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Add one part satire to two parts sincerity. Sprinkle on a couple of rants. Stir liberally.
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Daily Blah FAQ
Who are you?
I'm the newly-appointed Future editor at Business 2.0 and the former San Francisco correspondent for Time Magazine.
Wow, so does this mean everything you write reflects Time Inc's opinion? Or do you perhaps have some sort of standard disclaimer to the effect that it doesn't?
Naturally, the opinions contained in this blog are not those of my employers. In fact, some opinions may be the polar opposite of my employers. Some may be the same, for all I know. Hey, it's not like I ask my employers their opinions about everything in the news, okay? Let's just say that if this were a Venn diagram with one circle marked "my opinions" and the other one marked "my employers' opinions", there would doubtless be some overlap. But neither I nor my employers are able to pinpoint exactly where that overlap is.
What is this Daily Blah thing?
An experiment for a column I wrote about blogging back in December 2001. All these years later, I haven't been able to kick the habit.
If it's called Daily Blah, how come you don't ... hey, wait, you're writing every day!
See? Told you I'd try harder.
Mister, you talk funny. Are you one of them furrners?
Why yes I am, as it happens. I was born, raised and educated in Great Britain. I've been living in the U.S. since 1996 and identify as British.
I say, old chap, you forgot the "u" in "colour."
No I didn't. I may identify as British, but I am also an American journalist writing for an American audience about mostly American issues. These two different sides of me are a constant source of tension. Nevertheless, Daily Blah will adhere to American English grammar and spelling.
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Daily Blah for... Friday, December 19, 2003
Hail to the King
Last night I surrendered unconditionally to the overwhelming force of Peter Jackson. It took three movies, but the Kiwi director has finally shocked and awed me into submission. Yes, I enjoyed Fellowship and adored Two Towers, but there was always some nagging reaction in my critical brain that prevented me from calling them masterpieces. A smidgen too much CGI, perhaps, or a preponderance of heavy metal hair, or Howard Shore's half-baked melange of musical cliches -- softly serious strings, cod-Celtic pipes, and way too many apocalyptic-sounding choirs. Choirs should be the nuclear button of sci-fi and fantasy films, to be used only as a last resort; this became clear after John Williams overused them in Phantom Menace. When a choir heralds the start of a drag race, for crying out loud, what are you going to do when the entire galaxy is under threat?
Anyway, with Return of the King, it all just clicks. The music, the CGI, everything. P and I watched the extended DVD version of Two Towers before heading to the theater, which is highly recommended -- it substantially enhances your appreciation of the characters, and of what is about to happen. Suffice it to say that what you may have read in other reviews is true; the battle for Minas Tirith is even more jaw-droppingly good than the defense of Helm's Deep in Two Towers. In fact, your jaw hits the ground near the start of the movie, and it's as well that Jackson adds a lengthy coda (as Tolkein did) so that you have time to retrieve it before the cleaners do. As one of my seatmates said, with only a touch of hyperbole, "they should cancel the Academy Awards this year, and just show that." Why not? At three hours twenty minutes, it would probably clock in a little shorter.
Liberties have, of course, been taken with the sacred text. A glance at the original upon our return confirmed that Jackson has conflated about a half-dozen other battles into one big Minas Tirith confrontation. The professor, who got irked even by radio adaptations of his work, would probably not approve. But why should we care about angering that old goat? According to the excellent Humphrey Carpenter biography of Tolkein, he was basically embarrassed about letting loose the fruits of a lifetime's imagination upon the world and never quite understood the world's madly positive reaction. The neatest detail in the Carpenter book, to my mind, is that Tolkein seems to have spent more time devising and playing games of Patience during the eighteen years or so it took him to write Rings than sitting down with the manuscript itself; there were whole months, even years, when he didn't add a single word. There's hope for all of us frustrated sci-fi/fantasy epic writers yet.
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