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I have to admit it. It's not something I'm proud of, but, well, one must learn to admit these things in oneself, that one may learn to let them go.
Remixes - cover versions of songs - they give me fits.
No, it's worse than that. Different versions of a song give me fits. If I hear the Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young version first, then I get imprinted on it, and Joni Mitchell's take drives me nuts. Will for years. Maybe if I work determinedly, I can learn to stop hearing not-my-version and start hearing what she's actually playing, but that's if I work like the devil at it, and it's only because I love Joni Mitchell I'd give her the chance.
Knowing this, it's no surprise to me that so many people hated The Postman. They read David Brin's book, and the movie's just plain not it. But I would nevertheless urge every person who ever rejected it for not being their version, and every person who spurned it for the bad press it received, to reconsider.
I'll do my best not to spoil it, but I necessarily must say a few things to explain myself. And because I think it deserves it, I'll hold myself just to this movie, and not Brin's book. They're too much confused already.
In the story, war has torn the Earth. Nuclear war, I gather, but it's ended when the story starts. But as a result of that war, the United States has fractured itself - no more big cities, no more federal government, just towns, separate and alone. And the strongest forces remaining in the part of the States where this story takes place are clans, formed from and associated with a cult of personality that preceded the great war. Life is hardscrabble, desperate, 'nasty, brutish, and short', one might say.
The collapsed civilization is beautifully depicted, by the way. The movie opens with the protagonist walking through the Great Salt Flats in Utah with his mule among the remnants of the past, scavenging what he can from them as he moves along.
In any case, further along but still near the beginning, he is caught out in a storm, shivering, freezing, and stumbles upon an old mail truck, the driver a skeleton inside. He takes the uniform to protect himself from the cold, that night, and lights a fire to keep himself warm. In the morning, though, after building a cairn for his dead benefactor, he decides to try a trick with the uniform. He approaches a town, declaring he is a representative of the restored government, reopening the postal service.
And the rest of the movie leads on from that.
The Postman is a quiet sort of science fiction movie. Oh, there's fighting, and it's certainly set in a future, but no hyperintelligent computers or genetically-engineered beasts are to be found here, and what battles there are are muddy, dusty, confusing things, and far from glorious. It is science fiction like Watership Down is fantasy - the category is correct, but both are ultimately about people. And the important moments are those ones where these people act for each other.
Remixes - cover versions of songs - they give me fits.
No, it's worse than that. Different versions of a song give me fits. If I hear the Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young version first, then I get imprinted on it, and Joni Mitchell's take drives me nuts. Will for years. Maybe if I work determinedly, I can learn to stop hearing not-my-version and start hearing what she's actually playing, but that's if I work like the devil at it, and it's only because I love Joni Mitchell I'd give her the chance.
Knowing this, it's no surprise to me that so many people hated The Postman. They read David Brin's book, and the movie's just plain not it. But I would nevertheless urge every person who ever rejected it for not being their version, and every person who spurned it for the bad press it received, to reconsider.
I'll do my best not to spoil it, but I necessarily must say a few things to explain myself. And because I think it deserves it, I'll hold myself just to this movie, and not Brin's book. They're too much confused already.
In the story, war has torn the Earth. Nuclear war, I gather, but it's ended when the story starts. But as a result of that war, the United States has fractured itself - no more big cities, no more federal government, just towns, separate and alone. And the strongest forces remaining in the part of the States where this story takes place are clans, formed from and associated with a cult of personality that preceded the great war. Life is hardscrabble, desperate, 'nasty, brutish, and short', one might say.
The collapsed civilization is beautifully depicted, by the way. The movie opens with the protagonist walking through the Great Salt Flats in Utah with his mule among the remnants of the past, scavenging what he can from them as he moves along.
In any case, further along but still near the beginning, he is caught out in a storm, shivering, freezing, and stumbles upon an old mail truck, the driver a skeleton inside. He takes the uniform to protect himself from the cold, that night, and lights a fire to keep himself warm. In the morning, though, after building a cairn for his dead benefactor, he decides to try a trick with the uniform. He approaches a town, declaring he is a representative of the restored government, reopening the postal service.
And the rest of the movie leads on from that.
The Postman is a quiet sort of science fiction movie. Oh, there's fighting, and it's certainly set in a future, but no hyperintelligent computers or genetically-engineered beasts are to be found here, and what battles there are are muddy, dusty, confusing things, and far from glorious. It is science fiction like Watership Down is fantasy - the category is correct, but both are ultimately about people. And the important moments are those ones where these people act for each other.
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Oh, and isn't Watership Down allegory rather than fantasy? Or is that a grey area?
no subject
Well, it's fantasy for sure - rabbit's aren't smart, don't speak, and so on. It may be allegory as well, but I don't pick up on that most times.