Call for seasons/sequels that "dont exist"

you know those seasons of tv shows that shouldn't have been made? those movie sequels you'd rather forget existed? here's a call for suggestions! which seasons or sequels just "dont exist" for you?! ... "what 4th movie?" ... "no no, there were only 4 seasons." ;)

Gardens of the Moon by Steven Erikson

well just finished this book last night (stayed up til 6am! ack! :) and damn!!!! soooo good!! love it!! but now my only reservation is “please god dont let the series drag and lose focus” !! coz sooooo many of these multi-volume series do and start sucking so much! my 2 biggest disappointments were George R. R. Martin’s and Kate Elliot’s. those rants will be a separate post at some point! haha! but i’m hopeful coz i then spent an hour after finishing the book, reading more about the future volumes and they look like he knows where he’s going. hmm... you know what one difference is maybe? (i’ll have to confirm by reading Erikson’s series ;) Martin mostly keeps the same characters throughout and so has to become quite inventive with the plot, to the point of backtracking in my opinion, to make 4000+ pages of story keep going. Erikson has introduced a ton of new characters, settings and stories with each book, with one book (#5) being completely unrelated. but is later tied into the original story by subsequent books.

one reason his books (i’m hoping ;) will work as a 10 volume series is coz he created the Malazan world before beginning writing, with Ian Cameron Esslemont, for a role-playing game. so the creation of this world is super thorough with tons of detail!!!! and its a true world... a world with several continents and several countries/lands on each continent, and lots of different races!! i think if you’re gonna do 5+ volume series you have to create multiple lands and continents, you just cant get away with one. for one novel, no problem. also what might be great about this series is that each book is a complete story with a conclusion. only the 9th out of 10 books ends on a cliffhanger!!! which is more how Jacqueline Carey writes her novels vs. Martin or Elliot!! and i like that coz yes, i like to read about the same world and characters in several books, but please make a book finish a story arc!!!

so i think that detail-obsessed part of me is one of the reasons i love fantasy so much!!! i love pouring over glossaries and maps!! hahaha! and lately my beef with some fantasy authors is that you can tell when they planned the world ahead of time vs. on the fly as they wrote. the books really suffer when the world, characters, or story are created on the fly, in my opinion.

so back to Gardens! another awesome thing about Erikson is that he’s not stingy about magic!!! some books have just a smidgeon of magic. or magic on a grand scale, ie. main character has been blessed/fated to become the saviour of the universe. or they talk about what a huge toll magic takes on the caster so they dont use it much. in this book, there are consequences to magic use, which is totally important to have, but they still use magic a ton!! it makes me think of X-Men The Animated Series vs. the movies. in the movies they barely use their mutant powers, first movie not at all almost vs. the series where they’re always blasting someone!! even jean grey who’s power is telepathic/telekinetic is still blasting away at bad guys!! she barely did anything in the movie except become the phoenix!

so all round an amazing book and i’m really really hoping the series proves as awesome as this book!! nothing sucks more than absolutely loving books then getting turned off by future installments. it devastated me with George R.R. Martin.

oh. and great characters too of course!!! such variety of different types!! and he lets you into the head of each one so you totally start to get them!! oh one scene i gotta mention that killed me! so sad! the one where Quick Ben released the Korvalah demon named Pearl on the rooftops during the ambush. that demon has the voice of a child, but is super powerful, and so is surprised when the attackers are not fleeing and asks whether it should pity them and Quick Ben says no just kill them and then you can go free. as yet another attacker comes, Pearl says plaintively “Ben Adaephon Delat, see the last who comes. You send me to my death.” and Ben whispers that he knows. as he is about to leave Pearl says “Ben Adaephon Delat, do you pity me?” and he replies softly “yes”.

Elizabeth & Children of Dune

haha bet you’re wondering how the hell those 2 relate?!?! i just wanted to talk about scenes they did very similarly, dramatically and amazingly!! just re-watched both fairly recently (Elizabeth last night). they both had a scene where they showed a coup of sorts. it was mass arrests or assassinations ordered by the current ruler. so not technically a coup coz no one was overthrown. altho i just looked it up... we do use the word coup to describe a successful stroke or move? ok whatever! a coup of sorts! so both movies had this haunting, ethereal, enya-type music over a montage of scenes of the ruler’s enemies who had been conspiring together, getting arrested, or killed, or their guards killed. and wow what a dramatic contrast that just gets you!!! but i must say Children of Dune totally did it better!!! in Children of Dune the scenes were quick and violent, while in Elizabeth the pace of the scenes was matching the slowness of the music more. and that larger contrast in Children of Dune made it all the more striking and disturbing!!! i wonder who creates those scenes? coz obviously the director decides how and what is shot, but how involved are they in editing and adding music later? maybe it depends on the director? in any case, great dramatic scenes that were awesomely done!!

and unrelated but i’m so glad Shekhar Kapur made a sequel to Elizabeth!!! even more amazing coz it was done almost 10 years later!! and was still as good or better than the first!! (ie. Matrix or Star Wars sequels come to mind... so much later and not nearly as good) AND he got Cate Blanchett and Geoffrey Rush back!! (did you know Geoffrey Rush was australian? i must admit i didnt til now!) and as for Children of Dune. hmmm.. i might say that as a sequel was better too? the original David Lynch Dune and the first mini-series Dune (2000) just didnt strike me that much? not sure if its story or what. i also dont find Paul Atreides character overly sympathetic or likable. but with Children of Dune, maybe coz i loved James McAvoy in it, maybe it was better story, i also liked his twin played by Jessica Brooks. Susan Sarandon was an embarrassment in both in my opinion. but Alice Krige was cool! :) gonna have to love her forever after her awesomeness in First Contact as the borg queen!! haha! okey doke. nuff for now! but i do owe some comment replies!! will do so soon! :)

