| Author | Message | ||
     Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.232.199.129 |
For some reason, I started thinking about this the other day. I consider myself very fortunate in that I read widely from a young age. I loved to immerse myself in fiction, to exercise my imagination. In this day and age of glossy special effects in film and TV, I reckon that you still can't beat the 'special effects' produced by your own imagination. A good writer can do far more on the page than any special effects designer can do on screen - so long as the reader has the imagination to create their own mind-blowing mental image of what's going on. It seems very sad to me that youngsters aren't reading much any more, but relying on the 'quick fix' of on-screen special effects rather than using (and developing) their imaginations. What do you folks think? Is a good book, and the use of the reader's imagination, far better than anything that could be achieved on-screen? Are today's youngsters - without exercising their imaginations - going to be all the poorer for this lack of imagination? In fact, is society going to be poorer when it consists of people with little/no imagination? Lots of questions for the New Year for you!  | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
Yes. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.143.98.68 |
Yes. | ||
| John Forth (John) Username: John Registered: 05-2008 Posted From: 82.24.1.217 |
It depends on the quality of whatever it is they're reading/viewing. For example, I'd rather watch the film of JAWS than read the book. To take it to extremes, I'd sooner direct someone to a half-decent TV drama than suggest they read a Barbara Cartland novel. There's no absolute answer to this question. | ||
| Paul_finch (Paul_finch) Username: Paul_finch Registered: 11-2009 Posted From: 92.9.16.50 |
I agree, John. There have been a lot of crap movies made. But there have also been a lot of crap novels published. | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.232.199.129 |
I dunno, I think I'd rather someone was reading a Barbara Cartland novel than not reading at all! The point I'm trying to make is the one about exercising one's imagination - it's my theory that we're all the poorer for having it all given to us on a plate and not having to exercise our imaginations any more. Perhaps the day after the night before (ie. New Year's Day) isn't the best time for me to ask for deep deliberations on the topic!  | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.118.76.97 |
we're all the poorer for having it all given to us on a plate and not having to exercise our imaginations any more Agreed. The same thing applies to video clips: I'd rather make up my own mind as to what a certain song's lyrics are about. Also, when you've watched a video clip a number of times you'll 'see' its images even when you hear the song on the radio. So the imagination is curtailed. | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.232.199.129 |
Hey, I hadn't thought of that one before, Hubert. I grew up in the age before MTV and music videos. It makes me wonder if I'd have felt differently about the songs I grew up with and loved if they'd had accompanying videos. Interesting thought. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.143.98.68 |
Relevant to this, I hope, this is what I wrote just a few days ago in my latest RTR (the one about Black Static #20): You see, only words can convey horror. Visuals - even with, or despite, today’s CGI effects - are certainly not in the same game. When words in fiction come together at their optimum (by design or serendipity), the nightmares are real, with new feelings injected straight into the brain forever via some indefinite sense that the reading of words facilitates and that watching or seeing never can. These ‘word-worried’ feelings are not forgotten, as a film of feelings often is forgotten when you walk home from the cinema or remove the DVD. And here, in these five tales, we have words unintentionally aimed from five separately independent angles of authorial attack. A mighty catapulting of serious demonic, eruptive forces that, with some quieter, darker moments, threaten your sanity and sleepfulness. It is up to you to channel those forces. But rely on no drugs to protect you. | ||
| John Forth (John) Username: John Registered: 05-2008 Posted From: 82.24.1.217 |
I dunno, I think I'd rather someone was reading a Barbara Cartland novel than not reading at all! I've never really subscribed to that point of view, Caroline. Nor to do I believe that films can't exercise the imagination the way a book can. To give an example, I re-watched ALIEN on blu-ray the other night. At the same time, I have been reading one of Iain Banks' sci-fi novels. Both are entertainments that I would class within the good-to-great bracket. However, ALIEN - through a marriage of an economic script, inspired set-design, and a willingness not to over-explain its mysteries - fired up my imagination (in terms of the creature's motives, the background of the crashed derelict script etc) more than Banks' immaculately conceived and described world ever has. Similarly, I can't agree with Des' post above. If it's done well, the sensation imparted by a work of fiction - regardless of the medium - will stay with you. The terror of the thing banging on the door in THE HAUNTING, for example, stays with me a lot more many of the images from the source novel. And it's been a long, long time since I've read a scare anywhere near as terrifying as the climax of RINGU. Of course, when it all comes down to it - it's a matter of taste. Everyone has their own preferences. But, for me at least, no single medium wins clearly over the others. And a bad book is as much of a retardant to the imagination as a bad film or TV series. | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.232.199.129 |
