‘The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug’ Release Day
Monthly Archives: December 2013
Sesame Street Does Lord of the Rings
In honor of it being Hobbit release week, I give you Sesame Street’s Lord of the Rings parody. It is entitled ‘Lord of the Crumbs.’ It is pretty great.
Casting ‘The Name Of The Wind’ TV Adaptation
With little to no news lately on the release of Patrick Rothfuss’ final ‘Kingkiller Chronicle’ book (although this week he did some funny commentary on goodreads reviews of the unreleased novel), I thought it would be fun to revisit some of the cast ideas for the upcoming TV adaptation. It was announced a few months ago that Rothfuss’ popular fantasy series would receive the television treatment a la Game of Thrones and a few sites including Buzzfeed posted their ideal cast list for the show.
A lot of Buzzfeed’s proposed cast for ‘The Name of the Wind’ are vastly different than what I imagined, but they still look like they would fit the characters well. Bill Nighy in anything as anything is always great, but I’m sure he would be especially great as the Chronicler. Eddie Redmayne (pictured above) feels like he could manage as Kvothe, but I’d be curious as to what era Kvothe he’d play. Chris O’Dowd as Manet and Idris Elba as Kilvin sound about right, but truthfully I’d endorse them even if they didn’t fit.
In Tor’s ideal cast list, they have Tom Hiddleston as Kvothe, which honestly seems to fit a little better in my mind than Eddie Redmayne. Hiddleston could really shine as Kvothe, especially when called upon to convey a great underlying sorrow to the character. And I’m sure we could find a role to shove Benedict Cumberbatch in while we’re at it. Either way, be sure to check out the full fantasy cast lists at Buzzfeed, Tor and even Rothfuss himself chiming in over at his blog.
This Week’s Writing Links: 2013 ‘Best of’ List Edition
It’s that time of year again when “Best of” lists litter the internet and fill our Amazon carts with prospective purchases that will probably never leave the save for later section (I think my actually order to place in cart rate is like 14% retention, which has to be pretty good all things considered).
Amongst the early best of lists reporting in, we have Storyville’s Top Ten Best Short Stories of All Time, Goodreads Best of Fiction Awards, the New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2013 and Film.com’s video countdown of the 25 Best Movies of 2013.
In other news, I hope NaNoWriMo went well for everyone that participated. Even if you didn’t finish an entire novel, I’m sure there is half a book, a chapter, a paragraph, even a single sentence that you wrote that made it worth it. Good job, NaNoWriMoers. And of course, it was very sad to hear about Nelson Mandela’s passing. At the age of ninety five it is hard to argue that he lived anything other than a full life, even if a good portion of it was robbed from him. RIP, Mr. Mandela.
Links:
– Nelson Mandela on The Nature of Hatred (gnosticwarrior)
– Goodreads Best Books of 2013 (goodreads)
– The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug Video Diary (ign)
– Patrick Rothfuss Reviews Neil Gaiman’s ‘The Ocean At The End of the Lane’ (goodreads)
– 15 Powerful Insights From Slaughterhouse Five (inktank)
– Top Ten Best Short Stories Ever (litreactor)
– Today’s Quotable Quote From Raylan Givens (imgur)
– 13 Great Opening Lines From 1950s Novels (whizzpast)
– NPR’s Best Books of 2013 (npr)
– Film.com’s Video Countdown of The 25 Best Movies of 2013 (film)
– Guardian’s Best Books of The Year (guardian)
– NY Times 100 Notable Books of 2013 (nytimes)