Top Ten Movies and the Tree

Today is the FREE! release of "Part Seventeen: The Tree of Light"

Make sure you pick up your copy! (And more on that in a moment...) And notice the wonderful new cover by the fabulous Rusty Webb!

It's also the day of Alex Cavanaugh's Top Ten Movie thing (click the link for the list).

Let's get the movies out of the way first.

As per usual, I'm breaking the rules a bit. Many of the movies I list will be franchises rather than movies. Mostly, because devoting six of 10 spots to Star Wars seems a little redundant, and, well, even the least of the Star Wars movies is greater than most other movies. This will allow for more variety on my list. Oh, and I should also say that I kind of hate making lists like this, because, if I were to make the same list next week, it might be slightly different. That's why I have a "significance" page not a "favorites" page. The things that have been significant don't change. But enough of that; let's get to it...

Honorables:
Daredevil (2003) -- This was one of my top super hero movies until Marvel got into the game for real and started making their own movies. I still think it's one of the most watchable and is a great adaptation at the same time. It's completely underrated.

Ladyhawke (1985) -- During high school, my best friend and I spent the better part of a year watching this movie virtually every weekend. It almost made the actual top 10, but it's probably been too long since I've seen it to really know where it stands.

Fellowship of the Ring (2001) -- Fellowship was a great movie, perfectly captured the spirit of the books, and it deserves to be in the top 10. However, it fell off the list, because I don't feel compelled to put the other movies up there along with it, and it wasn't strong enough to stand next to the other top 10s all by itself.

Goonies (1985) -- This was the movie that my brother and his best friend watched almost every weekend for the better part of a year, and I often sat and watched it with them. [I know, you'd think I did nothing but watch movies when I was in high school, but most of this movie watching happened after midnight when it was too late to do anything else.] Then there was a period where my kids wore out this video, too.

10. Robin Hood (1973) -- The Disney version of Robin Hood was the first movie I ever fell in love with. And I did. I wanted to be Robin Hood, and he was the hero of my boyhood, along with Spider-Man, prior to Luke Skywalker.

9. Better Off Dead (1985) -- The other movie my best friend and I spent the better part of a year watching virtually every weekend. Even more than Ladyhawke. It was the most quoted movie of my high school career, especially, "Man, now that's a real shame when folks be throwin' away a perfectly good white boy like that."
And "I want my two dollars!"
And "Gee, I'm real sorry your <whatever bad thing just happened> blew up."
And... I need to stop, or I'll just quote the whole movie.
However, I do still use on my kids whenever we're having something they don't like for dinner, "It's got raisins in it... you like raisins."

8. Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986) -- Not quite as quotable as Better Off Dead but so much more tapped into the souls of us all who grew up in the 80s. No one really wanted to be Lane Meyer, but we all wanted to be Ferris.

7. Toy Story (1995/1999/2010) -- One of the greatest movies about friendship ever made. And they just kept getting better. The third one made me cry. I don't know that there's more to be said than that.

The Incredibles (2004) -- My feelings about this movie can be summed up in the line, "When everyone's special, no one is." If you don't understand, you probably won't understand.

Ratatouille (2007) -- Similar in theme to Incredibles but with the addition of not dismissing someone because you think they know who they are.

6. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) -- The second movie to ever make me cry (the first was The Fox and the Hound, which almost made the list) and possibly the event that nudged D&D into cultural awareness in any real sense. I'm still hoping, though, that Spielberg doesn't cave and make a sequel.

5. Iron Man (2008) -- The second virtually perfect super hero movie. I saw it three times its opening weekend (not, actually, on purpose) and could have gone back for more. Downey (whom I had been following since the 80s (Less Than Zero, anyone?)) was amazing. "I am Iron Man."

Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) -- The third virtually perfect super hero movie. Chris Evans was absolutely perfect for the role, and I was so relieved when they went with him (they almost didn't because of his portrayal of Johnny Storm). As with Iron Man, Marvel really captured the character and threw him up on the screen.

The Avengers (2012) -- I don't even know what to say about this one. Whedon tied all the other movies together perfectly. It stands as the masterpiece of superhero movies.

4. Spider-Man (2002/2004/2007) -- The movie I waited my whole life to see. Spider-Man has always been my favorite superhero. Always. I remember playing Spider-Man when I was four, maybe even three. He was always so cool with all the jokes and stuff, and, really, is there a better set of super powers? Not when you throw in how smart he is, there's not. Sam Raimi was the very first (director) to capture the essence of a comic book hero and throw it up on the screen for us to see. [Admittedly, Hugh Jackman's Wolverine was the very first perfect performance of a character in 2000's X-Men. Unfortunately, the X-Movies have been pushed too far down to make the list.] And it had the line "With great power comes great responsibility," unlike some lesser Spider-Man movies.