Points taken, John - that's the kind of discussion/statement of different viewpoints I was hoping for. But the examples you cite from film aren't special effect-heavy though. So I think that still raises the concern that, where it's all spelled out for the viewer in graphic detail, it doesn't exercise the imagination enough. In fact, I guess that's true of books too? Des - I honestly hadn't read your Black Static RTR so I didn't know you'd written that only a few days ago. It just about sums up what I'm getting at, I think. Do you and I have some kind of weird telepathic link, perhaps? (quite a scary thought, that!  ) | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Weirdly coincidental, Caroline, because I was worrying the other day that (despite the very presence on Earth of Stevie Walsh ) I read too much! I was scanning the books in my place and it struck me with horror just HOW many books I've read... and there's books in boxes I've read, I couldn't at the moment see... and books I don't even own, that I've yet read... and what I still WANT to read seems endless!... it filled me with horror, realizing all this.... Does the sheer amount others here have read ever disturb you, too? ("you," referring to the others, not you specifically, Caroline - though feel free to be disturbed too at how much others have read, if you'd like!) I agree with John, it's hard to simply separate films from literature, and making summary judgments about quality. Me, sure, I think so many more books than films are finer... but then, books have had a, what, 3000 or so years head start.... | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.31.202.102 |
Let's just expect and demand excellence in all forms of media. Books do things films can't do, and films do things books can't do. Incidentally, before we get too carried away with the 'only readers have imagination', it's worth remembering that far better men and women than any of us have lived, and that some of these are folk who have never read a novel or seen a film. We owe a lot of them - at the very least - our forms of thought. | ||
| John Forth (John) Username: John Registered: 05-2008 Posted From: 82.24.1.217 |
But the examples you cite from film aren't special effect-heavy though. So I think that still raises the concern that, where it's all spelled out for the viewer in graphic detail, it doesn't exercise the imagination enough. In fact, I guess that's true of books too? That's a slightly different point, I think, but one that I agree with - both in book and film. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.31.202.102 |
The other thing I think Caroline's question presupposes is the latter-day primacy of the visual sense above all others. If we ask whether films can engage the imagination in other ways than what we see in our minds, then films can be every bit as satisfying/stimulating. As a source of sustenance for the mind, I'd take the movies-in-effect plays of Shakespeare above any novel. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
As a source of sustenance for the mind, I'd take the movies-in-effect plays of Shakespeare above any novel. Yes, Gary! And which brings up the point too, that the novel - okay, it's sorta always been around in various forms - but as we mostly know it, it dates from roughly the time of Shakespeare as well. Let's just give it a round 500 years. The visual performance, plays: we know how old those are. Poetry, oral epics: those too. One could make an argument that movies and TV are a RETURN (though in different form) to the more classical, established, normal mode of storytelling.... | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.232.199.129 |
Of course, before all that it was simply oral storytelling - people telling each other stories which had been handed down (but not written down) through the generations. Now that REALLY took imagination. Craig - I'm often very disturbed by how much others have read in comparison with me! | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Caroline, here's some New Year's news, that is tangentially relevant (just the top paragraph): http://www.deadline.com/2010/12/in-other-new-years-eve-news/ Borders is a giant bookstore out here in the U.S., and it's apparently teetering like the Titanic. It's disturbing to see one near here, go through its liquidation: a gigantic beautiful store, shrinking ignominiously every time I go in.... | ||
| John Forth (John) Username: John Registered: 05-2008 Posted From: 82.24.1.217 |
We lost all of our Borders earlier this year, Craig. They were massive here for a while too, but no longer. | ||
| Stu (Stu) Username: Stu Registered: 04-2008 Posted From: 213.81.119.240 |
Just read comics. You get words and pictures at the same time. | ||
| Tom_alaerts (Tom_alaerts) Username: Tom_alaerts Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.176.230.104 |
Just read comics. You get words and pictures at the same time. And if you read manga, then something peculiar can happen when they are well done: action scenes with few words spread with movie-like edits over 30 pages. You have to read this quickly and it is as if the images start moving. Case in point, several scenes in the modern classic that is Akira. | ||
| Mbfg (Mbfg) Username: Mbfg Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 92.11.148.115 |
