Just one olive, though.

[sarea]

jade_okelani reminded me that Outlander had started airing, so I checked it out. I knew 20 minutes into the first episode that I was going to love the series. I ended up mainlining 4 eps last night, I watched 3 more this afternoon, and then I have a final ep to watch tonight of the initial 8 eps that have aired. Seriously, I love it. It's a fantastic adaptation.

In general, I like the casting. Claire is a little taller than I'd imagined. Initially I wasn't too convinced of the Jamie they chose -- the actor is a little too pretty and not "enough" of a redhead -- but I actually love him, so hurrah. I even like Frank Randall, because I liked the actor from Rome, even though he's older than I'd pictured for both Frank and Black Jack Randall. As for the MacKenzies and others, I barely remember the characters, so none of them have bothered me.

I'd even forgotten that Outlander had gotten picked up as a TV series. When I first heard, I was intrigued, but not incredibly so. I'd read the first book and absolutely loved it, but had felt meh about the second book. All the real-life history, not to mention the time travel, and all the different characters and politics, made things seem extremely convoluted. The stuff I cared about (Jamie and Claire's relationship) seemed very minimal in the second book, and I didn't see that changing for subsequent novels. I haven't read books 3-8, but I've kept myself apprised of events by reading Wikipedia summaries of the books, and nothing about the summaries makes me want to read the actual books. If anything, all the problems I had with the second book seem to just get magnified more and more, with even more complex politics and relationship shenanigans. The balance of the first book was about 50/50 in terms of romance and plot. Later books seem to lean much more heavily on the plot/history side of things, while leaving the romance to languish.

It's weird, I know, because all of the stuff I'm complaining about regarding Outlander, I love about Game of Thrones. I'm not sure why it is that GoT doesn't feel convoluted to me -- on the contrary, I love all its many characters, politics, and plotlines, whereas Outlander's subsequent novels feel like they're 95 percent filled with things I don't care about.

One of the good things about not being into the books is that now I can look forward to watching the series. As with Maze Runner, I think I'll enjoy the live action adaptation more than the novels... Whereas the opposite is true of GoT. Because I love the ASoIaF series so much, everything they do that isn't "right" grates on my nerves. (I'm so, so glad I stopped watching the show.)

If there's such a thing as a past life, I think I must've been Scottish at one point. Ever since I was young, hearing Celtic music, even just the haunting strain of a bag pipe, gives me all these feelings. It can instantly transport me to a place (that I imagined as wet, with gray/blue skies and green, green land everywhere) I've never actually been. So I don't know that it's anything like my imagination (and it would have been a different time), except it's more of a feeling than it is visual. Anyway, I say that because I loooooooooove the opening credits. The scenes are good, but mostly it's the music. I watch the whole thing every time.

"Outlander | Opening Titles | STARZ" (Watch on YouTube)

(Then again, I also get massive feelings when listening to stuff like this, which I don't know how to describe except as... woodsy? Folksy?)

Anyway, the Outlander music is unsurprisingly good, because it's composed by Bear McCreary, who did the fantastic score of BSG. And his involvement in Outlander is probably not all that surprising, because of Ronald D. Moore being the showrunner! Which should also explain why Outlander is so well done.

++++++

I read Gone Girl lightning fast, because I wanted to read the book before I saw the movie, and I didn't realize the movie was so close to coming out until the day it released and I still hadn't read a word. But! I read the book this last week, and saw the movie today.

I guess the movie's gotten a lot of critical acclaim, which I'm glad for, because in general I really liked the story. I thought the movie was well done, but preferred the book. Maybe I would have appreciated it more had I not read the book first, but I thought it had the same failings as most great books that are turned into movies: The abbreviated movie version just cuts way too many things, so that it ends up feeling like a Cliff's Notes version of something that had a lot of substance.

While reading the book, I wasn't even sure how it could translate to film. After all, you're in the characters' heads so often, and of course, Amy's diary entries are half lies. How would that work? They actually did a decent job of that -- probably because Gillian Flynn, the author, wrote the screenplay. Adaptations are usually better when the original author does it (imho the best book-to-film adaptation was done by Helen Fielding with Bridget Jones's Diary). Impressively, she did a lot of summarizing and rewriting of events, some of which were good, others not so much.

Because of the abbreviated time in which to tell the story, the tone of Amy's diary entries in the movie changes rather abruptly. One moment she and Nick couldn't be happier; the next he's acting like an ass. Everything seems to happen much more quickly than they did in the books, in which things are very gradually revealed. I preferred that, because it let my brain absorb all the new information and put it together with what we already knew.

