Todo Tiene Su Como-Se-Llama

The "Me" Weekly

I think my blog is trying to tell me something . . . What can I say? The little bugger has a mind of its own. Well, it has a point you know. I guess I have been a bit remiss lately . . . for no good reason in particular that I know of.

Scholl and I continue to watch at least one movie every day and my list is now up to a healthy thirty-one (we haven't watched tonight's movie yet). The List in terms of meaningless statistics:

-The average year of release for the movies we've watched is 1982. Release years on the list range from 1915 to 2004.

-The average movie length is 120.484 minutes for a total of 62.25 hours spent in front of a screen. The longest thus far is Schindler's List with a runtime of 194 minutes, and the shortest is High Noon with 85.

-The average objective rating is 39.19354839 out of 50 and the average subjective rating is 40.19354839 out of 50. The Replacements is the lowest rated movie at a total of 14%, while three movies have received perfect scores of 100% (Schindler's List, The Seventh Seal, and Rear Window).

I love gratuitous statistics. And spreadsheets are so awesome.

Anyway, as you can see, we've watched some pretty good stuff lately, on the whole. Went to see Harry Potter 3 on Saturday night with Anna, Ardith, Scholl, and Taylor and had a generally good time. Taylor was the only one of us who hadn't read the books.

I was generally caught up in the magic of the whole thing and my personal opinion was that the change in directors has definitely improved the production quality. Scholl and Anna were both a bit bothered by certain deficiencies in comparison to the book. I see their point, but PoA has (I would say) the best and most intricate plot of the five thus far and the movie's chief problem was that it was just too short to fully convey this (clocking in at a "mere" 142 minutes . . . twenty minutes shorter than the second movie, even though the book is longer by 100 pages).

Anyway, I think that production quality is up and screenwriting quality is down from the last installment. I have the first two winging their merry way in this direction from Netflix, to be watched over the weekend (in all probability). I'll let you know if I discover anything of further interest on the subject at that time . . .

As far as reading goes . . . Well, that quiz ate most of my weekend reading time when I wasn't looking. I chastised it severely, of course, but I wasn't about to go digging through quiz excrement looking for loose fragments of my . . .

No. The analogy does not carry through very well. Nevermind.

I did have time to finish Black Wolf yesterday, and I was quite pleased. Fourth in a loosely-connected series (each book by a different author, starring a different character from a noble family), it was a quality bit of escapism set in the Forgotten Realms universe (one of the main D&D campaign settings). I consider the overall quality of this series to be a cut above Salvatore's stuff set in the same universe. For one thing, I have yet to encounter an author in this series who has a pathological fear of killing off main characters (this tends to heighten the tension, making for a generally more enjoyable and less predictable plot). Of course, Salvatore wouldn't have that problem either if he hadn't made all of his characters FRIGGING OMNIPOTENT!!!

Anyway, I have (as you will see on the right) moved on to the fifth book in the series, which looks very promising thus far. Meanwhile, while I continue to read the other books, I am making special efforts to complete Shadowmancer asap. I won't lie . . . some few passages of it are really quite decent. Overall, however, I remain mystified as to how this book has done as well as it has. The chief problem . . . *thinks* . . . Well, okay, one of the chief problems I have with it (aside from his poor plotting, bad characterization, largely hackneyed writing, and pathetic attempts to scare me with a villain who behaves like a half-wit monkey child most of the time) is the blurring of the line between magic and miracle.

From a spiritual standpoint (since this book was written as an alternative to the undisguised occultism [sic] of Harry Potter and the aggressive atheism [not sic] of Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy) I would say that this is pretty much unforgivable. In spite of the mad ravings of the fundies, I am not spiritually confused by reading a Harry Potter book. For one thing, I know exactly what real world witchcraft truly is. Far more important than this, however, I realize that Harry Potter does not portray real world witchcraft . . . duh!

Shadowmancer, on the other hand, makes it very hard to keep track of precisely what the author thinks along these lines. He has set his book (supposedly a fantasy) in an actual location of the real world (albeit during a long-gone time period), which was his first mistake. By doing this, he has tied himself to real-world mechanics, and if you do that and you want to maintain a consistent Christian worldview in order to convey a message . . . well, you'd better at least stick to some form of conventional Christian thought regarding the supernatural (but don't make me go there, I beg you).

Taylor fails to do this on multiple counts. First, the pathetic bad guy I referred to earlier (Vicar and Magistrate Obadiah Demurral), often casts spells which are clearly demonic in nature . . . since he summons actual demons and sends them to possess and control his minions . . . and his methodology is classic, stereotypical, literary Satanism (he employs everything from pentagrams to blood sacrifices). However, much of the magic he makes use of is . . . well, it's weird. He summons random creatures from Celtic folklore as well as a number of pathetic Ringwraith rip-offs called "Varrigal." Seriously . . . the description of the things is straight out of Tolkien, with a bit of the "Frodo Ring-Vision" appearance (from Weathertop in the first movie) thrown in for good measure. The difference is, you can take these puny buggers out with a flintlock pistol or a rusty cutlass . . . Now, what kind of Satanically-summoned creature can be shot? Really . . .

Even worse to my mind, however, is the "good guy magic." This is chiefly wielded by the African boy, Raphah, the only true Christian to appear thus far in the story. He runs around slinging magic miracles like a D&D cleric . . . What am I supposed to make of this?

Message = "Become a Christian! We gots heap-big magicks!"

I'll need to see how it all turns out, but there is one of two possibilities here . . . Either Demurral's plan for world domination is legit, and God's omnipotent authority (yes, THE GOD) is actually under threat from this slimy little peon with his stupid magic artifacts and needs to be preserved by the lackluster efforts of three teenage basket cases, or nobody was ever under threat from anybody else and our heroes' frantic attempts to save the world were not required (thanks anyway, kids). While I will be more than a little pissed off at the waste of my time if the latter is the case, I sincerely hope that it is . . . If it ain't, we got bigger problems.

One final (for now) shot: If I pick up one more juvenile historical fiction book set anywhere between 1300-1800 and starring a grubby young teenage boy and girl who have been orphaned or otherwise come from broken homes and difficult circumstances, I am going to . . . Probably read it anyway. But I will be very upset. I swear . . . was this the only demographic doing anything during this period of history?! I think not!

Well, this post has now reached critical mass . . . I guess. In any case, I don't have anything further that I wish to discuss, rave about, or review at the present time, and I do have a number of books to finish. I will proceed to do that now.

Posted by Jared at June 7, 2004 08:45 PM | TrackBack