Writer's Block: Miss Manners

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Modern mobile phones. Not only do other people expect you to be always available, you also get to feel like every last blip of your opinion is important enough to be always available to the world. Which then leads to shitheads feeling the need to talk and text wherever they are, even if it's in the auditorium of a theatre, where the boundaries of who should be listened to and who should shut up are very clearly delineated.

This was only made worse by all these cameras being included in the phones. Now you are always on display and that strange idiocy that people can be prone to while on camera is everywhere.

"Watchmen"

So years and years of discussing and wondering and pondering and expecting came to an end yesterday when the film version of "Watchmen" finally went on general release over here.
And I really liked it. As somebody who has only done one concentrated full reading of the original comic (and quite a trip that was, let me tell you) but read a fair bit of the secondary literature as well as re-reading bits and pieces, I have decided that all the hype was pretty much deserved and that this quite simply is the best Alan-Moore-adaptation done so far now*.

( If you have not read the book, here be spoilers )

Obviously, the book adds many more layers, asks many more questions and gives you more to think about but that really is something that books by their very nature have an advantage on compared to mainstream films. There also is no question about Zack Snyder being very interested in things looking flashy (What do you expect from the man who brought you "Himmler's wet dream" "300"?) and maybe the film is a little bit "style over matter" but I did really like the fact that the story pulled no punches and tried its best to not turn into run-of-the-mill Hollywood fare (while referencing Hollywood: "Ride of the Valkyries", anyone?).
I mean, imagine this having been done by Michael Bay with Arnold as Dr. Manhattan. See? Scary, innit?

So, full marks.


*Kicking "V for Vendetta" into a deserved second place. But then I guess you could also argue that the list pretty much ends there. "From Hell" is an interesting film in its own right but only really adapted certain assumptions Moore made about the murders. A "proper" adaptation of the book surely would have been a documentary with a certain amount of re-enactments.
And "LXG".... come on, let's be honest here. The film took a number of characters Moore also used in "League of extraordinary gentlemen", added some and then did a stupid story with them. Calling this an "adaptation" is using the term very loosely.
"Constantine" and "Swamp Thing" will be completely disregarded here, although they have their merits.