Lucas Blogs About Books

Huh, I guess the library lost the Criterion Collection booklet. Wait a minute, this is the last Monday of the month, shouldn't this be Whan That Augustus ? It should, but you may recall that A Year of Unfortunate Events started to feel like a homework assignment after awhile. You may have complained about that at some point. I did. And since I'm taking a month off from The Canterbury Tales  I thought we could talk about A  Canterbury Tale instead.   So this is gonna be like that time when you talked about A Knight's Tale  last month? This is gonna be like that. Did a lot of people read that one? Nope! You know, I can't say as I'd heard of A Canterbury Tale  before. I'd heard of it, but I'd never seen it before. So let's talk about it. I'm game. A Canterbury Tale was written, directed, and produced by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger (aka The Archers ) during WWII. It's a mystery in small town, but describing it that way...

Hold the phone! Now give the phone to me. That's not a book! Wait a minute! A Knight's Tale  isn't that that cheesy jousting movie with anachronistic music? Well, first two things: 1) yes, and B) to be fair, since it takes place in Chaucer's lifetime and all the characters speak Modern English, it's also presented in an anachronistic language. Well, yeah, but— Also, why do people get so worked up about the anachronisms in the movie as if that were some sort of gotcha. As if the use of anachronistic music was an accident instead of an intentional choice. It's more that I think it's a bad choice. Whatever, a couple months ago I blogged about " The Knight's Tale " so I thought that it would be fun to blog about A   Knight's Tale . Okay. So what do you have to say about the movie. It's good. It's a fun movie. Do you have anything else to say? Uh . . . sure. Go on. All right, so we'll start with a quick sy...

Hey! Have you ever thought you could tell a story than its creators? I know I have. I am Lucas's Unbridled Hubris! I know I've spent a lot of time writing about Earthsea this year . That's partly because I first read the series this year and possess the zeal of a new convert. BT-Dubs, have you heard the good news about Ged, also known as Sparrowhawk, formerly the Archmage of Roke? In any case, how can I put this diplomatically? Both of the major Earthsea adaptations kinda suck. It was recently announced that A24 is developing a new miniseries with Jennifer Fox (whose work I am not familiar with) as a showrunner. And it turns out that Fox received Ursula K. Le Guin's blessing before her death in 2018. Now, you might say, "But, Lucas, Hallmark and Studio Ghibli also had Le Guin's blessing going into production, and both of their adaptations were disappointing at best." And you would be correct. However, I'll reserve judgment on this new adapt...