Oolite Bulletins

Yup gotta love them or hate them.
7 so far. I've started to watch them as a back to back movie fest. Had to check a few internet sites to make sure I get them in the right story line order. Wow so many opinions.

Not counting Rouge one or 8 The Last Jedi. Haven't seen 8 and Rouge One is well a wee bit rouge but as good as any the rest. Personally I take Rouge as being the 2nd and a story filler. Mainly as the Death Star is already built.

Can take a decade between watching back to backs like star wars again.

I enjoy watching back to back movies. Just switch everything else off (especially phones) and boom.

Harry Potter gets hit about every 4th or 5th year, makes me laugh.

There are quite a few great trilogies like Lord of the Rings and The Transporter, Not strictly a Trilogy but did follow a time line.

Recon I may watch a bitty too much in the line of movies.

i remember either reading or being told way back when the first starwars came out that it was number 4 in a set of 9 movies........ and they would be released as 4,5,6,1,2,3,7,8,9

it came out in the middle of my grade 11 year..... 1977....

I've always been more into bookseries... foundation,dune, skylark...... magician, thomas covenant( dreary miserable read that is!) .... too many to remember...at my age...lol

spud42 wrote: ↑Sun Dec 17, 2017 9:55 am

i remember either reading or being told way back when the first starwars came out that it was number 4 in a set of 9 movies........ and they would be released as 4,5,6,1,2,3,7,8,9

it came out in the middle of my grade 11 year..... 1977....

I've always been more into bookseries... foundation,dune, skylark...... magician, thomas covenant( dreary miserable read that is!) .... too many to remember...at my age...lol

Ye for the Star Wars movies. 8 So far, + a couple worth the watch. 7 watched in binge mode. Might take a few more years to attempt them again with the newer ones added.

Frank Herbert and his Dune series. Recon I read about 20 of them, just couldn't put them down.
There were a couple of attempts at movies. Totally wrong choices of actors for characters and total disregard for story line. Probably made by people that never bothered to pick up a book.

'magician'? You mean Pug? Raymond E. Feist?
That is a series I never tire of reading. Did you notice that he writes from first character narrative?
Possibly the best fantasy fiction writer ever. I know I have read everything he ever published. Did you know his wife had a bit to do with his characters too. When your married.. try and stop them! Guess which ones.

Thomas Covenant. EEUGH, what a misery and his gold ring. I admit I did read them all. I was young n stoopid. Though did skip whole paragraphs, sometimes chapters as they dragged on.

Funny enough. I've never read a single Star Wars story. Or Star Trek, not even a single Doctor Who.

spud42 wrote:

thomas covenant (dreary miserable read that is!)

<chortles> I read most of them, and Donaldson's other stuff, but fantasy ain't really my thing. His Gap Cycle is more to my taste.
As for Star Wars, I'm not a fan. Saw the first one in '77, and for ten minutes I thought it might be good - but alas, it wasn't.

i read donaldson because i started.....all of the covenant stuff.... like Alex i think i skipped bits. maybe i hoped it would get better.... nope.
Honestly i could not tell you a single thing about the books except they were miserable.

yes Alex, Fiest. i read it when it first came out. then had to wait for the next one.... torture... i hate that..lol
McCaffery's dragons of Pern series , Eddings (everything!!) i got to the 8th book in Jordan's Wheel of time series.... didnt finish it. its been so long now i would have to start from book 1 and it is up to 12/13/14? books now ??? must have read Tolkiens Lord of the Rings trilogy at least 5 times over the years.... even managed to sneak in a few of Wilbur Smiths series of books .....

Recently read Hamiltons books the Void trilogy as well as his other books.. currently i have been going through the free books available on my ph app.. Prestigo... reading a lot of Arthur Conan Doyle. lots of short stories as well as some novels.... funny but there is no Sherlock Holmes books on there free..... just a couple of short articles...

took this off topic but movies are badly acted books anyway...

spud42 wrote: ↑Mon Dec 18, 2017 12:44 pm

took this off topic but movies are badly acted books anyway...

Glad I'm not the only one to think so. Couldn't agree more.

Eddings. Mm, Mr and Mrs. Tellers of the stories of Garion.
Now that is writing of the highest. Maybe even better than R.E.Fiest.

Half a century of library memberships and heaps of other reading. I'm still hard pushed between these fantasy writers.

J.R. Tolkien even takes a bit of a back seat to these in my opinion.

Could you imagine trying to make movies of Pug or Garion and keep them in order. Never mind the the scope of the stories.