I really have to give props to Gillian Flynn for writing a great novel. It was set up and delivered beautifully. It's particularly impressive that I'm giving that props, because it's written in the first person, which I generally don't like much. (But that could be because it's the narrative format most often used by bad YA books.) Both characters were very relatable -- even Amy at her most insane. Throughout the book I marveled at how well Flynn was able to pinpoint and lay bare all the little failings that people have in their thoughts and actions, in a very concise, incisive way. It's really not until Amy has to call Desi for help that the book starts to feel like the plot of a typical movie that you have to suspend your disbelief for. Up until then, it feels like it could all be true. That's not to say that that act was a failing, or that what came before was better; it's just a change in the "feel" of the storyline.

The casting left something to be desired. Ben Affleck in this role was perfect. I'm not a huge Ben Affleck fan, but he was just right for the part. The good-looking, douchey face that you kind of want to punch, but fairly sympathetic despite that. Rosamund Pike as Amy was very good, but she wasn't quite how I'd pictured Amy. Go was fine, but also did not match the Go in my head. (And it really bothered me that for about 80 percent of the book, we have no idea what "Go" stands for, and yet in the movie, the first time we ever learn her name, we get the full "Margo.") Andie was definitely not what I pictured; I saw her more as a Zooey Deschanel type. The Elliots were totally wrong. Neil Patrick Harris as Desi Collings was totally wrong. Boney was definitely wrong -- she was supposed to be ugly, and they chose a normal, attractive actress instead. Tanner Bolt was... all right. Since they ditched his wife (which I thought was a good call), they decided to make him black instead, but let's be honest, anyone who's seen Breaking Bad pictured Bob Odenkirk in the role.

In the film, because we weren't able to be in the characters' heads much, the whole thing with Nick and his father was barely a blip, when I think that's a really important part of his psyche, and understanding who he is and why he is the way he is, and what his gravest fears are.

It also bothered me that Amy became a little more one-dimensional in the movie -- she's a psycho bitch! -- when in the book she had a few more layers. She loved her cat, for instance. (In the movie, she barely interacts with it at all.) True sociopaths don't/can't love animals, right? In fact, had she been a true sociopath, she would have first harmed the cat to punish Nick, because he loved it too. Anyway, the big one was her time with Desi. In the book, it's made clear that Desi was controlling, threatening, a jailer. Her experience with him is partly what makes her want to return to Nick (that plus all the videos he does -- rather than the one interview he gives). The fact that she kills Desi is abhorrent, but at the same time, almost understandable because he's basically kidnapped her. In the movie, he's an ass, but he's not the same kind of threat. I don't understand why they didn't include two things from the book that wouldn't have taken a ton of time, but would have more plainly addressed the situation: 1) Her asking him for money, and him giving her $40; 2) His not-so-subtle threat that if she were to leave, he would be forced to call the police in order to make sure she was safe. Instead, because those threats don't exist, when she kills him she just seems totally insane.

I really wish they'd kept Nick's line from the book about how he has to stay with Amy and his son because he has to be around to undo everything that she does; he's staying so that his kid has an influence that's not Amy. The movie doesn't do this; instead, Nick just ends up looking weak, with a really flimsy excuse for staying. In both cases, they could just be excuses -- the moral could be that they are both equally codependent -- but at least the argument he gives in the book is relatable. (I also wish they'd put in the thing about writing their respective books and how he ends up burning his, but I can see why that'd be expendable.)

Finally, one thing I have to say that's disquieting about the story, period, is that it seems to, in a way, provide an excuse for all the men out there who actually have or will murder or otherwise harm their wives/girlfriends. This story seems to diminish those real-life cases, or will diminish those cases, by planting doubt into a situation in which, let's face it, 99.99999999999 percent of those men did hurt their women. Now there's this defense of: Well, there's no body, so what if she's just run off, and he's really innocent? That kind of doesn't sit right with me.

++++++

I don't know what it is with my mom, but she reallllllllly loves the Seahawks now. Even though for 66+ years she's never given one single shit about football. It's bizarre! It really, really is. For a little while it seemed like she might start liking football in general -- I will watch any game that's on -- but her enthusiasm cooled and now she only cares about football when the Seahawks are playing. She was SO disappointed last Monday when they played Washington and it aired on ESPN, which I don't have, so we couldn't watch it. When she found out about tomorrow's game against Dallas, she got so excited and began planning the weekend around the game. (Only one TV in the house gets reception for Fox, my computer room, so we're going to cram uncomfortably in here. I don't know how that's going to work.) Just now, we had this conversation:

Mom: We get to watch the Seahawks tomorrow!
Me: Yeah. But you know, they might lose.
Mom: Tsk. Why do you have to say those things?
Me: Well, the other team is good!
Mom: It's the Cowboys, right?
Me: Yeah, and they're actually really good this season. They've won 4 games and lost only 1.
Mom: Well, I guess after tomorrow, they'll have lost 2.

Ha!!!!! That doesn't actually make me feel confident about the outcome, but I have to admit I am tickled by her sudden fervor.