Oooh. I hope the movie version of TTTW is good. I really enjoyed the book.

Franken: Yeah, it kind of was a happy ending. Except for the really freaky, freaky ending set in the modern 20th century.

Okay, and the reason I am kind of thrown off is our introduction to the world of the prestige and of Angier and Borden is through Borden's great grandson, who has always felt like he's had a twin brother but never actually did. He was adopted by another family. And he ends up meeting Angier's great-granddaughter, and without it being trite it becomes apparent that Borden and Angier's rivalry followed, inexplicably but without fail, down his line.

When their parents were fighting over the same thing, the reveal of the secret of Borden/Angier's tricks, the Angier father dares the Borden father to try the prestige machine. They get it all fired up, and Borden looks at it and says "no way." So Angier, in a fit of crazy, throws Borden's toddler son into the machine. But just as with Angier in the past, they pull the plug midway through, so that a copy of the infant--who is our first perspective in the story--is caught, frozen in time and as a child. The original was traumatized and blocked it out, until he saw his tiny younger self, which explained his feelings of "having a twin."

So you think it was disturbing *before*. But man, that was a whole other level.

Jeepers!

I've had a must/must not impulse around reading the book...and with each of SA's revelations, the pendulum swings wildly from side to side. I think I'm getting whiplash.

Heh. I'd take responsibility for them, but I rest them squarely on the author's shoulders.

I saw the book in the store today and I almost bought it. But I really want to see the movie first, because reading the book would give too much away. Hopefully, I'll be able to get to the movie this week so I can get caught up on all the whitefont before all the good discussion goes away and anything I have to say is banal and "we know that!"

Aronovsky made The Fountain old-school: without any CGI.

It's really pretty.

Aronovsky made The Fountain old-school: without any CGI.

You're fucking kidding me. Wow. I'm looking forward to it.

One of the director's first concepts for the script, Handel says, was a dramatic juxtaposition: "I remember Darren saying, 'How cool would it be to cut from a battle scene in some historical period to a man traveling alone in space for an unknown reason?'"

Okay, he sounds just like me. Hee.

Aronovsky made The Fountain old-school: without any CGI.

About time it came out! I've been waiting for it since Rachel Weisz showed up on the Daily Show with a pixie cut.

Aronofsky and Watson are planning an adaptation of Flicker, Theodore Roszak's novel about a critic who sees subliminal portents of the apocalypse in B movies.

I've read this book! Interesting choice. I'm going to love seeing them recreate the early film society days at the beginning of the book. Also the finale will be fascinating.

Oh, hey david--funny thing happened at the record store today. I got a store rec from a guy I met at the M. Ward show last night (which was one of many, many awesome things that happened that night, which included M. coming back for a *second* encore and finishing off his two-hour set by calling for a piano player from the audience; and everyone was like, uh, I don't play piano! so we were all shuffling around for a couple of minutes until even I was thinking about raising my hand, and I haven't played piano for eight years, until someone volunteered and came onstage to do the riff for M. It was great.) and checked it out today, and I was looking for the cds you had reccomended before. They didn't have any of them, and the Post-punk chronicles was sadly out of print. But he looked up the Rhino Records one for me anyway, and was like, "Left of the Dial?" And I already own that! I got it this summer! So apparently I'm in the know and I didn't even know it.

(If I were going to be a nitpicky curmudgeon about this sort of thing, I'd point out to Mr Aronofsky that his "not CGI" movie is still full of digital effects shots, unless I'm meant to believe that all the composite work was done optically. Which I don't, because the article mentions the post-house that did the digital compositing.)

(Not that I'm not looking forward to the film, because it is so pretty, but dude, it's not like you did the whole thing with optics and back-projection. The techniques you're using are distinctly not "old school.")

One of my friends has a personal grudge against Aronofsky for stealing work and making self-aggrandizing claims in the past. Apparently, his buddy and Aronofsky wrote a short together that became Aronofsky's first film, but Aronofsky refused to give the friend o' friend credit for his work because A's an auteur, even when someone helps him.