Asimov: 5
Austen: 4
And the Queen of Regency Balls and First-First-First World White People Problems isn't going down without a fight at least, it seems...
Jane Austen's definitely being more of a Lizzie Bennet than a Fanny Price in this round.
(And if you got that double reference, please tell me...does anyone here LIKE Fanny as a character? She's such a spineless wimp...and I get that's the point, but come ON, lady, you're being shat upon by these people for years, they don't even give you a room with a fireplace--and it being 18th century England, we must assume it gets pretty freezing there sometimes--and you just keep taking it and taking it...and then expect me to root for you to win out and get the guy in the end because...you did NOTHING and were a pushover the whole time? Come on!)
And if you've never read Austen...more than "Pride and Prejudice"--that one's actually damn good--"Mansfield Park" is basically every stereotype you've ever heard about Jane Austen and her romances...and just...ugh.
Watch the Frances O'Connor movie version, NOT because it's a faithful adaptation but just...just trust me, you'll enjoy the hell out of it, it's hilarious for all the so-wrong-it's-right kind of reasons. You want to yell at the screen, "You're drunk movie, go home!" because the adaptation's so ridiculous and just...
There is burping. TWICE. Burping in a Jane Austen movie. Consider all the hoighty toighty costume dramas and overly-refined films associated with Jane Austen and her works...and THEN picture a film adaptation that says screw it, we're throwing burps in there and high school-style eye rolls and just the most absurdly out-of-time-period acting and no one's in character, case in point, Fanny Price actually has a backbone here and rides a horse rather than spend 300 pages whimpering in the corner...
If they adapted a Shakespeare movie the way they adapted this version of "Mansfield Park," I'd probably be livid, it's so ridiculous and over the top...but because I couldn't stand the characters in the original book, it's hilarious, and, again...
I'm sorry, call me a simple man...I cannot help but laugh at a burp joke in an Austen movie, because WE ALL KNOW FLATULENCE DOES NOT EXIST IN THE WORLD OF JANE AUSTEN! Emma, Lizzie, Fanny, Mr. Darcy...not a one EVER passed gas in their whole lives, of course! xD
So, yeah, that was a digression...but seriously, if you don't like Jane Austen and want to laugh at her characters' expense, I recommend it...if you DO like her...you might still like it, but yeah...if you can't handle a loose adaptation of her work AND characters acting so out of character and time as I described...don't. It'll be like me watching "Romeo+Juliet" or Ethan Hawke's "Hamlet," IT WILL BURN. :p
So...um, yeah, that was a digression...
"i figured that you know this one, obi. have you read it?"
Nope. Wow, that was fast. :p I mean, I read "Pride and Prejudice," obviously (for the BEST Austen adaptation, it's the 1995 BBC miniseries of "Pride and Prejudice" with Colin Firth, hands down, even as someone who's hit-and-miss on Austen, it's amazing how well they adapted it...I'll forever argue the 1996 Branagh version of "Hamlet" not just the best version of that play ever, period--I'll take that version against ANY other, Olivier, Jacobi, Tennant, Hawke, Gibson, you name it--but arguably the best Shakespeare adaptation ever period...up there with Olivier's "Henry V"/"Richard III," Zeffirelli's "Romeo and Juliet" and other great adaptations--and I'd argue that what Branagh's film is to Shakespeare's play, this miniseries is to Austen's book...those are, thus far, the best play and novel adaptations I've seen, respectively, 100% for each, A+, see them both, NOW) but...
Never had the drive to read "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies."
I mean, much as I praise it, Austen's work isn't one I read over and over the way I do "Hamlet." Read it once all the way through, I've gone back to parts (especially the beginning and ending) and for me, for now, that's enough...if I want to experience it again, I'll pop in my DVD of the miniseries because, again, the miniseries is just that good.
Add that to the fact I don't care about zombies...and I'm actually somewhat surprised that, with all the paranormal and dystopian romance novels we've had for "young adults" that we haven't had a smash-hit with zombies in that niche yet, given how popular they are now (and yes, I know about "Warm Bodies," aka "Romeo and Juliet and Zombies" and...yeah...no, for the same reason I say "no" to just about any story adapted from R&J namely--it's NOT really a story you can still adapt and make work...the plot was already very cliche in Shakespeare's time, he made it work by making the characters closer in age, making it unclear who's to blame, and especially with the LANGUAGE...we now EXPECT romance stories to have characters close in age and to have some ambiguity, so the only thing left is the language...and I don't care if he got voted out Round 1 or not--who here would EVER bet on future writer's use of language in an R&J adaptation TOPPING William Shakespeare? You can't do it. You just can't. All problems of cliches aside, you could make the argument for that play being in the Top 10 of all his works when it comes to just the use of language and poetry...you're going to beat THAT? Of course not. So the language won't be better, the cliches are still there, the only novelty is the zombies, and that's been done before...prepare yourself for a bad pun in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1--IT'S DEAD ON ARRIVAL!)
The point of that? Oh, yeah. I care fuck all about zombies, so I haven't read R&P&Z. Also, I have a passing fondness for Shakespeare's works. ;)
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