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Breaking Bad Meets Star Trek
If there was any doubt that Breaking Bad has lots to do with science fiction, let that doubt be crushed.
Game of Thrones: In Memoriam
This video from Comic-Con is but a small slice of all the characters who have lost their lives. Or so I’m told; Dave’s the Game of Thrones watcher around here.
Extermimaze!
From the Daily Mail:
A Doctor Who fan has celebrated his love of the TV time-lord by carving the biggest image of a Dalek ever created into a maze.
Farmer Tom Pearcy’s tribute to the BBC show is over 300m, or 1,000ft, long and cut out of an 18-acre field of more than one million maize plants.
The design makes up York Maze, the largest maze in Europe and one of the largest in the world.
More photos at the story.
Red Wedding Reax Round Up
Okay, we waited a week to make this post, so we think we’re out of the most egregious parts of spoiler territory, and besides, WWEnd is a community of readers. Many of us have known about the Red Wedding for 13 years. That said, if you haven’t seen last week’s episode and haven’t read the books, go correct that error and then come back.
Whenever I come across a plot point in Game of Thrones, the first thing that goes through my mind is “where did that come from?” It’s impossible to look at the broad strokes in Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire without recognizing The War of the Roses right away, but elements of this series are, in fact, cherry-picked from many different parts of history: ancient, medieval and modern. So when I experienced the Red Wedding I immediately wanted to know where Martin lifted that particular atrocity. Entertainment Weekly asked that very thing last week in their interview with the author. He answered:
The Red Wedding is based on a couple real events from Scottish history. One was a case called The Black Dinner. The king of Scotland was fighting the Black Douglas clan. He reached out to make peace. He offered the young Earl of Douglas safe passage. He came to Edinburgh Castle and had a great feast. Then at the end of the feast, [the king’s men] started pounding on a single drum. They brought out a covered plate and put it in front of the Earl and revealed it was the head of a black boar — the symbol of death. And as soon as he saw it, he knew what it meant. They dragged them out and put them to death in the courtyard. The larger instance was the Glencoe Massacre. Clan MacDonald stayed with the Campbell clan overnight and the laws of hospitality supposedly applied. But the Campbells arose and started butchering every MacDonald they could get their hands on. No matter how much I make up, there’s stuff in history that’s just as bad, or worse.
Hell is Adaptations: The Hobbit Cartoon
What has a running time of 77 minutes, was once called “execrable” in the introduction to The Annotated Hobbit, and received a Hugo nomination for Best Dramatic Presentation but lost to Star Wars? That’s right, it’s the Rankin/Bass 1977 animated adaptation of The Hobbit! Loved by children and tolerated by critics, The Hobbit is a mix of cheesiness, hasty storytelling, and hippy ballads. And lest you think I’m exaggerating when I say hippy ballads, I give you this:
Many people might look back on this cartoon with fond childhood memories. They remember the dwarfs’ unexpected party, the sudden and electric appearances of Gandalf, the riddle game beneath the mountains, the trip down the river in barrels, the monstrous worm Smaug, the massive battle of the five armies, and think, “That sure was a great movie.” These people are wrong. Horribly, terribly wrong.
Time to suck your childhood memories dry, kiddos!
What makes this movie so bad? Let’s make a list.
The “Sliders” Movie You’ve Been Waiting For
Part of Kickstart or Die’s April Fools campaign (some NSFW language):
They have a few more movie “projects” in the works, including Wings, Dinosaurs, Family Matters, and Darkwing Duck.
New Film(!) List: Genre Lit-Flicks
Anyone paying close attention to our novel pages today may have noticed a curious thing. Many of our novels now have a section for “Film & Television Adaptations.” This was added to tie into our brand new shiny book list, Genre Lit-Flicks. This begins our project to build what we hope will be the definitive list of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror novels adapted for feature films and television. Here are some fun facts to whet your appetite:
Did you know…
…the children’s classic The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe has been adapted a total of three times: once animated, once as live-action for the BBC, and most recently as a special effects extravaganza by Disney?
…John Carpenter’s horror film The Thing (1982) was adapted from the novel Who Goes There?, which also spawned the film The Thing from Another World (1951) and the prequel The Thing (2011)?
…legendary actor Marlon Brando’s most infamous role was in the critically panned The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996)?
…the novel The Body Snatchers was adapted four times as Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), Body Snatchers (1994), and The Invasion (2007)?
…auteur director Andrei Tarkovsky’s film Stalker was an adaptation of the SF Masterworks novel Roadside Picnic?
…the ur-Horror novel Dracula has been adapted to film so many times we didn’t even try to list them all?
These and many other fun facts await your perusal at the Genre Lit-Flicks list.
But wait… there’s more!
That’s right! In addition to providing our loyal WWEnd members with the most comprehensive and up-to-date list of genre novel adaptations, we are launching a new blog series entitled Hell is Adaptations (series is not yet rated), which will document our ongoing trudge through the mire of Hollywood’s idea of what makes for good genre storytelling.
See any glaring omissions in our list? Think we should add a book to our database that was made into your favorite movie? Let us know in the comments below! Just be aware that we are not planning to add adaptations to the list until they have a theatrical or (shudder) direct-to-DVD release. We do know that World War Z is on its way, thanks…
