winterbadger (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
winterbadger) wrote2010-08-17 05:50 pm
winterbadger) wrote2010-08-17 05:50 pm
Entry tags:
books to TV: Tin Man
Not all 'made for TV' is dreck, of course, and not all of it ruins good books.
Watching "Riverworld" made me feel the way I do when someone brings a lot of free, mediocre snackage to the office and says "Hey, everyone eat this for me!" I eat some, then a little more because it's free and it's just sitting there. And a little more in the afternoon because, well otherwise it will spoil. And by the end of the day I've killed my appetite, I feel a little bloated, and I haven't really *enjoyed* it because I'm too conscious that it wasn't that good.
Watching "Tin Man", by contrast, was more like when I'm chilly and a little thirsty and make a huge mug of tea. It makes me feel warm. I can appreciate the gentle subtleties of flavour. It's not too much.
I've wanted to see TM since it came out, and with Netflix and my new Roku player, I could just dial it up and enjoy.
I liked it because the cinematography was good. Not just the landscape--like RW, it was filmed in large part in BC--but the way images were used. There was some CGI, but it wasn't (to my eye) terrifically hokey; they blended it well. And I liked the visual feel that the scenery, sets, costumes, and story evoked. It was both complex and simple, slightly steampunk but somewhat noir-ish.
I enjoyed the acting--a really good cast, and by that I don't just mean 'names', like Richard Dreyfus and Zooey Deschanel, but the less well known actors like Neal McDonough (who I recognized from Band of Brothers), Kathleen Robertson, Raoul Trujillo, and, yes, again, Alan Cumming (who is much better suited to his role here than he was in RW). Fans of BG will recognize Callum Keith Rennie, who played the Cylon Leoben, but in TM he has only a small role.
And I really enjoyed the writing. The dialogue didn't strike me as overdone, and it also wasn't as lame and flat as some of that in RW. And the conceits that linked TM to the Oz books and to the WWO movie I found charming--I can imagine that handled less deftly, I would have found then hugely annoying. The parallels between DG and Dorothy; between her companions and the Scarecrow, the Cowardly Lion, and the Tin Man; between Azkadellia and the WWW; and a whole host of other parallels seem entertaining and clever in the way that they are re-imagined into this new telling of the story.
Watching "Riverworld" made me feel the way I do when someone brings a lot of free, mediocre snackage to the office and says "Hey, everyone eat this for me!" I eat some, then a little more because it's free and it's just sitting there. And a little more in the afternoon because, well otherwise it will spoil. And by the end of the day I've killed my appetite, I feel a little bloated, and I haven't really *enjoyed* it because I'm too conscious that it wasn't that good.
Watching "Tin Man", by contrast, was more like when I'm chilly and a little thirsty and make a huge mug of tea. It makes me feel warm. I can appreciate the gentle subtleties of flavour. It's not too much.
I've wanted to see TM since it came out, and with Netflix and my new Roku player, I could just dial it up and enjoy.
I liked it because the cinematography was good. Not just the landscape--like RW, it was filmed in large part in BC--but the way images were used. There was some CGI, but it wasn't (to my eye) terrifically hokey; they blended it well. And I liked the visual feel that the scenery, sets, costumes, and story evoked. It was both complex and simple, slightly steampunk but somewhat noir-ish.
I enjoyed the acting--a really good cast, and by that I don't just mean 'names', like Richard Dreyfus and Zooey Deschanel, but the less well known actors like Neal McDonough (who I recognized from Band of Brothers), Kathleen Robertson, Raoul Trujillo, and, yes, again, Alan Cumming (who is much better suited to his role here than he was in RW). Fans of BG will recognize Callum Keith Rennie, who played the Cylon Leoben, but in TM he has only a small role.
And I really enjoyed the writing. The dialogue didn't strike me as overdone, and it also wasn't as lame and flat as some of that in RW. And the conceits that linked TM to the Oz books and to the WWO movie I found charming--I can imagine that handled less deftly, I would have found then hugely annoying. The parallels between DG and Dorothy; between her companions and the Scarecrow, the Cowardly Lion, and the Tin Man; between Azkadellia and the WWW; and a whole host of other parallels seem entertaining and clever in the way that they are re-imagined into this new telling of the story.
no subject
Sort of in reverse, I know several people who loved the Lord of the Rings movies, but couldn't get through the books.
People are interesting, don't you think?
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