Identity

I finished up Bourne Identity two days ago. I found it a passable thriller, but not as good as Le Carre or sadly, the movie. In the long time that I've read books and seen spin off movies this has only happened once before. In that case it was The Hunt for Red October. A vastly more enjoyable movie than book. Something about the way that the submarines moved in the ocean was much clearer in the movie than it was on the printed page. Usually I prefer my own vision of what a novel's events are, and most of my favorite writers are damn good at helping me to create that vision. The submarines in Red October defied my ability to see them as well as the movie could present them to me.

In this case Identity the film was close to but not lifted straight from the source book. They moved the movie to a two sided affair instead of the three way game of intrigue in the book. This allowed the film to concentrate much more on the two things that made it stand out so well from the pack. First, it brought to the forefront the relationship between Bourne and Marie. This humanized Bourne and made him a character that was much easier to root for than the Bourne in the book.

The second focus was the real winner for the movie over the book. The flashbacks that Bourne underwent as he tried to regain his memory. In the book Ludlum rushes through these moments, concentrating on using them to push along the plot of the book. The movie humanizes these moments, they become personal experiences of Bourne that the viewer gets to share. These interactions drew me into the movie and made me relate with the characters. It also made the plot much more vivid. Bourne's unknowing was the key to the film, in the book it's discarded whenever it becomes inconvenient.

The System is Down

I completed System of the World and have to say that it was hugely enjoyable. Sadly I was up late to finish it, and can't put coherent sentances together, so I'll get a longer post on it later.

Also, Dark Knight was a wonderfully grown up comic book movie. I'm glad to see that directors don't feel the need to make comic book movies into cartoons or overstylized sillyness.

Something worth reading

Right here.

I ran into a bet linked through Penny-Arcade about the nature of art and videogames. It ended up the next day at the New Yorker reading about the decline of reading. I have to say that it was an interesting journey and certainly one that I found to be highly interesting. The basis for all this was a wager on how videogames will evolve within our culture. The threads that were followed were diverse, and created a discussion about the nature of art, entertainment and how we judge culture.

In the end, video games, TV and Movies are a different type of media than books, and they cause different types of stimulation. Reading a book allows you to populate the world and characters with your own vision of them. The act of being entertained is more participatory and imaginative. On some level video games represent a reflection of this ability, while the plot involved may be straight forward, the best games allow you to interact with it, color it and make your own choices based on it. It's not the same as reading, as the world is shaped and colored by other peoples imagination, but it's less passive than TV or a movie, where everything is following someone else's idea of what is interesting.

Personally I prefer books, I like having the time to pursue tangents and minor characters in my own imagination before continuing with the authors story. It's why I dislike movies based on books, since they tend to calcify my image of the characters and the setting. Also, they tend to be rubbish, but that's not the key point. It's interesting to note that the best horror films tend to work on the same premise - that what you can imagine is more frightening than what the film can show you. Alien used this to its great advantage and once the alien was revealed the franchise became action movies instead of horror. In the end a book requires a level of interaction and a skill set the dwarfs that of video games, it's simply a skill set that is much easier to acquire (literacy) and a type of interaction that we encourage more (imagination.)

Little Reading Here

It's been a wee bit busy in Madison of late. The recent snow deluges have certainly granted me some free time, but that has largely been eaten up with other persuits. And the joy of my computer/DVD player and Netflix is finally letting me make some progress on my appreciation of non-wood pulp based media. But that's not really what this is about, so I really need to catch up on my books, or I'll have to start reviewing things that I've already read, without rereading them. And I'm fairly certain that counts as cheating.

Secretary was a good movie, I'm glad I rerented it to watch it all the way through. I'm not sure if I like the office or the love story more. The office was an interesting story about the personality of the lawyer, while the love story was much more about the main character. Either way, the actin was great, the family was wonderfully disfunctional, and her competing suitors parents made me cringe delightfully.