The power of three

[fajrdrako]

I went again to Daily Zen and today's question is: What are your 3 favorite movies? Books?

This is a variation on some things I have recently discussed, but narrowing it to three... well. That's difficult.

Movies

1. The Lord of the Rings (2001/2002) (If you make me pick just one of the trilogy, I'll pickThe Two Towers.)

2. Casablanca (1942)

3. The Lion in Winter (1968)

Why? because they are all about wonderful, complex people, and how these people shape the world they live in by heroic action, though they do not see themselves as heroes.



Books

1. The Game of Kings by Dorothy Dunnett

2. Shards of Honor by Lois McMaster Bujold

3. The Silver Pigs by Lindsey Davis

Because these writers write evocative, gripping, emotive and exciting stories that still have something to say about human psychology, history, and the human spirit. They understand how to use language to create worlds that reach beyond the page.

Comments

[moonchildetoo.livejournal.com]

I love The Lion in Winter not only for O'Toole's Henry, but also for Hopkins' Richard (his first screen role) and the then-beautiful John Castle's Geoffrey, as well as Dalton's Dauphin. Such intense young actors portraying such intense characters...and historical slash along with it - how can you lose?! Forget Richard and (gaack!) John, my vote goes to poor Geoffrey. As for Eleanor - the Real Thing was undoubtedly fascinating, but I'm not a KH fan.

Silver Pigs - yes! I loved that book - yet somehow, the rest of the books disappointed me. I'm not sure what there was about Pigs which grabbed me while the others started to, and then eventually did, lose me. I think it may have had more history, or more historical detail, than the others...or maybe it was just that it was set in Roman Britain rather than Rome. I dunno. But I was never so enchanted with Falco & Helena as in Pigs.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Geoffrey was wonderful, but I'm not sure there was a weak performance in the crowd. I love Katherine Hepburn and felt she shone as Eleanor. Now, almost none of the roles is as I see the historical personages - O'Toole's Henry would be closest, Philip Augustus coming seconf - but that's irrelevant. What a great movie, especially when most historical movies are fairly silly and not the least bit historical, along the lines of "A Knight's Tale" or "Rowing With the Wind". Horatio Hornblower of course is one of the wonderful exceptions - I think most of the good exception are adaptations of novels rather than original movies. Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Anthony Trollope, that sort of thing.

And the young kingly Timothy Dalton - what a treat!

I agree about Silver Pigs. None of the following books had the strength or power of that one; I continued to find Falco charming and Helena Justina delightful (one of the better women in fiction, IMHO), but the stories were flat and contrived and increasingly comic. So I bailed somewhere around "Last Act in Palmyra". I think it's a case where the author used all her best ideas up in the first novel and what was left for the others is all epilogue. They are good compared to many other novels out there, but not in their own right, and not compared to the first novel.

"Silver Pigs" was magnificent.

Re:

[moonchildetoo.livejournal.com]

Yes, HJ is very kewl. My heroine, to put up with Falco! I tend to appreciate Falco's family more than I'm drawn to him personally. Interestingly, I've heard other people say what you do about Davis - that after X number of books the good stuff peters out... It's disappointing when that happens with a series and author you start out liking.

I'm addicted to British-made film adaptations of historical novels.... I think I'd watch just about any of them...and I hope there's a neverending supply.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I don't expect the supply is 'neverending' but there are certainly a lot of good books which haven't been done, or haven't been done properly. I'd love to see someone really good adapt the Georgette Heyer novels, for example. (Or just one of them!) Funny how "Frankenstein" has had so many adaptations, and other works are ignored!

I'd like to see a good new remake of "A Tale of Two Cities", too.