By: moonrat,
on 4/21/2010
Via my dear friend Kelly, this most excellent link to the fan discussion of who you would cast if there were to be a Wheel of Time movie (series, obviously).
PLEASE leave me your casting suggestions :)
By: moonrat,
on 3/12/2010
My brother found this guy's blog. Check out his incredible trading card-style renditions of WoT characters. These are better than any others I've ever seen, including the official ones.
He also did some alternate covers. Sweet. (That's a dork joke. The original cover designer's name is Darrell K Sweet. But I think these covers are super sweet.)
Ok. That's probably enough rabid fanism for today.
By: moonrat,
on 11/12/2009
So as everyone clearly already knows, on Monday night, Dadrat truckled up to New York (took the day off to do it, too) to sit all afternoon in the Union Square Barnes & Noble so we would have seats for the Brandon Sanderson/Gathering Storm event.
For those who aren't tired of my personal story, I read Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time--well, the first 7 books, all that had been published at that point--for the first time when I was 12. My dad had brought them home and was probably a little peeved when he starting having to compete with me over custody of a given book at a given time, but he never let on (it would only get worse when my brother and sister would also become obsessed). When Robert Jordan died tragically in 2007 without completing the 12th and final book in the series, my poor father went into occlusion. Hope and order was restored to the world (partially, at least) when it was announced that Brandon Sanderson would be completing the series with the aid of Harriet McDougal, Jordan's widow and amanuensis--not to mention editor--hence the rather feverish anticipation with which he sat at BNN warming second-row front-n-center seats for three and a half hours before the event started.
Rather than having Harriet read very much--too many spoilers--Brandon talked mostly about how he came to be the one to finish the series. There was bound to be scepticism toward anyone taking up the project, but Brandon definitely won us over--he might actually be a bigger WoT geek than my dad. For a man who's really had a major break in his career with this, Brandon's beginnings were modest and inspiring. He wrote 13 books before he got his first book published.
("You should blog about that," Dadrat said. "Your people will want to know that.")
Just in case anyone was waiting for a report.
Oh, ps, whoever the genius people in the Tor marketing department are thought of creating and giving out bumper sticker. Mine says "I killed Asmodean," but I could have gotten one that said "Bela is a darkfriend" instead. It makes me want to go out and learn to drive so I can buy a car to put the bumper sticker on.
By: moonrat,
on 10/27/2009
Here's Harriet talking to Brandon about how he got assigned to write the conclusion. Apparently, he came to her house and she asked him if he wanted some dinner. He was like, "No, I want to know how it ends. How it ends, and who killed Asmodean!" Attaboy.
The Gathering Storm! Today! I'm not sure I'm going to buy one right now, though. I think I'm going to wait until Brandon is signing in NY on November 9.
By: moonrat,
on 9/18/2009
On page 549 of The Dragon Reborn (the third book in The Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan), one [male] character says this to another:
"Any fool knows men and women think differently at times, but the biggest difference is this. Men forget, but never forgive. Women forgive, but never forget."
By: moonrat,
on 8/30/2009
Hi, my name is Moonrat, and I am addicted to The Wheel of Time.
I had racked up a good 12 years of Wheel of Time sobriety--minus a mini-relapse in 2003, when I confess I reread books 1 and 2 but stopped myself there. But I'm afraid I've fallen off the bandwagon, good and hard this time.
Furthermore, my home environment is not conducive to recovery from this dreadful disease. My entire nuclear family, minus Momrat (who sniffs contemptuously at all things epic fantasy), is reading or rereading it with me. Right now, it's a competition of who gets to Book 4 (The Shadow Rising, obvi) first. And I am sorely behind, as I am the only one who doesn't own book 2! No more waiting for my brother or sister to finish--I must get my own copy and plow ahead!!
Now here's the thing about reading, in general. I read a lot (maybe you guessed?). And I've always felt I derived great cerebral pleasure from reading high-minded books I could brag about later, hoity-toity inaccessible classics and literary masterpieces that the New Yorker writes about. Or whatever.