Epic Historical Movies

so this is the topic that got me thinking about doing a blog! in a roundabout way! i was talking about this with my boyfriend, then thought about putting it as a facebook note, then concurrently i was thinking i need an online presence if i ever wanna make a production company and why not start now ages before i’m ready to start it!

so in this category i would say are the following movies (obviously you can beg to differ! but i’m still gonna ignore you! haha!) : Gladiator, Alexander, Kingdom of Heaven, Last Legion, King Arthur, Troy, Braveheart. so theres a ton of others. but i’m gonna ignore lower budget ones, and the older ones coz they’re not my thing (such a different style that doesnt appeal to me at all!) i feel the success of Gladiator spawned a renewed interest in these. so except for Braveheart, they’re all post-Gladiator. now Gladiator is one of my all-time favourite movies, and absolute fave in this genre. so i measure all else against it! :) and ok i will admit Braveheart was also awesome!! not much complaints about that one, altho i wouldnt have said Mel could portray a burly fighting scotsman but he did it!

rant begin: why do all the movies mentioned above suck so much!??! i watched them with such hope, hope that was dashed and trampled. :( actually not all. King Arthur is maybe my 2nd fave now in the genre! clive owen’s great, keira knightley is fierce, and the other ‘knights of the round table’ are all kick-ass and some are super cute!! ie. ioan gruffudd and mads mikkelsen! i liked the fights in it, and stellan skarsgård was amazingly scary! i loved the costumes and that they all had such different types of weapons and swords! i’ve watched it a bunch of times now and lovin it more and more! Last Legion’s quite decent too. story of how Excalibur came to be. supposedly julius caesar’s sword hidden away. found by the boy romulus who escapes to britain and becomes pendragon. (italian novel so of course Excalibur comes from rome/italy! ;) colin firth isnt your typical hero for these kinds of movies but they were saying in the extras they were looking for a more ‘thinking man’ hero so that kind of fits. and they have a chick who kicks ass!! and not just with a bow like keira! played by aishwarya rai who’s cool but zero fighting background, just a dancer. like ziyi zhang from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Hero. which to me is unfortunate coz theres so few female fighting roles i wish they’d use actresses who have a background as fighters/martial artists!

main rant: (haha) those 2 were decent and i quite like them. but i’ll start with Kingdom of Heaven.... i had such hopes coz it was ridley scott from Gladiator directing and orlando bloom is pretty cool. but it sucked in my opinion. so much so that altho i saw it on the plane i forgot and bought it thinking i hadn’t seen it. orlando is sooooooo not good enough to play the epic hero type! i think the worst to me was his attempt at the standard “rousing speech” thats always in these types of movies... EPIC FAIL!! he just cant pull it off. i also realized i was disappointed with that movie coz i hate the crusades. killing done by all sides in the name of religion. not as defense of your homeland. hard to get behind the cause then for me. even tho in that movie the christian leader was preaching tolerance of all inside jerusalem... why were the christians even there in the first place? they hadnt been there for ages!

then you’ve got Alexander which just droned on and on, and again i dont think colin farrell is epic hero material. kinda boring altogether. and then there’s Troy... sigh... potentially great but it just didnt do it for me? eric bana’s great but doesnt dominate as a character. brad pitt was great, but his character wasnt meant to be a pure hero, so you couldnt get behind him either. it does have great fights tho, especially the spear one in front of the gates.

i think one thing that extra-disappointed me in these movies was the lack of cool women fighters or heroes in it! thats probably what saved King Arthur and Last Legion for me!

oh and i’m super hopeful about the new Robin Hood!! ridley scott with russell crowe again AND with cate blanchett!! :)))) fingers crossed folks!!

technical issues

ok ARRRGGHHH!! haha! i was having issues getting the awesome background castle pic to show up in some browsers/platforms so i didnt wanna continue blogging til i got that figured out. so i spent tonight doing that and PHEW!! done!! a simple change that i tried in the beginning but it didnt seem to make a difference so i dismissed it. but just tried it now and it works! and worst was that Firefox would not show the background pic, then for some reason would start showing it, then continue showing it so it was impossible to troubleshoot!! grrrrr!!! i think the browsers were having trouble grabbing the image from the place i got this free template from for some reason. that'll teach me not to use free shit!! hahhaha! alrighty folks!! i think i can now safely blog!! hahaha! hopefully i'll get back to this soon and post something! :)

welcome to the blog

i debate whether i'll stay on blogger or create a blog from scratch and upload it to a web hoster. i'd rather that. more control. but in the meantime since i know SHITALL about all that i will start here! but may not put too much up. i actually have a backlog of shit i wrote on facebook notes. maybe its time to go public! haha! and main reason is lets set up a web prescence. i cant help but think of this situation... the author of an online new york times article started as a blogger and expert on her topic.. i guess it came to the point where someone researching the topic inevitably came to her blog and now she writes for several publications. how awesome is that?!?! altho admittedly a long shot times a million!! and i for sure aint no expert!! hahaha! but... please universe let me be an instant success overnight. pretty please? ok? no problem right? ;)

ps. theres a gorgeous castle pic in the background of this blog template but i noticed that altho it shows up in safari, it doesnt in firefox. hope you can see it!