As a general rule I always prefer the book. The one, big exception is the old b/w "Moby Dick" (with the magnificent Gregory Peck as Ahab) which is essentially the first 100 and last 100 pages of Melville's swollen, bloated sometimes biblical in its strangeness and wonder and as many times tedious beyond description, novel. The film is a tour de force of power and atmosphere which has stayed with me ever since I first watched it as a kid. Also the Henry Fonda "The Grapes of Wrath" is as much a masterpiece of film as an absolute milestone of literature (it is my favourite of favourite novels). "The Cruel Sea" is both a magnificent novel and film (well, any film starring Jack Hawkins is okay with me). Also "A Night to Remember" has the power to move me every bit as much as the book (and a million times more than James Cameron's wasted opportunity). And "Sideways", great little film of a great little novel. I'll stop there. Cheers Terry | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.182.24.98 |
I preferred ANGEL HEART to Hjortsberg's Falling Angel, but usually I prefer to read. | ||
| Tom_alaerts (Tom_alaerts) Username: Tom_alaerts Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.176.209.194 |
I preferred some adaptations over the book: - The unbearable lightness of being (book was irritating in my opinion) - The Shining (Kubrick's approach, though flawed, elevates the source material) - The Lord of the Rings (the books bore me to dead, can't finish them) | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
I preferred ANGEL HEART to Hjortsberg's Falling Angel, but usually I prefer to read. Ditto, Mick...that must be one of the best ever film adaptations of a novel. | ||
| John Llewellyn Probert (John_l_probert) Username: John_l_probert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.142.147.0 |
To answer the question Caroline posed, namely Is a good book, and the use of the reader's imagination, far better than anything that could be achieved on-screen? I have to say that some of the films of Cronenberg, Fulci, Ruggero Deodato and others have 'shown me the unshowable' and taken me places I don't think books could have. I appreciate that the answer to this is going to be different for everyone but if I think hard about it my most frightening / disturbing horror memories are all visual in nature - either film or TV (or yes Stu even comics!). Don't get me wrong - I love reading, but I also find horror a very visual medium indeed and when it's done right a frame of film really can be better than a thousand words. | ||
| Giancarlo (Giancarlo) Username: Giancarlo Registered: 11-2008 Posted From: 85.116.228.5 |
All this poses a metapsychophenomenological question: do we "have" Imagination or do we "inhabit" Imagination? In the former case, it'd be a brain depending function subject to develop-mental theories. If the latter case, it'd even be a political issue about how good citizens we are in the imaginational World. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.31.202.102 |
The imagination is just the capacity to turn the Lego set of the world into new toys. God provides the bricks, though on the side of the packaging He writes, "The manufacturer cannot be held responsible for consumers' varied use of this product." | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.31.202.102 |
How's that for a Materialist ontology? | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.143.98.68 |
The thing is - fiction in words is reality you have to make. Fiction in pictures is ready-made. | ||
| Giancarlo (Giancarlo) Username: Giancarlo Registered: 11-2008 Posted From: 85.116.228.5 |
Yes, provided Matter to be the style of World-Rhetoric...  | ||
| Stephen Theaker (Stephen_theaker) Username: Stephen_theaker Registered: 12-2009 Posted From: 62.30.117.235 |
I don't necessarily think books are better for the imagination, e.g. few books have done as much for the imagination of children as Doctor Who, which is deliberately geared to provide creative space for children to play in - provoking physical, playground play, as well as encouraging children to write their own adventures. TV and books fit different slots in life, too. There's room for both. I read when I want to do something on my own, watch TV or watch films when I want to do something with the family. I think my children are finding a good balance between the two. Having said that, I'm a bit down on TV myself at the moment - this is when I'd normally be looking forward to a new season of Lost, and I feel almost affronted that any other programme thinks it's worthy of filling the gap. I can't watch anything without feeling resentful! | ||
| Tom_alaerts (Tom_alaerts) Username: Tom_alaerts Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.78.35.175 |
Having said that, I'm a bit down on TV myself at the moment - this is when I'd normally be looking forward to a new season of Lost, and I feel almost affronted that any other programme thinks it's worthy of filling the gap. I can't watch anything without feeling resentful! You need to track down Boardwalk Empire - best series in quite a while. Top acting, a great story and lovely filming... | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.143.98.68 |
For many years now - unfortunately for me - I have found films and other screen drama (of whatever quality) to be fabricated and I can't help 'seeing' the cameras, the acting, the special effects. I can no longer lose myself in screen or visual fiction, although I still can lose myself in word-fiction. Meanwhile, I can happily lose myself in the most unvisual, unvocal forms of music, too, as if it is fiction injected straight into the vein? | ||
| Stephen Theaker (Stephen_theaker) Username: Stephen_theaker Registered: 12-2009 Posted From: 62.30.117.235 |
You need to track down Boardwalk Empire - best series in quite a while. Top acting, a great story and lovely filming... I don't tend to get on well with HBO dramas, though they are good... I usually enjoy the first couple of episodes, then think, that would have made a good movie - but if it was a movie would I want it to go on for another eight hours? | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.31.202.102 |