But. BUT. The Wheel of Time is not like that (and this is something I'd forgotten in the last 12 years). The Wheel of Time is something I'm literally dying to read, desperate to read, sitting all day at my desk editing furiously so the time between now and 6:30 pm might come sooner! So that I can scurry home and flop on my bed and read until midnight, then wake up at 6:30 the next morning and squeeze in another two hours of reading before I have to leave for work! (Bathing be damned!)
Oh, the tragedy, the passion, the human drama! With the magic and the wars and yeah, some occasional crappy writing, but for the most part nothing so bad I can't turn off the inner editor saying, "Eek, maybe you should strike this para?" I am SUBMERGED. Nothing else matters anymore; nothing!
I know I'm not alone. This is a friendly forum here--you can trust and come forward. (Haters of WoT will be lovingly mocked, as you have lovingly mocked us in the past!)
By: moonrat,
on 3/30/2009
A Memory of Light--the desperately long-awaited supposed last volume in Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series--is going to be published in three different volumes over the course of two years.
Author Brandon Sanderson (who is finishing the series for the late Robert Jordan) explains why. If only he weren't so persuasive! And cute. It's hard to stay mad at him.
By: moonrat,
on 6/3/2008
Brandon Sanderson, the exuberant and award-winning young author who was tapped to write Book 12 of the... um... cornerstone fantasy series THE WHEEL OF TIME (tying up loose ends fothe author, Robert Jordan, who passed away in September), has started a blog about his thoughts during the writing process.
Thanks, Dad, for forwarding this tidbit.
For other [recovering] WOT addicts like myself, the blog is of extraordinary interest. Sanderson has taken his project very seriously (not that there's not a gigantic amount of pressure on him from literally millions of literally rabid fans all waiting for him to put one foot down on shakey soil). I've never read any of Sanderson's books, although they have received the highest critical praise, but from reading his blog he seems--dare I say it?--maybe more qualified to write that 12th book than Robert Jordan himself was.
Anyway. Interesting circumstances, interesting playout. I may actually go back and start rereading this summer in preparation. Maybe. There are actually 13 books in my TBR stack against my bed at the moment. Can I add another 11? Hmm.
By: Jessamyn West,
on 12/20/2007
One of the things I tell people in my 2.0 talks is that the digital divide is becoming about much more than people who have computers/email/web sites and people who don’t. The difference, to me, is people who have folded the web into their day to day lives and those who haven’t. This matters for a few reasons. As I have said before, I think it’s anyone’s personal choice whether they want to use a computer recreationally or not. However as more and more of our government’s services are available either primarily or most easily online, being able to at least navigate the online world becomes important, if not mission critical.
I’ve often thought that I should do a program on “The life of a 2.0-pian” (pretty sure I’ve seen that before) where I outline the many ways in which being able to use the web as another resource makes my life simpler, easier and saves me money. Here is the example that came to mind this week. As some background, when I worked at a public library of medium size, when we needed supplies we had two main choices, possibly three. 1) buy the supply from the Big Catalog 2) send the systems librarian out to Staples to buy the item 3) get the supply ourselves on the way to work (on our own time) and get reimbursed. While I am not one of those “My tax dollars at work!” people, I have to note that this process was rarely cost- or time-efficient for anyone involved except, sometimes, the accountant.
In any case, I was printing out holiday cards this week — I have a group of online friends who swap cards every year, I do not normally do a holiday card thing — and ran out of printer ink. As you know, printer ink is one of those notoriously overpriced items and if it’s something you buy often it’s best to have an angle. The ink I need at Staples is $20. At my local office supply store it is $27. My angle is a price comparison site called dealink.com which lets me search competing ink prices. They told me I could get it for $18.50 shipped, HP brand ink, no knock-offs. That was pretty good. Then I headed over to my favorite coupon site, RetailMeNot to see if they had any online coupons for DataBazaar which had the lowest ink prices. They did. I hope you are noticing that I can link to all these things. I can’t link to the ink page at Staples.com. So, I got an extra $5 off if I bought three (I needed a few anyhow) making my total $48.85, delivered to my door, for three ink cartridges for my photo printer.