3. Indiana Jones (1981/1984/1989/2008) -- The greatest adventure movies ever made. Period. Adventure does have a name...

2. Dead Poets Society (1989) -- I left high school completely tired of math and science and being told I had to do something in math or science, or math and science. I was tired of having my math test scores waved in my face all the time. Drawing had already been squashed out of me, but writing had not. I was good at it. On the sly, my English teachers would let me know how good at it I was without talking about math or science. So I went on to college and immediately declared English as my major... only to have all of my advisors start yelling at me. But I held to it. I never doubted my decision, but that doesn't mean  that you know that you know that you're right. I walked out of DPS after my first year as an English major, and I knew that I knew that I'd made the right decision.

1. Star Wars (1977/1980/1983/1999/2002/2005) -- What can I say? Star Wars changed my life. Not that it didn't change the lives of lots of kids. Watching it that first time was like being in a darkened room, only you don't know that it's dark, and having someone flip on the light. It opened my mind and my imagination. And I watched it do that same thing to both of my boys. The flip of a switch. It was more gradual with my daughter, but it's there for her, too. It's the most quoted movie in our house. It's the most quoted movie of my life.
How could expect there to be anything different in this spot?

Shadow Spinner

Today is a big day for Shadow Spinner! It's the halfway point of the story, and there are some significant revelations. But no spoilers. Go read it if you want to know; after all, it's FREE! Well, today it is. And tomorrow. Here's the list of today's FREE! parts!

FREE! on Monday, March 18 and Tuesday, March 19:
"Part Seventeen: The Tree of Light"
FREE! only on Monday, March 18:
"Part Sixteen: The Dark Tree"
"Part Fifteen: Food of the Garden"
"Part Fourteen: Anger and Laughter"
"Part Eleven: The Kiss"
"Part Ten: The Broken Window"
"Part Nine: The Shadow of the Tree"
"Part Eight: The Cold and the Dark"
"Part Seven: The Moth and the Shadow"
"Part Five: The Police Car"
"Part Four: The Cop"
"Part Three: The Bedroom"
"Part Two: The Kitchen Table"
"Part One: The Tunnel"
Look at that! That's 14 out of 17 parts for FREE! But that's not all, because you can also get little tale that started all of this off:
"The Evil That Men Do"

As an added bonus, you can also find "Christmas on the Corner" available for FREE! To quote one reviewer's response to the novella, "What I liked best, and what surprised me most about this story was the amazing depth of emotion." Make sure you pick it up while you have  the chance to get it FREE!

And that will just about do me for today. Enjoy the movie list and pick up the FREE! stuff. Who can say no to FREE!, right?

An Expected Self-Indulgence

The more I heard about The Hobbit in the lead up to its release the more trepidatious I became. The Lord of the Rings, overall, is an excellent adaptation of the book. They're great movies, but they are also great adaptations. Mostly. Except for the few places where Peter Jackson got all self-indulgent and added stuff in just because he liked it better that way. Like the elves at Helm's Deep, which still just makes my ears steam. To hear him say in an interview that he added them in there because he just wanted there to be more elves because he loves elves so much just makes me want to smack him, because what he did completely undermines Tolkien's purpose for that battle.

And let's just not even talk about King Kong, because that was three hours of the most self-indulgent crap ever.

At any rate, the more I heard about what Jackson was doing with The Hobbit, the more I worried that that was what he was doing, making a completely self-indulgent movie. But my wife kept telling me to give him the benefit of the doubt because he'd done such a good job with LotR. >sigh< It turned out I was correct. Jackson needs three movies for his version of The Hobbit because it is exactly that: his version. And his version is not a better a version. In many places, it destroys what Tolkien did just so that Jackson could shove The Hobbit into his version of Middle Earth. [And now I know why the Tolkien family has restricted Jackson from any more of Tolkien's material than he already has access to (meaning he was only allowed what was in The Hobbit and LotR and denied everything else).]

