Audible.com has COYOTE DREAMS in! The books must be doing pretty well in audio format, because this is *way* faster than either of the other two were released. I got CDs of the first two books just a week or so ago, in fact, which made me beam a lot. :)
Spider-Man III review, since several people have asked me: spoiler-free, but
In a nutshell: far, far too long, but better than I expected. Mind you, I went in with low expectations. The pacing was bad (it has been for all three movies) and it was just too goddamned long. The special effects were fantastic, though. Lots of people’ve said Too Many Bad Guys, and I agree; Harry should’ve had his own movie, but at the same time I understand why they wrote it the way they did. It’s not what I woulda done, but for some reason Sam Raimi didn’t ask me.
It did not have any of the moments of pure Spider-Man geek joy that the first one especially had. That may be partly because we’ve now seen it before, but I also think it’s a failing of the film. I mean, the bit in the first one where Spidey rescues MJ and comes swinging across the park with her in his arms and puts her down, that was just 110% SQUEE! Nothing like that in this one. OTOH, the Stan Lee cameo was beautiful.
Uhm. I didn’t think Gwen Stacey was well cast, well written or well used; Kirsten Dunst would’ve made a better Gwen (but the girl who played Gwen wouldn’t have made a better MJ). Ted proposed that since they didn’t kill her, she should become the Black Cat, which I thought was a great idea. She’d be good as the Black Cat (though Ted leaned over during the movie and said, “The landlord’s daughter should become the Black Cat!” and I was so charmed by that idea that I was very surprised when her name turned out to be Ursula and not Felicia).
Also, personally, if the Spider-Man movies were mine to do with as I pleased, I swear to God I would turn MJ into Firestar. I realize how deeply, deeply geeky that is, but man, after three movies of dangling in webs screaming, if I were MJ I would just be like *fuck* this shit! Actually, if they keep going with the movies, they really need to write MJ out, which has nothing to do with Dunst and everything to do with giving Spidey some room to breathe.
Seeing Topher Grace on the Spider-Man screen re-affirmed my belief that he shoulda been cast as Spidey in the first place. I like Tobey Maguire, but I think he’s too geeky and doesn’t have the spark that Spidey ought to have. J.K. Simmons stole the show as J. Jonah Jameson, as usual. And I really, really liked the Sandman, although his storyline was badly grafted on to the previous movies. Still, the actor did a fantastic job, and the effects were awesome.
But still, *way* too long. Way, *way* too long. Pee before you go, and don’t drink a lot of soda while you’re there.
Rewrites proceed apace. I keep saying that.
I’m not swimming tonight for the *extremely* shallow reason that I have had bad hair for days and days and have hated it and today my hair is good and I don’t want to mess it up. I’ll go for a walk this evening, though. That’ll have to do.
I think MJ as a normal human being who learns how to defend herself per the comics is better. It’s more in keeping with the original Spider Man and his variosu issues. It’s easy to superhumanize someone t make them kick-ass, but I think it’d be more fun to see a normal human being learn to hold her own.
Gwen Stacy or Gwen Stefani? Couldn’t tell. :)
I liked the larger themes the movie addressed, and I see why Harry was there and what purpose he served.
Well, what I’d *really* do if I turned her into Firestar is give her the powers, give her a taste of Spidey’s life from the other side, and then give her the option to lose the powers, which I think she would do; I’ve never had the sense MJ wanted to be a superhero. It’s just doing *something* with the poor character besides putting her in a web. Her learning to fight would be great, but being able to fight isn’t especially helpful when you’re facing an 80 story drop. And the character is by no means useless, and uses her brain and does what she can, which pleases me. I still think in her shoes I’d be all “screw this!” ;)
All that said, I’d really prefer to write her out. Let her go have her acting career in Hollywood and give both her and Spidey time to develop without the other moping around.
Also:
Gwen Stacy or Gwen Stefani? Couldn’t tell. :)
Oh, god, at least she didn’t have the bouffant. :)
Yay on the audio book front! Also on the hair.
Haven’t seen Spidey3 yet. In fact haven’t seen any of them and not feeling any great drive to do so. Screaming girlies annoy me.
Would it please you to know that my reaction to your icon was ‘Wow! looks cool with longer hair!’? If not then please ignore.
*laugh* If only that were really me. :)
I couldn’t believe that she was Ron Howard’s daughter, Bryce Dallas Howard, the same gal who was in The Village and Lady in the Water. She looked a LOT more like Gwen Stefani than what I’d expected.
Are you sure it was faster? I was able to get Thunderbird Falls from Audible the day it was officially released. (Admittedly, we had purchased Urban Shaman in audio the month before.) We are due to get Urban Shaman as well, but the auto-buy for last month hit a week before it was released so it’ll be this month instead.
Also, has your RSS feed for livejournal gone wonky? Or do you have any idea? For some reason bloglines hasn’t listed you for me since May 7th. And I was reading stuff tonight and realized I hadn’t read anything from you lately and you are way more talky than that. :)
Well, faster than anybody’d told me! :)
I didn’t even know there was an RSS feed from my LJ. :)