Futility Now

This is probably the sweetest ice cream that I have ever eaten. There’s something kind of admirable about it in theory, but in practice it’s actually kind of gross.

So I think I’ve been tagged to write about Broder (and I will), but I also wanted to talk about the difference in tone between the book and film versions of Let the Right One In.

FWIW: “Spoiler warning,” as the kids say. If you’re the type for whom the plot is central to your appreciation of a work, you may want to go back to the 19th. Century. Furthermore, if this is true of you and you haven’t read or seen Let the Right One In you may want to avoid this post.

It should not surprise anybody that many details of the novel Let the Right One In were dropped for the film version. In fact, there are many reasons to be glad that they were. In an age where people feel like we need 2+ hours to understand the finer points of fucking Iron Man, a film that tells a complete story while letting itself in at under that 2 hour mark is a feat in itself.

Snideness aside, the trimming was well done and, I think, fairly symmetrical. Also, you will note that while all flashbacks were omitted, there were a couple of brief flashes, confusing if you haven’t read the book (which I hadn’t when I saw the movie), that acknowledge the events from those flashbacks.

In contrast to this, none of the episodes from Hakan’s (sorry, not going to go looking for the right escape code) past get any reference at all. In the absence of further information, it is easy to get the impression that Hakan started his life as a guy just like Oskar, and, by extension, that Oskar will one day be just like Hakan. Hazel and I both left the theater with this impression, and even if it were not the original intention of the film maker, it must have been accepted at some point.

I’m pretty sure that this makes the movie superior to the book. While the book is full of gruesome details, and many of the characters are substantially less likable, it still ends with a restoration of moral order. By contrast, the end of the film is incredibly bleak in a way that I found very moving. I think that it showed a little more courage (although it really took a dive on adhering to the fat-people-can’t-be-protagonists rule.)

I have been reading Lovecraft on Wikisource. At some point early in this endeavor (before I had put 2 and 2 together to realize that Wikisource’s URLs would be just like Wikipedia’s) I tried to search for “wikisource lovecraft” in Firefox’s built-in search bar. As you may or may not know, the FF search bar tries to offer helpful suggestions once you start typing text into it. Once you get to about “wikis” it has suggested “wikisource,” which is pretty much par for the course, but the second suggestion is “wikisource catullus.”

Now I know that this probably (which is to say, almost certainly) means that most people who go to Wikisource are taking a Latin class, but deep down I’d like to think the world is full of people seeking the most venal and lurid pornography that antiquity has to offer.

I think that any right-thinking person can see clearly that the aura of sleaze and degradation that a Polaroid can add to almost any image is truly beautiful. In order to make the most of this, we have decided to create a Polaroid wall, which we will populate with specimens that we (in our totally unbiased opinions, of course) find particularly charming.

Speaking of particularly charming, the backing for this is covered in Tyvek, arguably the world’s most perfect substance.

Our plan is to keep adding images until the whole thing is full, at which point new images will have to be weighed against the existing ones and found superior in order to gain a place. If the cost of Polaroid film doesn’t bankrupt us, we’ll keep you posted.

UPDATE: Replaced the obvious pop-song reference with a totally obtuse one.