The biggest problem, though, was that, while watching the movie, it was amazing. I mean, it really was amazing! But I couldn't get immersed in it, not completely, because the back of my head kept poking at me, saying, "But it's wrong!" And the problem with that is the farther away from actually watching the movie I get, the more the wrong parts bother me. So, although I enjoyed it while I was actually watching it (most of it, anyway -- the part with domino trees was just DUMB (and took me back to the swinging dinosaurs in Kong, which was also DUMB)), the more I think about it, talk about it, read about it, the more upset about it I get and the less I like it. Which will not keep me from seeing the others and, probably, owning all of them. And that bothers me, too!

And speaking of reading about it, my first impression upon walking out of the movie was that people who have not read the books would probably find more to like in the movie, because they wouldn't have the feeling of wrongness about it that I have. However, the more reviews I look at from people that have no other exposure to Tolkien than the movies (and some that haven't even seen LotR), the more I'm finding that people that don't already like Tolkien don't like this movie. So... if you haven't read Tolkien, you won't like this movie. If you have read Tolkien... well, you might like it if you read Tolkien a long time ago and aren't really "into" it, but if you are really into Middle Earth, I'm not seeing how you can really like what Jackson's done to it.

My sons are good examples of this. My younger son is most upset about the lack of the songs, because they are mostly excluded. And he hates the inclusion of the pale orc. As does my older son. (As do I.) They both have complaints about the movie that are at war with the fact that they enjoyed watching the movie. You shouldn't come out of a movie feeling both "I loved it!" and "I hated it!" You just shouldn't. The short of that is that we are all conflicted about it. Everyone except my daughter, I suppose, because she hasn't read any Tolkien, yet, but, because she lives in a Tolkien-ish environment, she has a predilection toward it.

Or, maybe, people who are really into LotR but not The Hobbit, people that read the trilogy because of the movies but never bothered with Hobbit, will really like it, because Jackson really did everything he could to make this (series of) movie(s) as epic in scope as LotR. But, see, that's not what The Hobbit is, so the movie is continuing to just bother me.

In fact, Jackson just mapped Hobbit onto his LotR template, so it's wrong from the very beginning: the prologue. It worked in Fellowship, because there is so much back story in LotR that the prologue gave us a sense of history that lead up to the events in the trilogy, but it fails completely in An Unexpected Journey. For one thing, Bilbo doesn't all that stuff before he goes off on his journey; he finds out as he goes along, so we lose the sense of discovery that Bilbo had, because Jackson just lays it all out for us at the beginning. I squirmed in my seat during that part, but I was still reserving judgment. By the end of the movie, though, I was annoyed with it.

I was annoyed with it because Jackson uses that bit of prologue to introduce Thorin's non-existent nemesis. Non-existent in the book, I mean. This piece of plot that has been woven in is the biggest weakness of the film. I say that because every member of my family (except my daughter) came out of the movie hating the pale orc. Not necessarily for the same reason, but we all hated him being in the movie. He is so NOT needed.

But, see, the prologue is not the only way we see Jackson trying to harmonize the movies. The fight with the goblins and the Great Goblin is just like the flight through Moria with the falling stairs and all of that with the Great Goblin subbing in as the Balrog. Bilbo puts the ring on for the first time in the very same way that Frodo does. The elves come in and rescue the dwarves from a fight that doesn't even exist in the book. The stone giants... oh, well, I don't know where the heck that crap came from, but it was dumb. Having them would have been great, but having the party end up climbing around on them was ludicrous. And since when were they actually made from stone? Did I say self-indulgent? Oh, yeah, I think I did.

Having said all of that, the movie was still beautiful and wondrous to behold. The acting was... well, Martin Freeman was ohmygosh awesome. And it's a good thing, too, because Jackson gave much of Gandalf's role in the story to Bilbo in order to increase Bilbo's importance at an earlier stage in the story. (Bah!) Richard Armitage (whom I loved in BBC's Robin Hood) was dashing as Thorin and completely not what I expected but in a good way as opposed to the rest of the movie. Dwalin and Kili are the only two other dwarves that get large enough roles to actually comment on beyond the fact that they are there and they are dwarves, and both of them do just fine. If you've seen the other movies, the rest is as should be expected. Oh, the scene with Gollum was excellent in that Andy Serkis was, again, incredible.

Of course, there's Radagast... Sylvester McCoy (a previous Doctor, so I'm pre-disposed toward him already) did a great job with the part he was given; I'm just not quite sure how I feel about that part. On the one hand, I really liked it; on the other, really? Really? That's what Jackson came up with?  He had the opportunity to bring Radagast, a character hardly mentioned in any of the books, to life for the first time, and that's what he came up with? Seriously? He had freaking bird poop running down his face! Of course, he had a sleigh pulled by rabbits, too, which was really cool.

