notes of the day

[calimac]

smofbabe: What I'm seeing is a totally different comment-making box than the one I had before, the one that you write comments on posts in. My browser doesn't recognize its "send" button as a button.

irontongue: I'm still using, as my everyday browser, an early version of Firefox which 1) I have customized up the wazoo to eliminate the most annoying features of the web (among other things, I have succeeded at completely eliminating the ads on LJ, and I don't want to lose that), and which 2) predates the screwing up of Firefox. Just about the time I was considering updating, which I'd done once before, I started seeing reviews of the new versions which were harshly critical.

The third reason I don't update is that YouTube is always telling me I need to get a "modern" browser. If they said "current" or "newer", I might do it, but the word "modern" gets up my nose. Do they think any browsers older than this year were hand-calligraphed on vellum by monks?

I do keep around the current version of Opera for emergency use on websites that just don't function any other way, and I have to decide if I'm willing to unbend enough on principle to use that to make LJ comments.

Why am I so stick-in-the-mud about this? Because software vendors and web enthusiasts are always touting the virtues of user freedom and options and the ability to do whatever you want. Well this is what I want and they're not going to take it away from me.

A Noted Tolkien Scholar says that if I don't like the Hobbit trailer I should just not see the movie. (And there is papersky, proudly standing far away from the entire set.) Sorry, that's not an option for me. Unless I decamp entirely from Tolkien fandom, I can't avoid this movie by not seeing it. I am going to be living and breathing its atmosphere wherever I go. I know, because I did that of its predecessors. Just as an example, I have this day alone received six broadcast e-mails from various friends alerting readers to the trailer. So I might as well see it, and be able to have and express my own opinion of it, instead of seething patiently through everybody else's, because you know they're going to be talking about it.

Also, I can't do the job of defending and distinguishing Tolkien's work from the movies without knowing what they say. Half my conversations about Tolkien with non-specialists in the last ten years have consisted of "that's what the movies say, but the book says this" or untangling some movie-born (and -borne) misapprehension, which I'd never have understood or figured out if I hadn't seen the movies myself. "Know Thine Enemy" the proverb goes, and thereby for my own protection I am forced into the theatre.

Comments

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

Perhaps you should wish that Jackson had done an even worse job. I don't recall ever having to explain to anyone that Starship Troopers the book was nothing like Starship Troopers the movie. For that matter, none of the previous Tolkien films made that sort of massive impression on the fantasy audience; they more or less vanished unlamented.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Yes, I've often ruefully thought that, and I made pretty much that point on p. 33 of my essay (an essay which has proved useful because often I can just point to it instead of having to say the same thing over again). I sometimes turn it around and say that my attacks are a tribute to the quality of Jackson's works, and indeed I have to keep saying that I don't hate the movies as movies; I think they're pretty good movies of their kind (I said that, as clearly as I know how, at the beginning of my essay on p. 29, but I find I have to keep saying it - even to people whom I know have read the essay); their kind is just not Tolkien's, and if their enthusiasts would just stop pretending that the movies are good adaptations of the books, we wouldn't have this problem.

Still, while I never had to spend much time defending Tolkien from Ralph Bakshi, it took about a decade to wash the foul taste of that thing out of my mind. (And the Rankin-Bass monsters? Luckily, I've succeeded in never seeing those.)

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

I've been saying for some time—more or less since the first film—that I didn't think of them as The Lord of the Rings; I think of them as a new historical dramatization of the War of the Ring. In those terms, they make fairly good sense, though it's an average of a few really good scenes and a number of really egregious ones (I'm sure you have your own list).

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

That may work for you, but it doesn't for me, for two reasons. First, I'm too consciously aware of the War of the Ring as a literary creation of Tolkien's to be able to hold onto the pretense that it's an independent historical event (though, unlike some Tolkienists, I have no objection to trying: all fiction must be read as though the characters were real people with circumstances and motivations of their own). Second, even if I could, unlike Ozophiles who love to deconstruct and falsify Baum, I can't (except for joking purposes) see Tolkien's story as distorted by bias. That view would only turn Jackson's movies into the equivalent of Braveheart, also an enjoyable pseudo-historical medieval war film that ludicrously trashed its sources (my essay, p. 30).

[smofbabe.livejournal.com]

You might want to try to change your journal's style and see whether that helps.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I tried that - hesitantly, because I like my style - but it doesn't seem to work.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Half of my conversations have too, that's why I loathe the movies unseen and know the names of the actors -- which does make it easier to boycott other films they appear in.

"Just don't watch it" would be great advice for somebody with no friends living on Europa. It's polluting my mindspace whether I watch it or not.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Right, but that's my argument for seeing them anyway.

If you boycott Ian McKellen, you'll be missing some good movies. Can't say as much for most of the others, but even Elijah Wood was once in an excellent movie (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), though he was the worst thing in it. It was also a good Jim Carrey movie, a rare thing and to be cherished.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I did see that, though I didn't know he was in it in advance. It was OK, actually, as he was playing such a villain it was OK to hate him anyway.

I think your argument for seeing them is intellectually correct, I just can't emotionally put myself through it. And I am not a Tolkien scholar.

There was once a BBC radio adaptation of LOTR, and it was pretty good, as these things go. I was listening it to one day lying in bed, and the guy playing Legolas left out the line: "They sought the Havens long ago". I leapt off the bed screaming at the radio.

There are many books in the world that people can make movies out of and merely make me angry, but if they had any respect for me they should have the good sense to leave Tolkien alone. I'm not rational on this. Somebody mentions approvingly that they have made the trailer for The Hobbit darker, and I instantly unfriend them.

(By the way, I wish they did have a vellum web browser hand calligraphed by monks. I'd switch to it immediately.)

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I just can't emotionally put myself through it.

When I went to see the second Jackson movie, I couldn't find a seat in the crowded theater, so I curled up in the corner of the floor reserved for wheelchairs to park. It turned out to be a good position, removed from other patrons, to whimper with mental pain in. (The only other time I've been unable to find a seat in a movie theater was for Galaxy Quest. I stood in the back, but was so delighted throughout that I didn't care.)

a BBC radio adaptation of LOTR ... was pretty good, as these things go.

Yes, and it's about the same length as Jackson's extended edition (and is subject to the additional constraints of sound-only and rigid hour-length episodes), so I use it as counter-argument to the claim that the needs of condensation forced Jackson's horrors upon him (my essay, p. 44-45). It does have some serious problems - the opening is hopelessly inept - Jackson, though also monumentally untrue to the book, does a better job with it - but screams of listener pain were few.

I wish they did have a vellum web browser hand calligraphed by monks. I'd switch to it immediately.

You could probably find it in the Abbey of the Blessed Leibowitz.

[irontongue.livejournal.com]

The highly customized browser would, indeed, make it more difficult to upgrade, as the upgrade might break one or more or your customizations. I have few customizations of any of my browsers. (There are ads on LJ? Oh, I guess there are, but I find them easy to ignore....)

There's always doing a fresh install of FF (i.e., a new download to a nonstandard location) and seeing whether you can customize to your requirements. But if you consider more recent versions broken, that won't work.

In this context, "modern" has something to do with the particular underlying browser technologies, which have changed a lot from older browsers. Safari and Chrome both use WebKit, which provides a number of useful security features not available in older browsers and current versions of IE. I do understand your antipathy to the term.