I Am Legend

-
I watched the film. For the first hour I was thinking: "this is pretty good, quite scary and entertaining". Then it all went to shit just as I thought it was getting good. I don't want to go into detail, because I don't want to spoil it.

Then I thought: "the book is a classic of SF, and horror - surely this must be a case of Hollywood tinkering with a good story, improving it for focus groups and merchandising purposes". So I read the book.

It kicks arse, specifically vampire arse. If you've seen the film, read the book and think: "why the steaming fudge did they not just film this?". If you haven't seen the film, and don't want to, read the book. It is a classic, and rightly so. If you want to see the film, read the book afterwards. Not before. Otherwise you will sit there thinking: "oh fuckety-arse, they've shat all over the great story and now the title of the film makes no fucking sense".

In the book, Robert Neville smokes a pipe, grows a beard and uses paper plates instead of doing his washing up. Damn straight the last man on Earth is absolutely going to do those things. Will Smith didn't. I rest my case as to the relative merits of the two versions.

Comments

  1. Unknown31/1/08 21:50

    I read the book ages ago, and thought it was awesome. However I thought the film was okay, the first half was really quite good. No, it's not really the same story as the book, but I think I had such low expectations that I came out feeling positive.

    Surely "Come out Neville!" would have been brilliant on film though?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Gareth1/2/08 10:54

    Yeah, the first half was made of awesome and I was glad I hadn't read the book before seeing the film.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

(fre)ebooks

-
Tor are currently giving away free ebooks as part of a promotion for their new website. Just sign up for their newsletter and once a week they'll email you a link to download it in html, pdf, or mobi format. They're on their third book at the moment: " The Outstretched Shadow " by Mercedes Lackey and Someone Else Whose Name Isn't As Distinctive. The previous two were " Old Man's War " by that nice Mr. Scalzi, and " Spin " by Robert Wilson. I have a decent-sized screen on my PDA-phone-thing, and reading "Spin" was quite comfortable. There were advantages over the paper version (reading in the dark; not as heavy; easier to read one-handed while swaying on the commuter meat wagon; I always have my phone with me so I've always got a book too), and disadvantages (could not read at the beach; or anywhere in bright light; not as high contrast as print on paper which did give me a slight headache after an hour or so; my book now depe...
Read more

Best. Purchase. Ever.

-
About two weeks ago I managed to pop the little rubber cover off one of my Apple in-ear headphones . It pinged off into the middle of the open railway crossings we have here in Australia, during a collision with one of my more indecisive fellow-pedestrians. These little rubber doobries have to fit your lughole snugly otherwise they sound shithouse. I tried using the medium sized ones (the headphones come with three different sizes; my giant canals need the large size), but it was no good. I journeyed far and wide in search of replacement whatsits, but no-one makes them. Not even Apple. In times of crisis I find it helps to turn to a higher power. Google found me an article where someone recommended the use of the foam sleeves for the Shure E2C in-ear headphones . These happen to be a perfect fit for the Apple ones. Great! Only problem is that there are only two places in Australia that distribute them. One charges $35, with free shipping. The other charges $25 , plus $7 shipping. The ...
Read more

Sharing Files Between Windows Mobile and Mac OS X via Wi-Fi

-
Image
I bought an ibook just before they started bundling bluetooth, but after they started bundling airport extreme. On Friday, my new i-mate jasjam (also called a HTC Hermes / TyTN ) was delivered. It comes with Active Sync, which only works on PCs. It comes with a USB cable, but all I could do with that was charge the battery on a Mac. It has Wi-Fi and joined my home network easily, but it won't sync over wireless. A bit of googling later, and I found out that you can share files, and get it to work as a modem with a mac - but only via bluetooth. Grr - no good for me unless I shell out for a dongle. There's also Missing Sync , an Active Sync replacement for Mac OS X, but it costs money and requires OS 10.4 (I've got 10.3 - so that would be an extra $200 on top). I thought of using FTP to transfer files, but Windows Mobile doesn't come with a FTP client. You can buy them, but I'm a skinflint. Ah-ha, I thought, Windows Mobile probably supports SMB (the windows standard ...
Read more