I think the real problem with the whole thing is that Jackson didn't have anyone standing next to him during all of this to say, "What the heck? Is that seriously what you're doing there?"

And before anyone starts comparing this with Lucas and the prequels, there is a huge difference: Star Wars belongs to Lucas. He wasn't screwing around with something that belonged to someone else. Middle Earth and The Hobbit don't belong to Jackson, so all the screwing around he did is rather disrespectful to the source material.

Oh, and speaking of Star Wars, there were parts where I felt like I was watching that instead. The Great Goblin was so much Jabba the Hutt. And, actually, the part where the Pale Orc is demanding Thorin's head made me feel like I was at Jabba's court. And, then, there was the line by Galadriel, "The riddle of the morgul blade..." >sigh<

My general reaction to An Unexpected Journey has been much the same as my reaction to The Dark Knight Rises: I enjoyed it while I was watching it, but the more time I have to think about it the more it gets under my skin. Like a thorn. And I'm just picking at it and picking at it trying to get it out but succeeding only in working it deeper. And there are two more of these movies to go! But I really want to see Smaug!

Let's just not talk about the moose, okay. We're gonna try to forget about that altogether.
Now I want to go watch "A Room with a Moose" from Invader Zim, the only place we should have a moose, I'm sure.

The Happiest Place on Earth: Part 1

I've never had a huge attraction to things Disney. That's not to say that I don't have my movies: Robin Hood and The Fox and the Hound are still two of my all time favorites. But Disney was never a thing for me. That may have been due to the butchered versions of The Black Cauldron and The Secret of Nimh they released when I was a kid. It's hard to hold any special fondness for the butchers of two of your favorite books.

But that didn't stop me from wanting to go to EPCOT Center when it opened in 1982. I had absolutely no desire to go to Disney World, but I desperately wanted to go to Epcot. That never happened. In 1987, Star Tours opened, and I wanted, even more, to go to that! I mean, it was Star Wars. But, in 2010, they shut Star Tours down to re-design it. I was bummed about that. I'll never get to experience the original Star Tours  attraction. But I still had hope to go to the new Star Tours. That's the only reason I've ever wanted to go to Disneyland. That and the exclusive Star Wars action figures the Star Wars store there has.

Several years ago, the kids' grandmother took them to Disneyland, and they brought me one of these:

It's awesome! But it made me want to go even more (and get all of the figure series).

Earlier this year, my oldest son got to go to Disneyland to perform with his choir (where they received a gold medal ranking), and he got to go on the new Star Tours and brought this back:

I just have to say that I love all the collector's editions of the Potato Heads. I have, well, probably, more than I should. Spuda Fett filled me with a renewed desire to go to Disneyland just so that I could buy the whole Star Tours collection of them. My wife did not find it amusing.

I still had no real interest in Disneyland in general, though. I figured it was overpriced and overrated. Besides, I've been to Six Flags. I mean, I grew up within driving distance of the real Six Flags, which has a lot of attractions and Texas color and isn't all about the rides. Why would I need to "waste" money on a trip to Disneyland? You know, other than Star Tours. And the Indiana Jones ride, but that wasn't as big a deal.

Earlier this year, the grandparents (my father-in-law and his wife) decided to take the kids to Disneyland this summer. During the ensuing conversation, I mentioned that I'd never been to Disneyland. It was an innocent comment, especially so since their grandmother (not the grandmother that took them the previous time (that had been my wife's mom)) had asked me a question that I couldn't answer because I'd never been. It never occurred to me what kind of an uproar it would cause. As it turns out, I was the only one in the family that had never been to Disneyland, a fact my wife knew but neither of us thought particularly important as my wife had not much care for Disneyland, either, a fact that just reinforced my attitude toward the place since she had been there before.

At any rate, a whole new plan was conceived. A plan that involved the entire family going to Disney. People were excited. Well, honestly, 6 of 7 of us were excited. Even my wife got excited. I was looking forward to finally getting to go on Star Tours and going to the Star Wars store, but, really, I didn't have any particular care about the rest of the trip. It was a necessary evil to accomplishing my Star Tours goal.

That trip was last week.

I can't say how wrong I was. Sure, Disneyland is a big commercial enterprise, and they really do a good job of enticing people into spending money. I mean it's a massive money suck, but, oh! it's so much more. But you'll have to wait for Part 2 for the rest...