I recon it's better just to show the books and teach to read. Than spend the trillions it would take to make a decent series of movies for either story.

absofrigginloutly. read kids.... expand your imagination... i bet alex's idea of how Garrion looks are different to mine... whos right? both of us. because reading is as much the words as well as the relationship YOU have with them. my idea of garrions farm home looks like something from medieval Yorkshire... stonewalls and thatched roof.... lots of mud in the yard... i can almost smell it...

I was never wild about The Belgariad (borrowed the series off a girlfriend thirty years ago IIRC), but I could bore for Earth versus Mars about Tolkien. Steven Donaldson is a tough read with many imaginative ideas but a thoroughly depressing protagonist and a vocabulary that does come across as dictionary-swallowing for the sake of it.

Anne McCaffrey wrote half of a great book (the first half of Dragonflight is much the best of the entire series) but committed a grave strategic error by dragging in time travel; once you've done that you are setting yourself up for trouble in creating compelling plots that then can't be resolved by time travel, and the excuses never quite work. Nonetheless a lot of the setting resonated very convincingly and whenever I read the Harper books I always mentally picture the Harpercrafthall as being rather like my old college, and characters like Master Robinton and Fandarel the Mastersmith are really well done.

As for Dune, I think I made it through three books.

spud42 wrote: ↑Sat Dec 23, 2017 10:19 am

absofrigginloutly. read kids.... expand your imagination... i bet alex's idea of how Garrion looks are different to mine... whos right? both of us. because reading is as much the words as well as the relationship YOU have with them. my idea of garrions farm home looks like something from medieval Yorkshire... stonewalls and thatched roof.... lots of mud in the yard... i can almost smell it...

HAHHhahahaha, funny that, exactly what I pictured for the farm, even the smells. Working farms smell the same every where. A cacophony of nasal assault for anyone that has never been. Stone walls for sure. Limned to stop insect attack on the mortar. The older farms weren't painted white for looks. Not sure about the thatch though. I imagined wooden shingles for no real reason.

Garrion was small with dark brown hair. Slim not skinny. His 'Aunt' was the cook and his main chore master.
Wonder what the writer thought.

Pug from the Magician was a totally different story. Medieval waif. Was his hair really mousy blonde or just muck induced bleaching?

That is the problem with movies. They really restrict your imagination. When I read a book, I don't really see the book but an imagination induced movie in my mind. No CGI can come close to that. And story holes are closed as you go along. If not the next or last in the series usually takes care of it.

These books not your cuppa. Join the local library. There are literally millions of books to choose from. Might even learn what a genre is, only took me most of my adult life to realise I was spelling it wrong. Which gave me a slightly skewered idea of the meaning. Reading like travel really does give you different points of view.

Just goes to show how difficult it is to make a movie from a well regarded book.

i think that is the hardest movie to make. a well regarded book is a timebomb waiting to go off.... everybody has their own idea what it should look like and how it should be shot.
the old adage "Damned if you do , Damned if you dont" springs to mind.

why does Hollywood think it necessary to remake old classic movies? and when they do why are they invariably worse than the original?

spud42 wrote: ↑Thu Dec 28, 2017 12:21 pm

i think that is the hardest movie to make. a well regarded book is a timebomb waiting to go off.... everybody has their own idea what it should look like and how it should be shot.
the old adage "Damned if you do , Damned if you dont" springs to mind.

why does Hollywood think it necessary to remake old classic movies? and when they do why are they invariably worse than the original?

"invariably" might be a bitty strong. Though thinking about it, it is hard to think of a single one they didn't mess up.

Also if you think, most Hollywood 'blockbusters' are actually remakes of European or Eastern Asian movies anyway.

Book to movie! Yup. Not easy. More so since the internet is killing the movie theater, just as TV killed the radio star. You can see it in the quality of productions. Story telling and actor skills. Not the cgi. Which movies seem to be rated on.
Once upon a time when I had to move between UK cities, I'd have my 'Walkman' and a story on tape. Borrowed from the library. Usually an Alistair MacLean novel. But would have to get the book later. Coz I'd sleep through a fair bit. My 'Walkman' wasn't a Sony, It had Auto-reverse. Oh it ate AA coppertops like crazy. Back when they were new and really did last as long as said. I tested them against the next best in continuous use. The margin is much smaller today, so much that price is a major factor. Rechargeable? Haven't found any that are close to their claims.

Noo that is well off topic..

Just watched 'Bright'
Wonder if it's from a sequence of books. Good story with developing characters. Hope there are more.