The only reason films have a less chaste reputation than books is because everyone watches films and only some read books. But there is just as much shit on paper as there is onscreen, much of it the stuff the great majority consume. So there. Stephen, in reference to your example about Dr Who and the imagination - I'd say that was a case of the fiction which gets to us early in life, when our imaginary faculties are unjaded. The stuff which "gets there first" is always going to be the most powerful, whether film or book, because it's scribbling upon a blank slate. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.31.202.102 |
>>>For many years now - unfortunately for me - I have found films and other screen drama (of whatever quality) to be fabricated and I can't help 'seeing' the cameras, the acting, the special effects. I can no longer lose myself in screen or visual fiction, although I still can lose myself in word-fiction. Why do you suppose this is, Des? Is it because of limitations inherent in the medium or yourself being (as Amis puts it) "hideously experienced"? | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.31.202.102 |
>>>Meanwhile, I can happily lose myself in the most unvisual, unvocal forms of music, too, as if it is fiction injected straight into the vein? You might have the same problem if you were a musician. I can't listen to Mozart piano sonatas any more, because, as a consequence of piano playing, I know how they're constructed and can see the tricks he uses. | ||
| Giancarlo (Giancarlo) Username: Giancarlo Registered: 11-2008 Posted From: 85.116.228.5 |
Blank Slate or Black Lily? There's the rub... | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.143.98.68 |
Take the point on Mozart. But Penderecki, Boulez, Eno... ? | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.31.202.102 |
Indeed. Even Beethoven, whose stuff I know well from a musician's POV, gets beyond my assimulating processes. Mozart is very formulaic. Then again, I might similarly counter your observation about TV/film, and ask . . . Bergman, Kubrick, et al? | ||
| Stu (Stu) Username: Stu Registered: 04-2008 Posted From: 86.24.29.245 |
>>fiction in words is reality you have to make. Only if you're writing the story yourself. If you're reading a story then the author has done most of the heavy lifting for you. It's just up to you to interpret and understand what they mean. >>Fiction in pictures is ready-made. You still have to interpret and understand what the pictures mean. Especially in silent movies. So you're still using your brain whether you're reading a book or watching a film. You're just using different parts of your brain. Neither form is inherently better than the other. It's a question of how well an individual book or film is put together and the taste of the individual reader/viewer. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.143.98.68 |
A piece of music is an individual performance of it - each one different. It's focussed, personal... A film - however good - is diffuse, many hands, and always the same film. No separate 'unique' performances of it. hard to explain. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.143.98.68 |
There are degrees of 'heavy liftiing' (didn't Cameron use this phrase recently?) in fiction. But words on their own are not enough. Pictures are enough in themselves. Both, I agree, need a degree of interpretation, or leitmotifs to gestalt (to coin a phrase).... | ||
| Stu (Stu) Username: Stu Registered: 04-2008 Posted From: 86.24.29.245 |
>>I don't necessarily think books are better for the imagination, few books have done as much for the imagination of children as Doctor Who, Of course Dr who spun off into the Target novelizations. Terrance Dicks was a huge influence on me in my formative years. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.143.98.68 |
By "words on their own are not enough", I don't mean they need pictures to go with them, but they need 'reading' / transliterating for the mind to make its own pictures or fiction plot or music of meaning... | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.143.98.68 |
31 Dec 2010 ... "Britain faces a year of 'heavy lifting'..." David Cameron | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.118.75.212 |
diffuse, many hands, and always the same film But when you see a given film at various intervals in your life, it can be a different experience every time, and isn't that one of the halmarks of true art? Not that I don't prefer books, mind. | ||
| Stu (Stu) Username: Stu Registered: 04-2008 Posted From: 86.24.29.245 |
>>By "words on their own are not enough", I don't mean they need pictures to go with them, but they need 'reading' / transliterating for the mind to make its own pictures or fiction plot or music of meaning... Images do that too. How about the beginning of The X-Files episode Jose Chung's from Outer Space where the opening image is a close up of the underside of a spaceship ... only for the camera to pan away and reveal that it's actually the underside of a platform being used by a technician to reach a telegraph wire? Two different interpretations playing against each other. Or to switch media how about Frank Miller's black and white artwork in Sin City? Half the time it's just silhouettes and negative space -- you have to figure out what you're looking at. Are those white circles pools of light cast by overhead lightbulbs? No, they're the tops of the stools lined up against the diner's counter, their legs swallowed by shadow so that only the round seat remains visible. And that's before you even get into the imagination required to fill in the gaps between the pictures in the different panels. "In the first picture the character's outside the building. In the second one he's inside. Did he teleport? Walk through a wall like a ghost? Or did he use a door?" You get a similar thing in the way films cut between scenes and images. Imagination is still there, some people just prefer using a different kind of imagination. Which is perfectly fine until they start saying that their preferred kind of imagination is the best kind for everyone. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