Oh! And I got this:

I wasn't able to get all of them, but I got the most important one!

Lawhead's Skin Map

One of the authors I mention on my Of significance... page is Stephen Lawhead. He's long been one of my favorite authors and has some wonderful books. I got my introduction to Lawhead through his Pendragon Cycle which I read because I was interested in the Arthurian content. Prior to reading Lawhead, my exposure to the Arthurian legend had been things like Excalibur which, although full of knights in shining armor and all of that, were not very historically accurate. However, The Pendragon Cycle, although a work of fantasy, was being presented as historical fiction, and I wanted to see what it was about. The original Pendragon Trilogy remain my favorite Arthurian books to date (Jack Whyte's series comes close, though).

If you are at all interested in the Arthurian mythos, I would highly suggest Taliesin, Merlin, and Arthur, the original trilogy. Lawhead did go back later and add in a few more books. I don't remember liking Pendragon (the 4th book) very much, and I can't remember how I felt about Grail, so, maybe, I need to go back and read that again. The 6th book, Avalon, is not technically part of the series. It takes place in the near future and is about the return of Arthur and was quite good. Darn... now I'm wanting to go back and re-read all of them.

Lawhead is not always a great author. Some of his works are tremendous, but some are... less than good. The works that are great, though, are really, really great and make him an author I follow. My favorite book by him is Byzantium, also a work of historical fiction. More recently, he wrote a trilogy about Robin Hood. Prior to Star Wars, Robin Hood was my childhood hero. The first two books of that series, Hood and Scarlet, are great, although I felt he dropped the ball a bit on the final book, Tuck. It's probably a good book, but Hood and Scarlet are great, so I was let down when I got to Tuck.

All of that to say that I was very excited to hear about his Bright Empires series, especially since the title of the first book is so good: The Skin Map. What a great title! [And the next book, The Bone House, also has a great title.]  However, The Skin Map is somewhat of a departure from his usual style of writing. Lawhead generally sticks to just one POV at a time, even in books where more than one POV is used. Often, he will divide a book into sections so that each section is done from a different POV. Probably his most effective style is when he uses a narrator from within the story to tell the story about a different character. It's kind of a 1st/3rd person blend with a singular POV and most of his best books have been written in this style. [Now, I'm trying to think of other novels written this way, and I'm completely drawing a blank. Well, other than the Sherlock Holmes stories which are narrated by Watson.] The Skin Map, though, has five separate POVs (that I can remember off the top of my head) that he bounces between with no discernible pattern. I found this, from him, distinctly less effective than his style in his other novels.

I also didn't particularly care for his main character, although I am somewhat hesitant to call Kit the main character; he was, nevertheless, the central character around whom the story revolved, which may have been my issue with all the different POVs. We just spent too much time away from Kit for me to become invested in him. Since it seems apparent that Kit is the main character (based on the ending), it would have been nice to have more from him. Of course, like I said, I didn't much care for him. At the beginning of the book, he is a character to whom things happen only. He has no initiative, no ambition, no opinions. My response to him was, repeatedly, "Oh! My! Gosh!" There was an inkling of a change in him by the end of the book, but I'll have to reserve judgement until I read The Bone House.

So, yes, it was good enough that I want to read the next one, although I can not deny that part of that is on the strength of the author, not the book itself. It's hard to say whether I would want to read the next book if I didn't like Lawhead so much. The end of the book does open up a bit more, so to speak, but the first 2/3 were a real struggle to get through. A greater mystery is revealed towards the end, and there are some rather unexpected twists, so that may have been enough to make me want to go on even if it wasn't Lawhead. Since it is Lawhead, I'll be looking to get the next book soon.

At the moment, I'd give The Skin Map a "C," mostly because I struggled with it so much. It just seemed pretty typical. However, given that it's part of a series, my opinion on that may change as I read the next books. If, in retrospect, I can see that this was a great set up for what's going to happen, my opinion may change.

Note:
I ended the freebie special on "Part One: The Tunnel" (see the Shadow Spinner tab up top) a bit early. The first two days, it had brisk downloads, and it peaked at #26 on Amazon's contemporary fantasy list, which, I think is pretty good. However, the third day, the downloads dwindled, so I'm guessing that everyone that's going to download it, right now, has pretty much done so. I'll save the other two free days for a later date. Thank you to all of you that downloaded it! I hope you enjoy it.
"Part Two: The Kitchen Table" will be available Monday, August 13.