This has been a pretty fantastic evening. It started with Brandon's celebratory graduation dinner at P.F. Chang's, which was really yummy, even though I didn't like what I ordered, but everyone else had enough great stuff to share that it ended up being great anyway. Also we loved our server a lot, and Baby Goose was incredibly entertaining slash adorable, so dinner was wonderful.
Then we walked around the pretty outdoor mall, and the weather was incredible, and it was a lot of fun. Dafni and Brandon went off to shop with my parents, and Mike, Joseph, Daniel, and I took Jaylee and walked around, and she didn't get upset once that Mommy and Daddy weren't around! We walked across a park and a little girl, probably around six years old, ran up and asked if she could look at our baby. We said yes, and the girl said she was really cute and asked her name. Mike told her it was Jaylee, and I said we call her Baby Goose, and the girl went "Goose!" and started laughing. Then she said "Thank you!" and ran off. It was so cute, and very polite.
Then we went to Borders, where Mike and I bought Jaylee a book, partially because I gave it to her to play with and then looked down to see that she was ingesting it. The others joined us then, I bought Joseph some delicious Borders hot chocolate that we shared with my mom and Daniel, and then we left.
Mike and I had books to return at the Allen library, so we dropped them off, then wandered around contentedly with nothing in particular in mind, just picking things up as they looked good. This is probably going to sound silly, but for me it was really nice to not be thinking of what books I need to get for a challenge, but just to browse.
As we were leaving Mike asked if I wanted to go to a movie, so we went to the theater to see what was playing. The only thing that was starting within the next hour was Narnia, so we went... and, sadly, it was terrible. They added all kinds of junk to the plot that isn't in the books and seemed contrived; Reepicheep wasn't Eddie Izzard (although they misleadingly used his voice in the trailer!) and was annoying instead of loveable; the fight scenes were cheesy; the dialogue was just bad; and Will Poulter--the kid from Son of Rambow--was by far the best actor in the cast. We ended up leaving halfway through and were very grateful to get our $18 back. We never go to the regular movies anymore anyway, so it would have been really disappointing to spend so much on a movie we didn't like.
Then we came home and watched Friends--episodes we'd never seen because the disc is missing from our season 5 but we'd finally managed to borrow it from Dafni and Brandon!--and now Mike is playing a weird looking game while I write. Our window is open, the breeze is incredible, and we can hear the barn door banging around, which, I am surprised to find, I think is really cool. As soon as I finish this post, I'm going to bed, hopefully to sleep better than I have been all week.
Also, I found out this afternoon that my cousin and his wife will be living in Austin for the summer, which is happy news, since it will mean visiting. And the video of Jaylee that I've been trying for days to upload to Facebook finally worked! so you can check it out if you are interested in seeing some adorable baby dancing. It's adorable, I promise.
So tonight was wonderful in about a zillion different ways, and I am content. Huzzah for a beautiful evening.
Don't listen! The Voyage of the Dawn Treader was excellent!
ReplyDelete(But seriously, I would like to know what parts in the movie you found to be so very divergent from the book's plot... Also, I'm pretty sure Eddie Izzard's voice was not used in the trailer, since the new actor was announced some time ago.)
Well, the battle with the slave traders and the business with the seven swords aren't in the book, and Lucy's obsession with being pretty isn't either. It is mentioned that she thinks about it, I think when she's looking in the book of incantations, but it's exaggerated quite a bit in the movie. Again, we only saw the first half, so I don't know what happens later.
ReplyDeleteMaybe it isn't Eddie Izzard in the trailer, but it sure sounds like him, and the voice in the movie doesn't. I guess I have no way of knowing for sure.
I think we'll still want to watch the whole thing once it's out on DVD, but neither of us felt it was worth the regular-priced tickets.
Oh, and there's also the mist thing, which basically takes over as the purpose of their journey--rather than finding the seven lords and Aslan's country--and which doesn't even exist in the book.
ReplyDeleteThat's true, I guess the Mist sort of became a major objective, and they did add a fight scene or two (even though Prince Caspian added a major battle that wasn't in the book, which I didn't mind either). I thought it was an interesting addition, which seemed to kind of round out when it came to the Dark Island. I guess I had forgotten that the swords weren't part of the book's plot, but it was a nice little visualization of finding the seven lords, I guess.
ReplyDeleteAnd I actually thought Simon Pegg was a pretty good replacement (though I do generally hate when they replace actors/voice actors in a franchise like this). Much better than Bill Nighy would have been, who was the original replacement announced (though I do love him in movies, that would have just been too jarring a change).
For what it's worth, C.S. Lewis's grandson has evidently given his enthusiastic endorsement: http://www.narniafans.com/archives/10846 . I think it might round itself out for you if you stick it out, especially regarding the ending--Aslan's Country was very nicely handled, I thought, when it could have been omitted entirely (heaven forbid). Maybe you might catch it on TV or DVD one day.