#i enjoyed the movie!! but it doesn't pack half as much of an emotional punch as the book

[callonpeevesie]

watched the color purple and the casting was so good but wow the movie really decided to nix about 80% of celie and shug's relationship and all the sex and shug and albert's backstory and mary agnes and sofia's relationship and the whole thing of celie giving up on god and writing to nettie and then unlearning the white male god and almost everything about nettie's relationship with samuel and corrine and the children and

[lightflame]

Tagged by @bagadew (Also tagging in @waermeflasche because you tagged me weeks ago and I didn't get back to you)

Last song I listened to: Soap by The Oh Hellos. I burn CDs and listen to them in my car. (The first few I tried to give themes and titles, and select the perfect song orders, but ended up kind of bad and the other was cursed and wouldn't play even though I remade it three times, so I just switched to throwing a ton of songs together on "Random Mixes" and enjoying.) I was listening to my very first random mix on the drive home from work and this one came up. It's a pretty snazzy song. I think Theseus and Hello, My Old Heart are my favourites from the band.

Last book I read: Can I do a couple? I just recently finished Play of Shadows by Sebastien de Castell. It's the first book of Court of Shadows, the sequel series to his Greatcoats series. Greatcoats is one of my favourite series, filled with swashbuckling action, clever humour, and an absolutely miserable protagonist, Falcio val Mond, who always manages to get back up and keep going anyway. I read everything de Castell writes, and after a string of books with severe pacing problems (check out The Malevolent Seven for a book that doesn't have a second act) and other problems (I have a hard time seeing any book topping Crucible of Chaos as the worst book I've read this year), he finally seems to be back. The book didn't pack quite the emotional punch of some of his other books, but it definitely made me want to jump up and cheer for the heroes at the end.

The other book I just finished is The Warm Hands of Ghosts by Katherine Arden. I liked her Winternight Trilogy (look it up and be prepared for some absolutely gorgeous covers, with prose to match), so I was excited to see something new from her. This book was about World War I, with some fantasy elements used for magic realism. (Portraying a soldier's struggle with addiction and PTSD through the lens of him losing his soul to the devil was a brilliant idea.) I most subsist on a steady diet of fantasy books, but this one had me hungering to read a few more historical books. I might have to pick up some books about the Halifax Explosion.

Last film I watched: I haven't watched much on my own for a while, but my friends do a movie night every Sunday. The last two times I tuned in, we watched Jesus Christ Superstar and Pokemon 3: Spell of the Unown. They were both fairly cute movies. I liked Judas's actor.

Last TV series I watched: I've been making my way through The Office for the first time. I'm on Season 3 and this happened to me, actually. There was some stuff I was like, "Wow, that was funny. I should tell my coworkers about it," but then I realized that I can't be the guy who tells his coworkers about this funny new show called The Office.

Last video game I played: If visual novels count, Umineko. I've been working my way through it slowly for about five and a half years and I'm finally closing in on the end. It's peak fiction and the greatest love story of the twentieth century. It's also funny I picked a game this insanely long for my first visual novel. Other than visual novels, I just finished Pokemon Legends: Arceus, after putting in 104 hours this year. Completing the Dex is my favourite part of any Pokemon game, so having it be more involved and include a big checklist made the game basically crack for me. I've also been casually playing some Star Wars: Battlefront II (2005) with my brother. Every time we play it, I'm always amazed by how good it is and how much content it has. I want to take command posts forever.

Last thing I googled: "Dandadan Aira". I just started the manga the other day and I like her best, so I wanted to double check her full name, I think? Other than that I'm mostly looking up when books are available at my local stores. I've been religiously checking when The Book that Broke the World will be available and I'm not even sure if I'm buying it.

Last thing I ate: A few snacks from my snack drawer. I also had a Quaker yogurt bar at work. I bought a big box of them last year, but I had to throw them out because of the Salmonella. (Chewed through a lot of them before that came out, though, including eating three on an airplane.)

Amount of sleep: Supposedly seven hours, since I went to bed right after finishing The Warm Hands of Ghosts last night. The only problem is that if I get to bed at a good time, I sleep fitfully, so I'm either sleeping poorly or sleeping well, but not getting anywhere near enough sleep.

Currently reading: I started Empire of Silence, the first book of The Sun Eater by Christopher Ruocchio, at work today. I've had the first three books sitting on my shelf for a year or two and I finally got around to starting it. (I'd resolved to do both this series and Kushiel's Legacy this year, after having both for so long, and I got that one done at the start.) I'm not very far in, but I enjoy the writing style a lot, even if a lot of the worldbuilding is obviously cribbed from Dune. (Whoa, look, mentats.) I've heard it picks up a lot in the second book, so I'm excited for what's in store for me.

Passing this on, I'll tag @somerunner @lyssq @soulsinshadow @lunawithsocks and @dancerladyaqua. (They also have currently watching and sweet, salty, or savoury as questions, which I didn't do.)

[ari-grace-the-space-case]

Movie Rambles:

I watched both Road house movies over the weekend. Starting with the jake gyllenhaal(2024) one. Which Im glad i did it that way. I wanted to go in with as little expectations as possible and make up my own mind.

The 2024 was a lot of fun, Jake played a very fun action movie lead, it was cool seeing him in that kinda role and I think his performance was solid.

I had some good laughs, the fight scenes were cool but ultimately I felt end half of the movie was pretty weak. Some things felt weridly uncharacteristic and the story beats the movie set up earlier didn't have the emotional leverage to pull it off.

The romance sublot also felt very forced and the two leads did not have any chemistry what so ever, and the main romance just came off as mean instead of playfully snarking back at his witty and aloof charm.

so overall, fun but pretty forgettable.

the 1989 version on the other hand? Excellent.

It was like enjoying an extra delightful melodramatic 1980's romance novel out of your moms collection that you definitely should not have been reading at your age.

I can only describe that the 2024 version was like roadhouse from a completely different timeline. It was kind a fascinating experiment in seeing two movies have the same concept for a plot and have very different approaches.

The new movie had 14 additional minutes and managed to tell less of a story.

They stripped out an important character and combined, what was literally a whole community in the 1989 version, into a singular character that doesn't get much depth or development.

Then stripped out a whole character in the new one that turns out to be a KEY EMOTIONAL TIPPING POINT FOR THE PROTAGONIST in the original.

Which made it click in my head why the Protagonists more serious and dramatic actions felt believable in the 1989 one, and not the 2024 one. The 2024 one had no weight to justify the actions.

Instead of a rough and tumble bar that, that, as it was looked after and cared for became bright and lively again. Watching even the location get it's own story development, the bar in the 2024 one was just posh from the get go, it had no personality and felt static.

I did appreciate how it was designed to mirror a MMA Fighting ring. That was a nice touch.

the 1989 set up it's story beats so well, everything flowed easily and the emotional weight of certain actions actually packed a punch.

Overall, 1989 Roadhouse was a lot of fun and worth watching.