So, the reason this matters and why I’m putting this on a libraran-oriented blog is that first, we tend to not buy things this way where I am, in libraries or elsewhere. Getting to Staples from my house takes at least 90 minutes round trip and $5 worth of gasoline and yet we still sometimes act like buying things online is somehow risky or uncharted territory. What’s risky for me is getting on the highway this time of year, to say nothing about the time I’d have to take off from work when there’s work do be done. Second, this is the type of efficency that 2.0 stuff gets us. A computer can compare prices. A computer can stockpile and share coupons. A computer can show me a photo of an item so I can see if it’s the one I want. Letting the computer do these parts of the shopping-for-supplies experience that is one of the less fun parts of librarianship leaves our bodies and big old brains free for doing what a computer can’t do like helping someone navigate their first email account, or doing a storytime puppet show, or having a book group discussion or forgiving someone’s library fines because it’s the holidays or making a book display about the Solstice.
Working on the web isn’t just about collecting real and/or imaginary friends and new interactive ways of sharing photos of your cat, it’s also about saving real time and real money so that you can do real things in your offline world. That’s my twopointopia report, over and out.
This isn't a casting decision. But my perfect WoT scenario is a television series directed by J.J. Abrams.
P.S. if I see another suggestion of Vigo Mortensen cast as Lan I'm going to go postal. Lan and Aragorn are not similar characters.
I don't think a movie could cut it. The books are just too long and I would get angry at everything that is cut out.
Plus middle america would freak over Ran with 3 wives. I just don't see it happening.
That site is casting OLD people too....the main characters are young and all those wtih the POWER don't really age. I see them stopping the aging process around 20-something.
Mark--that is absolutely true. However, his coloring is correct. (I picture Lan brawnier than Viggo, but...)
Tanya--yeah, I guess the average character age IS about 19. Ha.
I need to think on this carefully. I posted it here in hopes that other people would think on it for me :)
I started reading this series when I was a kid, and now all the people I used to think perfect for the roles have grown up!
@Tanya, Rand doesn't have three *wives* (yet). He's just with whomever he's with at the moment. (For the sake of TV, I think that part would play perfectly in America. He's practically a soap opera all by himself.)
Completely concur that Lan is bigger and brawnier than Mortensen. (And also I can't quite get over the fact that Mortensen said he didn't even know about The Lord of the Rings when they first called him; his geek son had to encourage him to take the role of Aragorn.)
I used to play this game at home all the time. But it was so long ago that Angelina Jolie was in the frame for the borderline-dominatrix parts not the multiple-mum ones :)
Still, at least that meant the LOTR movies hadn't come out yet!
An HBO miniseries would be perfect. There is so much that could be cut! Anyone that doesn't think so is crazy if you'd want to watch political discussions and tertiary characters doing very little of import. That works in a bazillion page novel, but not on screen. That said!
Casting would be difficult. I'd love to see a bunch of unknowns, but for the sake of this discussion I would go thusly:
Tam: Liam Neeson (he's tall and a badass and he'd just be perfect)
Rand: Josh Hartnett (heart throb and he's a good actor and he's tall at 6'3")
Perrin: Not sure
Mat: Not sure... maybe Jake Gyllenhaal
Lan: Christian Bale (He's big, burly, stoney faced and physical. Age him up a little and he'd rock it)
That's three-ish...
Egwene: Natalie Portman
Aviendha: Olga Kurylenko
That's all I got for now...
Ooh! Fun! I really like Steve Buscemi as Padan Fain. Casting the Aes Sedia is tricky with their ages - they need to be old enough to have that Aes Sedai wisdom but young enough to have that youthful face... not sure how that would work on screen.
@ Kerry - Matt Smith (the latest Doctor Who) is a good example of a youthful actor who can play old and wise with a young face.... unfortunately women don't tend to get such complex parts, so it's a lot harder to think of someone comparable. (Not to mention the whole how-to-ruin-your-career-with-Botox argument.) Wonder if you'd actually get better Aes Sedai by looking outside the US/UK...?