So I remember watching Master and Commander when it first came out, but recalled very little other than Paul Bettany walking on an island, and lots of ocean. But I've spent the last eight months or so listening to audiobooks of the Patrick O'Brian novels, so after I finished Far Side of the World (the novel on which the movie is officially based), I figured I would watch the movie again.

And I have to say, it was really enjoyable. Mostly, however, because I recognized the characters (though Billy Boyd was woefully miscast as Bonden), and because Peter Weir didn't really base the movie on Far Side of the World. That novel involves a chase around Cape Horn and into the Pacific, ending rather anticlimatically when they find the antagonists have wrecked their ship on an island; as a result, there are no great sea battles in that book, unlike most of the others.

But Weir used the framework of the book to basically include as many little tidbits from all the other books he liked. So we have big sea battles and stormy weather at sea; Maturin naming a Galapagos tortoise after Aubrey; and the "lesser of two weevils" joke; and Maturin amputating the arm of one of the "squeakers"; and Aubrey playing the trick with the lamps on the raft; and Aubrey pretending to be a whaler (which doesn't actually work because whalers have crowsnests and men of war don't). It doesn't have the ridiculous business where Maturin falls out the stern window and Aubrey jumps in after him and they end up captured by female Polynesian cannibals, thank goodness.

Anyway, the movie does do a good job of showing the cramped quarters, easy loss of life, and ridiculous amount of alcohol that characterized the Royal Navy in the early 1800s. And both Bettany and Russell Crowe are good, though their characters are somewhat different from the ones in the books (although Crowe is much closer to Aubrey than Bettany is to Maturin, who is a small, ugly, clumsy man who also happens to be a spy and a natural philosopher).

I have yet to see Avatar OR Titantc

I enjoyed Titanic for Kathy Bates and everything in the background. I was always fascinated by the Titanic story, and the romance was secondary to what I was watching for.

Oh, hey, the Catching Fire trailer is out: [link]

I LOVE the lesser of two weevils joke!

I LOVE the lesser of two weevils joke!

I love that Jack thinks it's so funny. In the books, Jack's so ridiculous in that he thinks so highly of his own wit when it's usually really labored and kind of simple. The movie, I think, doesn't quite get to that: you don't see Crowe ever being quite the doofus book!Aubrey can be, although they made a good attempt with that, and the silly Galapagos pudding.

Part of the problem is that Russell Crowe just doesn't do silly convincingly.

Oh, hey, the Catching Fire trailer is out

HA - I was just about to mention Hunger Games as a pop culture phenomenon I felt so completely overloaded by commentary and opinion on that I never bothered to check out the original thing itself. (Until I was on vacation with nothing else to read...I got through about 50 pages before I got bored. The movie was ok.)

I haven't listened to the audio on that, but watching it did make me shiver. Certain hot buttons got hit there.

I have yet to see Avatar OR Titantc

Avatar: Don't. Still annoyed, though happy I saw it solely for techno reasons. Am glad there are now occasionally GOOD movies being made with that technology (see: Hugo. And maybe Gatsby will do it well.)

Titanic: Kinda do. Surely by now the pimping and build-up has worn off a little, right, and you've incorporated just as much hate as obsession into your psyche? It's not best-movie-ever-made good, but it's really pretty, plus Kate and Leo are pretty good actors (not as good then as now, but still) so the love story sells well. I didn't like it much at the time, but I was a fifteen-year-old boy and so the swoons of my female peers did far more to turn me off than any overselling I would encounter now. But watching it now, it's enjoyable. And did I mention pretty?

I've tried to watch Titanic--it's not the hype that turns me off. The romance storyline was really unengaging for me, and I don't like real life disaster movies, so its 0 for 2.