Did you miss the part where I said \"I don\'t think this is the case\"?

Ah, now you see my power. Overlooking the obvious.

The Huffington Post has a fun post trying to recruit people to watch BSG. The comments are rather entertaining, as well (the original post made the mistake of claiming that SF was poorly written, and he gets a lot of SF readers defending the quality of the genre, as well as a few die-hard original BSG fans deriding this version).

Thanks, again, Kalshane! I appreciate your indulgence.

Not a problem. I'm a big fan of the books (Jim Butcher refers to them self-awarely as "Popcorn" but they're very good popcorn, IMO.) and enjoy sharing.

Also, I lied. I just bought the first book.

Cool. It starts off a little slow, since it's got to do the whole world-building thing, but it picks up. I would say book three is where Butcher really hits his stride, but then I absolutely love the character of Michael and that's the book he's introduced in.

Fair warning, there are huge differences between the books and the TV series, though the basic concepts are still pretty much the same.

Kalshane, my library handed me up one of the middle books: Dead Beat--should I bother reading it now, or hold out and do them in order?

Dead Beat is book 7 of 8 out so far (9 will be out this Spring.) It's one of the best in the series, but the opening directly references the big reveal in book 6. I think it would be an enjoyable read, even for someone unfamiliar with the series, but it does directly refer to events that were surprises earlier in the series. So it would depend on how spoiler-phobic one is in regards to their reading material.

ETA: There's also a reveal in Dead Beat that doesn't have as much of an impact as it would if one had read books 5 and 6 (5 in particular).

7 is really far on. I'll return it and try and start at the beginning.

Well, the library system was missing 1 through 6, so so much for that brilliant idea. They have submitted those titles as suggestions to ordering, but who knows?

I went to Wikipedia to check the titles, and was led to this from Jim Butcher about casting:

I'm sure that many have already heard this one, but it's official: Paul Blackthorne is Dresden. :)

James [Marsters] would have loved to do the part, but he was unwilling to head to Toronto for five years: he has family growing up in and around LA, and he didn't want to relocate away from them. It takes a great deal of personal integrity (and considerable wisdom) to realize which things in life are /really/ important. A lot of men wouldn't have made the same decision when offered the temptation of a feature role, quite possibly leading to an ongoing, starring role as the absolute, uncontested core star of a show.

Ironically, James' decision in this makes him, at least in my eyes, more Harry-like than ever, and kicks my respect for him up several notches. I'm disappointed--not that he made that decision, which I think is the right one--but that things just didn't work out. That's how business goes sometimes. There are no hard feelings on anyone's side. If the movie goes to a series, though, maybe he could be talked into a guest spot. I can think of several characters, who, if used, James would be great for.

Mr. Blackthorne, according to all reports I've heard, is an extremely skilled actor with great presence, and able to do "dark" sorts of scenes and emotions very well. I think he looks remarkably like Connery when he was in "Darby O'Gill and the Little People." You could do worse than a quasi-Connery for a lead actor. :) With luck, I'll get a chance to visit the set and meet some of the people working on the movie, and give you guys some inside skinny when I return. :)

Now see, I'm glad Marsters didn't take the part. He would've been lovely, of course, but I'm afraid I wouldn't have been able to see Dresden for Spike. At least at first; Marsters could have sold me, I'm sure, but for the first couple episodes I would have been kept out of the story by watching the differences in the two characters. Also, I wouldn't have been introduced to Blackstone, whom I'd never seen before.

If Marsters gets a guest spot sometime, though, that would be great.

Yeah, Marsters was a fan-favorite because he does the audio books for The Dresden Files.

I haven't listened to any of the books, so I can't vouch how good of a job James does, but I'm personally happy with Blackthorne. He looks a little older and thinner up top than the Harry in my head, but otherwise fits him spot-on physically and his facial expressions are perfect. His delivery seems a little off, but I'm willing to chalk a lot of that up to trying to speak with an American accent.

ETA: With Marsters there'd probably be Spike-disconnect, as well. Not to mention the lack of physical simularities between Marsters and the character.

After Blackthorne was cast, but back when Bob was still going to be in the skull, and then later when he was supposed to be a skull-shaped image in Harry's fireplace, the fans were hoping that James could play Bob, since VO-work wouldn't neccessarily require him to move to Toronto. That, I think he would have done a great job with.