marccarlson

So I've been tweeting and facebooking more, flickring less, but still haven't gotten over here to LJ very much.  I never can think of that much to say on top of everything else that's going on, and since my Twitter feed has failed, even that's stopped.  I used to be able to get LJ to link into FB, but facebook doesn't seem to like that.

It's aging news by now, but I guess I'll link this over from work: http://orgs.utulsa.edu/spcol/?p=2017

I just finished the latest 007 novel, Carte Blanche, and I enjoyed it quite a bit. It's actually the first new James Bond book that I've actually read through since failing to finish Scorpius in 1987 (well, not counting the "Young Bond" Silverfin in 2005). James Bond novels, like many continuations of established fiction continuities, are tricky. In many ways they strongly resemble the Bond movies in that every so often things change with little explanation, and there's little or no continuity carry over from the pre-change version. Novelizations contain the worst of both the situations in that they are trying to expand movies in to the novel format, but as stand-alones, they generally can't share too much continuity tying them to either the film version or the current novel version, lest they risk losing half their audience. I should point out that I like novelizations, and books based on series, but as with canned peas and fresh peas, they aren't the same thing and have to be kept separate.

The James Bond books, as written by Fleming, and the movies, depict a different character in a different universe. That's just the way it is. Sean Connery is generally thought to have been fairly close to Bond as he was depicted in the books, but he's not. Connery's Bond wasn't really the hard anti-hero from the books - but for a movie version he was close during the first few movies. George Lazenby wasn't bad, but people had started wanting Bond to be the suave hero, and that wasn't the book to play that role in. After that, with Roger Moore, the movies rapidly left any resemblance to the books - moving into a SF gadget-ridden, CAMPground of Bond-as-Hero. I was delighted when Timothy Dalton took over and moved the scale back to the anti-hero side, although the plots stuck with Moore styled plots that the movie audiences had grown to expect. Pierce Brosnan's tenure was all over the place, as the producers tried to keep the franchise interesting after the collapse of the Cold War. I really liked Daniel Craig's Casino Royale, since it brought the character back to his roots as an anti-hero. Plus there was no pretense, it was a reboot, pure and simple. I'm less enthusiastic about Quantum of Solace, but it was still better than most of the movies in the franchise.

Novels however, tend to convey an impression that they are a continuation of the past series, with the inherent continuity. The book Bond (based on the publication information) got his 00 in about 1951 or 57, depending on who you choose to listen to. He was born probably around 1920-1. That means that by the novel License Renewed (1981) the character had to be 60 years old, still being portrayed as if he were in his 30s. This sort of sliding timeline that appears in comic books is hard enough to accept there, as the continuity keeps piling up. In a novel series, there is a point at which it just doesn't work anymore.

Which is why I stopped reading them. For the record, I also stopped watching Bond movies in the theater after Dalton until Casino Royale, although I have seen all of them since their release.

SO, this new book -- it's a reboot, pure and simple. This reboot has nothing to do with the current movie series. Fleming's estate hired Jeffrey Deaver, noted mystery author, to bring Bond into a post 9-11/7-7 world, and he does this by starting over. The basics are still there, although Bond is now an ex-smoker. He drinks considerably more than I do, but considerably less than the original. He still sleeps around, but is more considerate of his partners in the long run. He no longer works for SIS (i.e. MI-6), but for a covert black-ops unit called ODG answerable to the Prime Minister and the Foreign office. This is because MI-6, as with the CIA, is not as free as it used to be to cause international mayhem in the name of Her Majesty's government. M (Miles Messervy) is his boss, and most of the old cast make an appearance - with the exception of Major Boothroyd, the armorer. This is likely because the character, whose role in the book is nothing like the "Q" we all know and love from the movies, that it would be difficult to pull off - plus it gave the author the opportunity to make the unit a little more believably less Caucasian.

There are toys, but in general the major gadget is a smartphone that looks like an iPhone, but has more functionality than any on the market with way more cool apps than I have available to me (and my phone apps would have been a major dream for spies in the 60s). I really would like the app to listen to a freshly planted bug. All of the technology is acceptably plausible for today (As an amusing aside, as I write this I am re-watching Casino Royale and all of Bond's phone apps look slightly dated and faintly quaint).

In any case, it's a good book, complex plot, bad people, good people, and lots of up to date everything. If you're too much of a purist, I'd say skip it.

Yesterday was the Woodie Guthrie symposium and in the evening a concert, all in celebration of Guthrie's upcoming 100th birthday, and the fact that his archive is coming to Tulsa (not to TU, that ship sailed long, long ago).

Woody Guthrie concert was excellent.  By an accident of luck, we wound up with excellent seats 7 rows back from the stage.  The iPhone camera is bad at low light venues, so everyone of the pics is badly overexposed.  I'll have to see if they can be saved.

Huge number of acts; some doing Guthrie songs, some doing songs based on scraps of Guthrie's in the archives, others doing songs that reflecting Guthrie.  High points include Rosanne Cash's When the Mother is Gone, Jackson Brown's You remember the night, the Flaming Lips techno-horror Vigilante Man, and Mellancamp (and the audience) doing Pink Houses.  Fun evening.

While I won't support a lot of the garbage stories about the Brady Theater being haunted, I will say that there are definitely ghosts of 1921 in that building, and some of Guthrie's music in That Place gives an interesting vibe.

This afternoon we went to see John Carter at the Theater.  I'm going to say that it has a similar relationship to the books that Master and Commander had to the Aubrey and Maturin books - it reasonably conveys the essence, but they have to change the story to make it filmable.  We enjoyed it, but absolute purists might not.

A 19th century photo album with 100 images (well, 96, plus 4 freebies) for $50.  Many of these may be from the same people.

I'm sitting here scanning all these negatives that I picked up yesterday and I have to ask - is this collecting vintage photos as creepy as it's looking right now?  And if not, how many of these should I post to Flickr?

So, we went to the flea market today and I came home with a serious haul.  People just don't appreciate the importance of negatives.  The same dealer who was selling "snapshots for a dollar, and photos ( I.e. cabinet cards) for two each" had a bunch of negatives she was willing to part with for a dollar.  I gave her five.  

After counting them, that's 85 images:
68 616/116 film Brownie images, some going back to the 20s.