Comments are now open again. They’ve been going down quite a bit lately (after having been stable for a good long while). Unfortunately, there’s still no indication that WordPress intends to fix this problem. If you ever see the comments closed on a post here at the Alexandrian, please drop me an e-mail and let me know.

March has proven to be a horribly dismal and frustratingly unproductive month for me. (And the silence ’round these parts has only been one small part of that.) My fingers are crossed that I’ll get things turned around and April will be better in all respects. At the very least, I can promise that things will be more active here at the Alexandrian as I’m currently laying in a full slate of content that will launch on Monday.

While I’m here, let me chat about a couple of movies I’ve seen recently…

JOHN CARTER OF MARS

John Carter has become another victim of the “nobody saw it opening day, so it must not be good” fallacy that plagues the toxic combination of Hollywood’s front-loaded marketing schemes and the cult-like worship of the box office in media news.

Were the trailers terrible? Yes.

Have the mainstream reviews been mediocre? Of course. (Mainstream reviewers will always rip apart a genre movie if they’re given free rein to do so.)

But what about the actual movie? It’s very good. Not perfect, but very good.

If you’re a fan of science fiction adventure stories — particularly ones which are mind-blowingly beautiful — then you owe it to yourself to give John Carter a chance to wow you on the big screen before it disappears from theaters entirely.

THE HUNGER GAMES

Recently re-read the books and then watched the movie.

The film is a very good adaptation of an excellent novel. If I had any quibble whatsoever, it would be that Katniss ends up being a slightly weaker character in the movie. This is partly the result of needing to push exposition out of Katniss’ head and into the mouths of other characters (which results in other characters taking away some of her decisions and insights), but it’s also a minor structural issue in which Katniss remains almost constantly reactive and is never allowed to capture the initiative or take control of her situation. (Which is in marked contrast to the book, where I’d argue that Katniss’ unique quality is her ability to force her will onto situations over which she should have no control.)

Despite this, however, Katniss remains one of the strongest female protagonists in film history. (Which is kind of a sad indictment of female protagonists in film. But I digress.)

I have a general rule of thumb about adaptations: If the only thing I didn’t like in the movie were my favorite moments from the book, then the adaptation is a good one. (Why? Because they’re my favorite moments. The odds of the film perfectly capturing my personal vision of those moments is almost nonexistent; and because they’re my favorite moments, any deviation is going to come up lacking in my judgment.)

The Hunger Games passes that test, and also clears another important hurdle: Instead of just regurgitating the book onto the screen, it takes the opportunity to explore the story in ways that the book couldn’t and didn’t.

(This assumes, of course, that the book was good in the first place. In a situation like Field of Dreams — where the original book, Shoeless Joe, was mediocre at best — a different set of rules applies.)

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