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I've been telling the entling all year that if she has free, leisure time on a school night, she must be forgetting something.

I found some time this evening to do some reading online and I was immersed in Phil Bildner's powerful account of his recent trip to back to New Orleans, LA to volunteer along with 34 high schoolers in the Lower Ninth Ward when I realized I, that myself had forgotten about a booster club meeting at the high school. Zooooommm...

Good thing we have spring break next week.

Back at Bildner's blog, I read that he is one of 120 authors who will be blogging at Pulse BlogFest. At least I will have time to read it next week.

From March 14 to March 27, 2008, Simon & Schuster is launching our first annual Pulse Blogfest -- a two-week event where more than 120 of our top teen authors and all of their fans will come together to share ideas on one single blog.

...

Each day, for fourteen days, we'll have one featured question. For each question, dozens of our authors will be posting blog entries addressing that question. You'll be able to get dozens of unique viewpoints of the same question. Each participating author will be answering anywhere from one to seven different questions throughout the event.

I noticed that with the DiR title change to The Seeker etc. etc., came a new trailer at SeektheSigns.com.

Chocolate and Vodka points out that the new trailer has also replaced the old one at YouTube.

Lo and behold, all those mean negative comments have disappeared too! The astroturf was taking hold when I last checked.




Given all the changes to the story, I think the new title should be Will's Excellent Adventure.

A commenter at IMDB's Dark is Rising entry has called for a new title to this movie. I liked the suggestion: The Fans are Bawling.

Care2 has a petition up to ask Walden to change the name of the film since it has nothing to do with the book by the same title.

Maybe in that spirit, Walden has apparently changed the title of the Dark movie. They appear to now be calling it The Seeker: The Dark is Rising.

I have been feeling so badly for Susan Cooper. It must be terrible to watch something like this happen to one of your books, even though you know that the movies are separate entities on their own. It also occurred to me though, that it might be wonderfully heartening to know there are so many people who feel so passionately and have such a loving connection with the books.

I spent some time looking at blog posts and comments about TDiR (or is is now TSTDiR?) movie and came up with a list of keywords that have been employed to describe readers' reactions. I've left of the ones that would earn this blog an "R" rating or worse.

I think the most often employed word was "cry."

One commenter used the expression "a quick toss off" which is probably accurate. I don't think Walden knew what they were stepping in when they messed with series.

Fools, fools, fools.


mangled
cry
sad
travesty
craptastic
something one of my cats puked up
shredded
completely without imagination
horrified almost to the point of muteness
brutally slaughtered
semi-literate imagination-deprived monkeys
the vomit is rising
unbelievably painful
painful, pathetic mess
Oh, twist the knife a little more, why don't you?
RIDICULOUS
dreck
a quick "toss off"
depressing departure from a well-loved story
desecration
disappointed
erase our minds
disservice they are doing to a beloved classic
heartbroken
fix it before it's too late
butchering them
mindless vandalism
I just threw up in my mouth.
wanton dismantling
I shouldn't care about this so much.
Stupid Stupid Stupid!!!!
total hash
appalling
ugh
severe disappointment
shocked and confused
disfigured and trivialized
mockery
My Gorge is Rising
The Dreck is Rising!
"Will's twin" insanity
I feel ill.
The Dark is Winning?


A fan at IMDB did have this take:

The only comfort I get out of any of this is from knowing that there are so many wonderful, intelligent, eloquent people out there who are as passionate about these books as I am. Granted, nothing that any of us do or say is likely to stop Walden Media from releasing this colossal piece of crap, but I have to hold on to the hope that someday, a true fan will make a movie that does justice to the story.

Like Sheila at Wands and Worlds , I also cannot seem to look away from this train wreck a.k.a. The Dark is Rising movie. Sheila found a side by side comparison of the differences we already know about between the book and movie. J.L Bell at Oz and Ends has more dispiriting news here and here on this travesty and reminds us of the the "originality" of fruit cart scenes.
Oh my.

I think this title, "The Dark is Sinking" and this snip from BlogCritics.org, says it all.

During filming in Bucharest, Romania there was a joke on The Dark is Rising set that only three things have been changed from the original 1973 novel: the nationality of lead character Will Stanton, changed from English to American; his age changed from 11 to 13; and everything else that happens in the story.