birthday boy
The phone rings.
R: Hello?
J: Hello!
R: Okay, so it turns out I didn’t have to worry about that Earthsea thing on Scifi being unfaithful to the books after all.
J: No?
R: No. ‘Cause apparently they’re based on a completely different set of Earthsea books, by some other writer called Ursula K. Le Guin.
J: Ah. Not good then?
R: I. Have. Not. The. Words. Well, no, I do: so Ged is Bobby Drake from the X-Men movies, and he’s running around being all, like, California surfer dude, totally. And Danny Glover looks pretty good as Ogion the Silent, but he just WILL not shut up. Which is not, y’know, really in the spirit of that character. And God, the script is so awful, with all the beauty and weirdness and darkness excised, like they found-and-replaced all the good stuff with the nearest roughly equivalent cliche… Let me put it this way. We’ve already had someone yelling “Ged! NOOO!”
J: Err. So everyone knows his secret name?
R: Ah. Well. Ged is his public name in this one, and Sparrowhawk is his secret name. So it’s completely backwards and lame. Oh, Jeremy, I feel so sorry for some of the people involved, because they’ve done quite a nice job with the cinematography and the whole ripping off Weta’s art direction and costume design thing, but my Christ it’s a cynical cash-in. I bet I know how they sold it to the network: The Legendary Adventures of the Fellowship of Harry Potter the Vampire Slayer, Warrior Princess!
J: Did Tolkien write that?
R: I think it was CS Lewis. Hurry home now.
J: Love you. (click)
The phone rings again.
R: Hello?
J: So you’re saying it’s The Tie-in, the Pitch and the Wardrobe?
R: Guess who’s getting blogged on his birthday?
J: Yay me!
