A story of one girl’s obsession with books, movies and TV shows

The tale of two unfortunate book adaptations. Plus one less so. 3 March

Now and then some TV boss decides to try to make another fantasy show. The majority of such creations are either completely unremarkable in every aspect or go all the way into Cheesyland. Due to that or despite it the aforementioned TV boss greenlights the adaptation of a popular book series. Well, we all know what a rarity good adaptations are. I for one can only recall the LotR and Harry Potter franchise. Narnia wasn’t all that, and Golden Compass — plain awful.

There are three recent TV shows that appeared on my radar as I’ve read the book series they were adapted from.

Early ’09 newcomers: Dollhouse, Lie to Me, The Beast and more 19 February

newcomers-09

A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin 25 January

A Song of Ice and Fire covers

Button fiddling

Long, long time ago, when the grass was greener and the sky a deeper shade of blue, I was naive enough to believe that there was no better epic fantasy than Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan.

Somewhere in the gap between nth and (n+1)th book I grew bored and decided to look for new options. Immediately A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin caught my attention.

Several reviews praised it to the stars yet also mentioned that no other author was so prone to crippling and murdering his characters like Martin. I knew how attached I might become to the characters so the doubts lingered. Then at some point I decided to give it a shot.

Twilight the movie: good cast, wrong sparkle 4 January

Twilight poster

I haven’t read the Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series nor do I have any inclination to, but still I was interested in all the ‘new Harry Potter’ hype so I’ve read several reviews instead. They mostly agreed on how excruciatingly bad the books were yet some shamefully admitted the weird appeal.

Well, I said to myself, let’s watch the movie. Forbidden love, cute teenagers – what’s not to like? The premise for the story is quite simple – the divorcee’s daughter Bella Swan (ouch!) comes to live with her dad, a chief of police in a small town of Forks. Surprisingly she becomes rather popular in new school and several nice guys are always around her but Bella falls for the pale-faced and distant Edward Cullen. The guy seems to be avoiding our heroine yet he is omnipresent wherever she goes. Cold hands, supernatural speed and strength, allergy to the sun – WOW, he is a VAMPIRE.

Californication s2e10: It’s the S-word 2 December

Hank:
OMG, what is that bump on my precious cock?
Karen:
OMG, it’s cancer!
Dr.:
Don’t worry, it might be STD, syphilis for example, or cancer, or whatever.
Hank:
NO, it can’t be STD, it’s not like I f*ck everything that moves and hate condoms. Well, I had vasectomy so now I have a reason to not use condoms. And I f*cked that sweet maid at my client’s ex-girlfriend mansion. No way that girl could have STD. And I f*cked that crazy cook from TV. NO WAY that stark raving mad b*tch could have had STD.
Karen:
Oh God, then it’s cancer!
Dr.(by phone):
It’s syphilis!
Hank:
YAY! It’s syphilis!
Karen:
Thank God, it’s syphilis!
Californication writers:
Cool, now we don’t need to use internet for our diagnosis! It’s brain syphilis! This is so great! We don’t even need House for differential!! We will just take some antibiotics!!!