Imagination is still there, some people just prefer using a different kind of imagination. Which is perfectly fine until they start saying that their preferred kind of imagination is the best kind for everyone. Well, yes, but wasn't Caroline asking for opinions? I don't think anyone's saying that their kind of imagination is the only one people should utilise. They're just giving their, like, opinion, like, man, like. | ||
| Stu (Stu) Username: Stu Registered: 04-2008 Posted From: 86.24.29.245 |
And I'm giving mine. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.143.98.68 |
Exactly, well Zed. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.143.98.68 |
Interpretation of images (some trick or slow-moving into place) may be better for some, worse for others, but it seems to me radically different from interpretation (transliteration) of words that depend on semantics, graphology, phonetics, syntax. Seeing and interpreting images is something you do all day automatically? Even seeing the page of a book ... until you start 'reading' it, rather than just 'seeing' it? | ||
| Stu (Stu) Username: Stu Registered: 04-2008 Posted From: 86.24.29.245 |
There's a syntax to the use of images in film-making and a different syntax to the use of images in comics. >>Seeing and interpreting images is something you do all day automatically? Yeah, so it's possible to take it for granted. Even though people actually make lots of MISinterpretations of images throughout the day, often without even realising it. So it's important that they interpret images correctly during a story or they'll end up with a completely distorted take on the story. | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.232.199.129 |
>>Well, yes, but wasn't Caroline asking for opinions?<< Yep, I was. I was simply giving my opinion - ie. that books exercise my imagination more than anything on screen - and seeing what others thought about this. Which is what I've got from you all - a lovely wide range of opinions. No-one's right, and no-one's wrong (apart from me, I'm always right - my hubby tells me that regularly!  ). I wonder if the way we feel about this depends on how 'visual' we are? I always used to think that everyone visualised thoughts in pictures (as I do), until I found out from some people that they don't think in that way. I'm highly visual - so perhaps words work better for me as they allow me to create my own images, most of which I find far more effective than anything that could be created on screen. Just a thought - no arguments, please!  | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.143.98.68 |
Thanks, Caroline. BTW Life in general is full of misinterpretations, ambivalences, ambiguities etc. and perhaps that's a good thing. If everything were straighforward, it would be boring? | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.232.199.129 |
Very true, Des. By the way, do you recall a while ago you (Des, that is) posted a story on the Vault (Filthy Creations) forum and I *totally* misinterpreted what it was about? You and Rog were laughing at my misinterpretation of it (laughing in a nice way, that is). I also recall completely misinterpreting a story which someone posted on the Pantechnicon forum when it was going - I commented that it conjoured up a beautiful image in my mind and the author told me it was supposed to be about something pretty horrible. Perhaps I'm good at misinterpreting stories!  | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.170.177.92 |
A belated 'no'. Film does things only film can - we get the dissolve, which is one of cinema's finest tools, and music with an image, and the cut, and the subtle sound. We get accidents in film where moments happen without having been intended, or where the voices of the crew have been allowed to be heard. Cinema is communal. We see something unusual in a set or filmed location that could never be conjured in a book. I love books (even if I can hardly read them these days) but films for me are like real places; recently my wife bought us a projector and we've hardly stopped watching it. We watched Sweeney Todd off the telly - it was astounding, practically as good as seeing it at the cinema. I was IN London, in that world. We watched an episode of Supernatural and I kid you not that it felt as real as life in this way - I was there with these characters (in heaven as it was) and feeling perhaps more transported by it than I have since my childhood. (folks - buy a projector now. It's just one of the best things that's ever happened to me (sad as that sounds).) | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
For me the order of "merit" runs something like this: music, art, novels, theatre, short stories, cinema, TV, comics, video games. Have I forgot any? | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Oh yeah, dance... which does nothing for me at all, basically because I'm hopeless at it lol. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.170.177.92 |
The merit - they all blend in for me according to the merits of each. This thread is really interesting but really it only heightens the fact that quality counts more than a specific form. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
That's my personal ordering but, indeed, how can we differentiate between: Bach, Picasso, Dostoevsky, Shakespeare, Kafka, Hitchock, Potter, Crumb or Smith? |