Where Have All the Buttercups Gone


I am finally bowing to pressure from both online and offline sources to update this blog. All I can say is this - I warned everyone that if I set up a blog it would be updated infrequently. Such is my life.

Of course now I have far more free time on my hands...I've in the past month graduated (with not one but TWO masters degrees), gotten a job (poor students...their minds are mine!) and tomorrow will begin my 24th year.

*whew*

And that's the readers digest version. Yikes.

I did notice something the other day - all this graduating and transitioning into the "real" world has got me on one hell of a nostalgia kick - and I noticed that I hadn't seen or held a buttercup in my hands since I can't remember when. Buttercups used to be so big a deal...I remember picking them in my yard when I was in elementary school, really loving what I was doing. And now...

But Anathema, what in the world made you think of buttercups now?!

And this is the fun part - I was channel surfing and caught a little bit of the start of "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory." And there was Willy Wonka...drinking out of a butter-cup. Heh. The punning in that movie is delicious. Literally. It's almost as good, and perhaps a good deal more subtle than the puns in the book "The Phantom Tollbooth."

Speaking of old childhood books, I found myself thrilled to see that they (Disney/ABC) were finally airing the movie version of "A Wrinkle in Time."

A little background - the Murray-O'Keefe books that Madeline L'Engle wrote were one of my favorites as a child. They were classics in the sense that in the mid-80's they were already a good 20+ years old. Now? We're looking at 40 years after the books were written my friend. And yet, in the most important ways, those books are truly timeless. These are books that I fully intend to purchase in hardcover as soon as possible.

I so desperately wanted the movie to be good...

A little more background. Another of L'Engle's books, "A Ring of Endless Light" was also made into a movie by Disney. I loved the book as a child as well, not as much as the other series, but still loved it.

The movie? SUCKED. I mean they took ALL the depth, all the subtly, everything that made the book a wonderful book...and they KILLED IT. The characters were all 2-D carictures lacking the wonderful richness that Madeleine L'Engle endowed them with.

So, I was naturally trepiditious when I saw that they were doing "Wrinkle" as well.

So the good news first - it was DEFINATELY better than the "Ring" adaptation.

Bad news - it could have been ever so much better. L'Engle is quoted in an article as saying that the movie was what she expected - she expected it to be bad and it was. One of the Television Without Pity authors said that when he first read that he thought that she was just being bitter about something she'd written 40 years ago. Nope, she was on target.

A movie like this...the actors just didn't understand where it was coming from. The kid who played Charles Wallace came across and weird and creepy instead of quietly intelligent and arrogant. Calvin became a virtual non-character. Dr.Mr. Murray was not all that impressive. And Meg...oh god Meg...no braces, no glasses...what the hell? Mrs. Which, Mrs. Whatsit, and Mrs. Who - all lost something in the translation to the small screen. And for god's sake, who's idea was it to make Mr. Jensen nice?! The whole point in the first book is that he's a total ass! Come on now people! And while Fortinbras as a German Shepard instead of a Black Lab I can let go...Dr. Mrs. Murray didn't give the same incredible feeling of a woman who knew her husband was ok. And what was with the private investigator bit? People please! That's not the point...

And they really made the Charles Wallace's kything ability seem like some sort of weird telepathy. It's NOT telepathy - it's something far deeper. Kything is what was supposed to make it ok for him to talk to Calvin in the end - that was handled pretty poorly to start off with.

*sighs*

They did a great job with the first 2 Harry Potter movies...so would it have been that hard to make a little more effort with this flick?

One good point though? Calvin, played by Gregory Smith (aka Everwood's Ephram) is hot hot hot. So that was ok then.

I think this is long enough to satisfy my critics...at least for another couple days. And...I'm out!