Eliza Bennett and Andy Serkis Discuss "Inkheart"
Interview with Iain Softley & Helen Mirren

Eragon: fan devotion, books and movies

Years ago, when I was a daily school librarian, one of my "reader" students, B, used to come by the library office after school to talk about books. Like so many teachers' kids (my own entling included) she was trapped at school until her parental unit finished the day's paperwork and prepared for the morrow.

She asked me over and over again if I had heard of this new book called Eragon. Since I had LOTR standups of the fellowship all around my library I would ask, "You mean Aragorn?" No, Mrs. P--ERAGON!

B and her family had met Christopher Paolini at a local bookstore where he was selling copies of this book that he had written and his family had published. Her younger sister had ended up in a pleasant and lengthy conversation with Paolini so their mom went ahead and purchased a copy of the book from him. I think B read the covers off her copy. Later she complained that the new edition that Random House brought out was different from her "original" edition.

I finally did read Eragon. The first 100 pages were an absolute slog. Normally, I would have abandoned the effort but my young friend's earnest devotion to the story compelled me to keep going even though I had to physically push my eyeballs from one word to the next.

At some point the story grabbed me and I enjoyed the last half of the story. Was the story derivative? Oh yes. Paolini is a devotee of Lord of the Rings, Dragonriders of Pern, Star Wars and it shows in every character, plot twist and set piece.

What continues to interest me though is how much kids still love this book. The second book, Eldest, has a devout following also. I have not read it -- my own entling did read it but was not very enthusiastic. It circulates frequently at the libraries where I sub and I know kids who think it is better than Book 1. Is it Paolini's teenager perspective that resonates with the kids?

The entling wanted to see the movie so earlier this week we rounded up some friends and popcorn and zoomed off the local multiplex.

I did not have high hopes. The reviews had not been kind and every word of this review in School Library Journal rings true (I liked this review because the reviewer has obviously read the book.)

On the whole though I enjoyed the movie. The dragon technology is amazing. Jeremy Irons never turns in a bad performance and I thought Edward Speleers did a perfectly acceptable job as Eragon, the dragonrider. I personally don't "get" John Malkovich and his delivery in a fantasy piece echos "Yondah lies the castle of my faddah" but we are not in the Oscar stratosphere here. The director obviously stole his vision from The Two Towers but if you are going to ape your betters, then Peter Jackson is the place to start.

Not having the book committed to memory may have improved my enjoyment. There were heapings of bitterness about the short shrift given to Murtagh and the compression of time on the way home in the car.

I expect I would have had the same reaction to Anthony Horowitz's Stormbreaker if it had ever reached my fair city. Michele at Scholar's Blog writes about Horowitz and his reaction to the limited release of Alex Rider in the USA. Michele enjoyed Stormbreaker and since she has pointed me towards some other good movies, I feel like I would have enjoyed it too. I will watch for it on Netflix.

007 -- James Bond

Treebeard and the entlings and I saw Casino Royale over the holiday.
Terrific.
Loved it.
I felt like I had seen at least 3 movies by the time it was over.

I was not ready to embrace the "new" Bond but Daniel Craig totally won me over! He is closer in character to Ian Fleming's Bond than many of the previous portrayals.

Another fan of the movie is Charlie Higson, the author of the Young Bond series. He writes in The Telegraph:

At key moments, we see Craig acquire all the familiar accoutrements – the gun, the Aston Martin, the dinner jacket – and, in a way, his unconventional looks (in a Bond sense) work perfectly, because we are watching someone turn into Bond before our eyes, rather than leap fully formed onto the screen with bow tie and raised eyebrow. It's not until the last frame of the film that he has fully earned his signature tune, and you could almost view the film as the longest pre-titles trailer in Bond history. You come out of the cinema looking forward eagerly to the next installment.