Thirith on 14/1/2020 at 10:37
I have a soft spot for the '80s film version of The Name of the Rose (it definitely left quite the impression on twelve-year-old me, ahem), but it's in no way a definitive adaptation. There's so much in the novel that is left out because the film is one thing, a medieval whodunnit, while the novel is many other things as well. (Frankly, I like the film better, in part *because* it has more of a focus. The novel's focus, if it has one, is "Hello, I'm Umberto Eco, and I have a brain the size of a planet. I have read *so fucking much*. Admire me.")
Starker on 14/1/2020 at 15:53
If you have a passion for literature and/or medieval studies, definitely a plus rather than a minus. But yes, it seems very hard to adapt to any other medium without losing much of its essence.
Thirith on 14/1/2020 at 16:07
I'd say I have at least a liking for both, having majored in Literature and minored in Medieval History a hundred years ago, but I don't particularly like Eco's way of blending research and storytelling. IMO the latter tends to suffer with him, though not always to the same extent, and then I'd rather read something that's just about "This is cool, isn't it?" than something that tries to tell a story at the same time yet gets distracted from the story whenever there's a cool new bit of historical trivia. Reading an Eco novel is a bit like reading a Wiki entry and vanishing down the Wiki rabbit hole, except it's supposed to be a novel - and it doesn't help that I always get the impression Eco's engaging in a fair bit of scholarly dick-waving.
Starker on 14/1/2020 at 19:29
I've met him, so I'm perhaps overly biased, but I never got that impression from him. He didn't need to show off. He really was just that smart. And that's how I also read his novels, wonderful multi-layered meta- and intertextual pieces of the kind only a semiotician would (or could) write.
icemann on 22/1/2020 at 15:19
Interesting. I remember watching a live action mini-series of Alice in Wonderland (with part 1 being a remake of the 1st cartoon film, and the remainder being after it), which had a Jabberwocky main bad guy/creature. A very dark adaptation. That Jabberwocky scared the ABSOLUTE CRAP out of me as a kid. Gave me nightmares. Gah.
Did a quick google search and it brought up next to nothing on it, besides that it came out in the mid 80s. Hmm.
Best I could find was - (
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088693/)
Worth a watch at least once. Very similar in style to the movie "Return to Oz", which I absolutely loved as a kid.
Renzatic on 23/1/2020 at 22:20
Quote Posted by icemann
Very similar in style to the movie "Return to Oz", which I absolutely loved as a kid.
I remember watching bits and pieces of Return to Oz when I was a kid. For the longest time, I thought it was some fever dream I had. Thought the same thing about The Peanut Butter Solution too, which was so freaking surreal, I was honestly surprised it was a real movie.
On another note, I just got through watching Star Trek: Picard. It was surprisingly good. I was initially turned off by the reports of a less optimistic Starfleet, thinking they were gonna make it all edgy and SO DARK, BRAH! The way it's actually portrayed is much more realistic. At some point after multiple Borg invasions, the Dominion War, and a bunch of other crap that eventually culminated in an AI rebellion on Mars that destroyed the Federation's main shipyard, and killed nearly 100,000 people, Starfleet has become much more cautious and isolationist, abandoning the Romulans during their moment of need because they have more pressing concerns on the homefront.
Very topically relevant!
What's weird is how a good chunk of the plot hinges upon a single episode of TNG. I wouldn't have caught a few of the references if I hadn't just watched that particular episode.
zombe on 25/1/2020 at 08:07
While the previous Star Trek series was a bit crap from start and got rapidly worse by every episode - this one has my hopes up from the, admittedly, single episode i have seen so far. I hope they won't screw it up this time.
Sulphur on 25/1/2020 at 09:49
Yeah. This one seems to remember that a guiding principle of (good) Trek shows has always been about putting up a mirror to society and examining where it could go with our present-day contexts. I'm glad they've dropped Discovery's empty tryhard edginess for some actual, grounded Trek storytelling. The fact that it's heavily TNG-based and inspired is the icing on the cake. Fingers crossed as well that they see it through.