![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Back in time...
Nov. 29th, 2005 02:05 pm
Haha. I haven't seen ANY of them yet!
That's more like it.
DeLorean! Yayz!
Nov. 29th, 2005
Haha. I haven't seen ANY of them yet!
That's more like it.
DeLorean! Yayz!
Has anyone else read "The Giver" by Lois Lowry? I'm reading it now, and MAN! It's good. So good that I'm actually tempted to log off and go READ until I have to go to work. (I think I could finish it by then, I'm about halfway through...)
I have to share this pic. The auction was televised on a local channel, and they would show certian items. (Clothes, jewelry, pretty much anything that wasn't a gift certificate or savings bond, lol.) Someone donated this foam-ball shooter that looked like a big machine gun, and my dad got on screen to show it off. He put his hat on (yes, he wears that hat when he goes outside, that's a normal thing, it's actually a really expensive hat from Wilson's) and was all, "Look at me! I'm in the mafia!" and joking around. The TV station would freezeframe the things so if they needed to show it again later they could use the still picture, and so for the rest of the evening they showed this...
(click to enlarge) I got the TV people to email it to me. Yay!
And that foam ball you can see zipping off to the right? It actually hit one of Dad's fellow Lions in the gut, and he totally played along, screamed and fell to the floor. (Too bad it was off camera; it was really funny!)
And now I'm sure that everyone thinks my dad is some kind of triggerhappy NRA freak, lol. (Okay, okay, he is a member, but other than strategic squirrel removal I've never seen him use a gun for anything but target practice...) Really, he's...well, no, he's not NORMAL, but I assure you he's not, like, a psychopath.
Anyway. Gave my presentation in Bio yesterday, only stumbled once, and that was to look for the mysteriously-disappearing laser pointer. I think Dr. Dry was happy with it, though we WERE the only group that didn't actually have our creature there with us. (That was their idea; we weren't required to have it. As a matter of fact, unlike the other teams, we did not manufacture any pictures or include real pics of ourselves in the presentation.)
And that probably made no sense, since I don't think I ever detailed the assignment, lol. We had to fake a 20- to 30-minute presentation in which we described our trip to the ocean floor, where we discovered a new species. ^_^ The whole thing was entirely made up, we didn't have to document our evidence or anything like that, but we did have to make up stuff that was biologically possible. Our group "discovered" a parasitic tapeworm that created cancers in its victims and then ate the cancers--the idea being that we were going to try and replicate the enzyme it used to digest the cancer and use it to TREAT cancer. I got to be an oncologist for half an hour! Go me! ^_^
Teeheehee, we chose a departure point for the ship, and my partners were all like, "Some island paradise kind of place," so I blurted out "North Shore of Oahu!" Which is, of course, where Lost is filmed. And it STUCK, we used it. ^_^ Also, we were named Team SPAM--made up of the first letters of our names, Sarah, Peter, Audrena, and Mat, lol. Go us! (We basically wrote those four letters down and played with the possible anagrams, and that was the one that amused us most, it was cooler than PAMS or MAPS or AMPS, lol... Hmm. Our last names would have made it S, P, I, and O. Not in the same order.)
Lol. Lots of stress gone to have that done and overwith. I'm happy.
I saw Charlie and the Chocolate Factory not too long ago, and then went and read the book.
I like both movies, but I don't feel that either of them captured the book--and neither one of them was "closer" than the other.
The original movie:
-made Charlie just as bad as any of the other kids, but the only difference was he didn't get CAUGHT misbehaving
-changed a few stupid things, like squirrels to geese (mayhap geese were easier to train in the days before computer animation for that sort of thing?)
-added that carwash thingy (I can't recall what it was there for) out of nowhere
-completely screwed up the Oompa Loompas, they didn't look at all like that and were MUCH shorter
-didn't even use Roald Dahl's songs for inspiration, but made the infamous doompadie-doo chants
-ended much, much truer to the book ^_^
-actually had a slightly different title, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, IIRC...
The new movie:
-threw in the whole daddy-issues subplot, which worked, but had not even a breath of inspiration from the books (can't say that I was disappointed to see Christopher Lee, though! Yay!)
-did much better with the songs, I don't think they're verbatim Dahl, but they're WAY closer, definitely DRAWN from the book
-had the origin of Oompa Loompas right, and the size, but still, in the book there are Ooompa Loompa women and children, and they all wear animal skins. (Like they did in Loompaland.) Though I still think it was funny that they all had the same face in this one, lol...
-ended weird, but the way it had to because of the inserted subplot...
-why, exactly, did Wonka have that (Charlie's word) weird haircut?
-though I think Gene Wilder had Wonka closer to the book, I really liked Johnny's portrayal...he always pushes his character so far off the page
Both movies:
-completely ignored the fact that Wonka had facial hair, which is a shame since Johnny Depp looks SO much better when he has it!
-ignored the Square Candies that Look Round, which was the funniest thing in the book
-had only one adult with each child, though in the book they were all allowed to have both parents and all but Charlie did so
-glossed over the fact that the Bucket family was, in fact, starving--in the book Charlie started leaving for school earlier because he didn't have the strength to walk fast
-missed the point of the book (IMHO) and focused on something else...
The book:
-I think Roald Dahl wrote the book to criticize TV (or at least its use as the new baby-sitter, realize that the book was written in 1964) and the rest was just story fit in around it. In the book, most of the songs are a page-and-a-half to two pages, but Mike Teavee's song is nearly FOUR pages. So both movies completely missed his point, IMHO
-just...read the book. The book is ALWAYS better.
And that's all for today. Thank you for listening, and I will now open the floor for any questions. ^_-
