avevale_intelligencer (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
avevale_intelligencer) wrote2010-04-08 12:25 pm
avevale_intelligencer) wrote2010-04-08 12:25 pm
Bits
I am old and jaded and cynical, and shamed by the idealism of stronger and brighter souls than I. :)
In other news, today I finished reading to Jan the second and third volumes of the Soldier Son trilogy by Robin Hobb. This was occasioned by the local library having the first volume in audiobook, but not the other two. I found them heavy going (Jan says I should probably avoid Dostoevsky, a decision I made in early life and am glad to have confirmed) but ultimately rewarding. However, I did find myself constantly brought up short by poor word choice; the same word repeated within a paragraph or even a sentence, despite the ready availability of alternatives. I would call it first-draft writing, except that I wouldn't even do it in a first draft. It really does interrupt the flow of the narrative.
And tonight we watched The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, and found it very Terry Gilliam, rather like The Circus of Doctor Lao with added grot and the usual downbeat ending. Tom Waits made an oddly uncharismatic devil, and Christopher Plummer bore a strong resemblance to John Neville in Gilliam's Baron Munchausen. Not sure if it's one I'd want to see again, but it was enjoyable at the time.
Part three of Breaking Down The Walls Of Time is on the way.
In other news, today I finished reading to Jan the second and third volumes of the Soldier Son trilogy by Robin Hobb. This was occasioned by the local library having the first volume in audiobook, but not the other two. I found them heavy going (Jan says I should probably avoid Dostoevsky, a decision I made in early life and am glad to have confirmed) but ultimately rewarding. However, I did find myself constantly brought up short by poor word choice; the same word repeated within a paragraph or even a sentence, despite the ready availability of alternatives. I would call it first-draft writing, except that I wouldn't even do it in a first draft. It really does interrupt the flow of the narrative.
And tonight we watched The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, and found it very Terry Gilliam, rather like The Circus of Doctor Lao with added grot and the usual downbeat ending. Tom Waits made an oddly uncharismatic devil, and Christopher Plummer bore a strong resemblance to John Neville in Gilliam's Baron Munchausen. Not sure if it's one I'd want to see again, but it was enjoyable at the time.
Part three of Breaking Down The Walls Of Time is on the way.
no subject
I think that large parts of the film are possibly left as exercises for those who like to find parallels. One could probably do something with the Heath Ledger character as a sort of subverted Christ figure and Parnassus as a fading God. If it was actually supposed to be about stories and the power of imagination, then I think it maybe missed its own point a little...but I could be wrong.