Weekly reading/watching meme

[petronia]

Adapted to my own purpose.

What are you reading/watching now?

D&D game is cancelled so going to watch Beasts of the Southern Wild at the Dollar Cinema tonight, methinks. Haven't picked next book yet (see below).

What did you just finish reading/watching?

Finished Beowulf on Saturday, during a four-hour hairdresser's appointment. (Felt really pretentious, which is not something I normally care about, but well.) Wrapping that up with some critical essays. I've been advised to look up the Seamus Heaney translation for comparison, which is serendipitous because I coincidentally fetched a Heaney lecture series from the house (one of the pieces is on Dylan Thomas; the other book I bought in the same lot as Beowulf is a Dylan Thomas collection). Will keep an eye out for that.

Brief thoughts: strong open, strong close. Arguably gives the lie to the chestnut that English passive tense is weak (how much of that is the original?). Recognizably British sense of humour (unexpected but disarming). Do not much care if something is defined as an epic or not and why, possibly because I do not have the value system of a classics translator. No leopard print bikinis. Tumblr thanks you, anonymous 8th century author, for indirectly causing there to be thirteen dwarves in The Hobbit, and also for Smaug, who really is fanfiction with the serial number filed off.

Speaking of Tolkien -- rewatched The Two Towers and Return of the King, extended editions, plus some of the featurettes. Am not convinced I have ever watched the extended RotK, actually. Have mellowed with age and am not actively enraged at the changes anymore, but they still disagree with me. (I don't think -- nor have ever thought -- that PJ & co. didn't have the right to make said artistic decisions in translating the novel to cinema; only that I didn't happen to agree; whereas eg. I agreed with almost all the changes to FotR.)

What will you read/watch next?

Good question? Will decide and update later tonight.

Comments

[brooms]

were elves in helm's deep the most disagreeable change to you? just checking.

[petronia]

No! That takes me by surprise every time I watch tTT, because I forget it's a thing, but I don't mind it hugely. It's there to represent the fact that the elves are fighting on fronts you don't get to see "onstage".

I hate the changes to Pelennor Fields, on the other hand, because Eomer's despair at Eowyn's seeming death and his mistaken Tristan/Theseus-esque reaction upon seeing the black sails are a big moment for me. (Actually, the whole plot point whereby Eowyn and Merry nearly die from striking the Witch King and need to be revived by Aragorn isn't fully clear, even in the extended edition.) Also not happy with the way the Eowyn/Faramir ship was handled (or rather not handled), but at least the major revisions to Faramir's arc didn't ruin the character, whereas Denethor was purely flubbed, and after Theoden was so spot on too. The whole plot point where Arwen is sent to the West but ends up nearly dying or whatever(?) is sort of baffling/illogical/bit overdone but not hugely objectionable (my general opinion is that Arwen is a boring character if you show her too much and benefits paradoxically from the air of mystery the hobbits' limited POV gives her in the book). Not doing the Scouring of the Shire makes me FROTH AT THE MOUTH, though objectively speaking the revised Bad End to Saruman and Wormtongue is not-bad.

[narie]

I don't think I've quite managed to ever watch RoTK extended. The last time I tried - over Xmas, after about a year of gearing myself up to rewatch all three movies - I was shocked to discover that there actually is some sort of nod towards the Houses of Healing, but like you say, it is rather not enough. But for me it's Aragorn I can't support, because he is hardly what he was in the book. His spine didn't quite survive the transition from book to film, and for a character like that, well, it was an important point. Although bless VM for his insane devotion to the role. Also I don't know that I agree with you on how well Faramir survives his revision... although more so in TT than in RoTK.

I am forever curious as to what the original Arwen plot was going to be - she is at Helm's Deep for a couple of frames, and she's wielding swords; as much as I appreciate her angsty premonition as she rides towards the Grey Havens (and my can that kid give guilty looks), her will she won't she die plot is just naff all around.

[petronia]

Honestly I divorced Viggo!Aragorn from book!Aragorn immediately, within minutes of his appearance in FotR, because the former is not the latter in my mind -- although it's a very good performance by Viggo, whom I like enough that it's always felt churlish to complain; and a consistently written character by PJ. The fundamental issue with both Aragorn and Faramir is that Tolkien wrote their nobility and courage as static qualities, because proceeding from true breeding; I like them that way, but PJ evidently believed that Aragorn needed an arc. So what you get in the movies is, essentially, the younger, more conflicted and uncertain Aragorn glimpsed in the appendices, rather than the guy he is by the time LotR-the-book gets underway. Faramir in tTT falls victim to plot mechanics really; I mind the Osgiliath episode less, taken as a sledgehammer reification of the internal temptation he undergoes, and after that a lot of the problem with that storyline is really the RotK movie not getting Denethor and the Houses of Healing right, rather than Faramir per se. OTOH, I don't much like the actor at all.

Incomprehensible aspects of the Arwen sub-plot: 1) why should she risk falling dead immediately even if she is doomed by her own choice to die on Middle-Earth? 2) clearly it was never the last ship because Elrond and Galadriel aren't on it, duh, 3) she makes the standard because she has it at the wedding but never gets it to Aragorn in time for the battle???? Having Elrond deliver Narsil is fine since we are trying to cut down on the number of elf characters and in PJ's Middle-Earth everyone can magick themselves everywhere unless they are in the protag party in which case they have to trek endlessly over Kiwi vistas, but Elrond bringing Narsil reforged and not Arwen's standard baffles me.

I always thought the original Arwen plot would have been her having a revelation partway, then being like FUCK THIS NOISE!! and hijacking her retinue for Helm's Deep (in other words, it would have been Haldir + archers with her, not Figwit/Lindir). Which would have been a glorious clusterfuck in its own way, though a decade ago I would have been Severely Unamused. NB: it is very clear upon rewatch that the scene where Eowyn comes up to Aragorn all happy that he's still alive and stop short when she sees Legolas return the pendant to him was originally written (and perhaps partially shot) with Arwen in place of Legolas.

[petronia]

I am pretty sure that PJ likes Eowyn->Aragorn better than Eowyn/Faramir btw which I can grudgingly accept because it is just opposing ships really, like cool I have had extensive practice at being a mature adult about this and BESIDES MINE IS CANON HA

[canis_m]

Am glad someone else recced the Heaney Beowulf to you because I meant to and then forgot. It is aces and the one I used in classes when I made undergrads read it lol. I heard Heaney read--or rather perform in manner of scop--from it once in an old stony church in Cambridge (MA not UK, alas) whilst somebody else plucked on a reconstructed early-Middle-Ages-style harp, all very delightful.

[petronia]

Ooh, that sounds like an amazing experience! I kept a casual look out for it but didn't see a copy this week.