I perhaps should re-read what I had written to see if I make this distinction clearly, but me thinking Sanderson's prose is relatively poor does not mean that I equate that with him being a "bad writer" in the sense of his tales being unreadable for me. It's more a case of a particular weakness being more easily perceived by me than others (just like I might like a story with beautiful sentences that possesses a weak plot element, whether or not such was intended to be such) and as a reviewer, I bring that up in reviews because it affects my interaction with the text.
It's a fun movie, even a good movie by some standards, but there are some flaws that are obvious to anyone who looks for that kind of thing. And since it's very hard to un-see something once you've seen it, that can affect your enjoyment of the movie, even if you're trying to just enjoy it on a simpler level.
I seem to be in the minority of those watching the film version of Cloud Atlas who thought it was a good movie. I had read David Mitchell's book and I knew going in that the cinema version would have to be altered significantly. What I saw was a different way of telling a wonderful story, while my dad and uncle, who watched it with me, saw a confusing mess. For myself, knowing a bit of the narrative structure and the problems the directors would have in adapting it made what they did impressive in the sense that they used certain repeating themes to tell several stories in parallel, all with the same actors playing different characters/similar roles over several hundred years. I was reminded favorably of D.W. Griffith's 1916 movie, Intolerance, in how these events unfolded in parallel, but it certainly is not the sort of linear storytelling that appeals to most viewers (and readers, I suppose).
Je suis méchant.
- 25/05/2014 05:22:04 AM
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