I did do something other than lose my phone yesterday, I'll have you know.
Jeff,
dragon_mintz,
5minutelimit, and me watched the TV version of Earthsea yesterday.
5minutelimit seemed to physically be in pain quite a bit of the time, as she knows the books inside and out and much of the plot of the tv movie had nothing to do with it, or twisted it in terrible ways. Even I knew that, and I've only read the first book, and that was three years ago. After trying to watch it seriously for a short time, we just started ripping it up, MST3K style. It was so much fun. Also, Ged kept looking like a (slightly tall) hobbit, especially after he started wearing a cape with a pointy hood.
Watching really bad fantasy reminds me of how good, good fantasy really is. So much of Earthsea was shameless ripoffs (either that or just sloppy copies) of stuff from Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter. Gawd, it was awful. And there were so many anachronisms! Why, in a culture that doesn't believe in hell or have any concept of it, would someone say, "What the hell is going on here?" Wouldn't the head priestess realize she was being poisoned, or that Cossel was being sleazy?
The special effects were bad and a lot of the production values were terrible (hello? I know people who can do better computer graphics than that!), but that wouldn't have mattered if the plot or dialogue made any goddamn sense.
The costumes were nice though. I'm especially fond of the dress the priestesses wore, even if it looked a lot like Eowyn's dress copied with brocade from Jo-Ann's.
If I'd been fourteen or so, I would have thought that movie was The Shit. Alas, age makes us cynical. *lol*