Susan Cooper: C or D?

i always wanted to send the books to christopher lee and beg him to play merriman in a film...

the dark is rising DESTROYS harry potter.

Cait - there are female old ones, Miss Grey (?) who owns the manor where they all go to when the Dark creates a huge snow storm is an Old One!

I'll have to dig out my copy of The Dark Is Rising and reread it to try and work out just what happens.

On the other hand... coo I dunno, interesting!

So, there appears to be a film. Did I miss a thread about this?

I think fans of the book were trying to pretend it doesn't exist. (I would, after that trailer.)

it's fucking terrible, fwiw

Oh the trailer was abhorrent. Will not watch. I don't have any time for the family being made American suburbans, the point is that Will's whole family are rather like L'Engle's Austins in being not really of their own time -- they live in the country and are close-knit and a little bit insular for it, making their own wholesome fun at home. The fact that Will comes from this v compassionate, trusting, clear-sighted family who live close to the border of belief already is crucial to the right things happening story-wise.

Late to the party now, but I have a strong impression that the Old Ones are not divided by gender. There are a lot of group scenes in which women are mentioned to be present but not individually singled out: the Christmas party at Miss Grey's that Will goes back in time for, the joining of the Signs that takes place at the old blacksmith's forge...other group scenes too, I think, but I can't specify 'em from memory. Lots of those scenes are hazy b/c they're told from Will's point of view and his impression is of a multitude of men and women who are present in a not-entirely-physical way, more a metaphysical one, so naturally they're a little clouded.

There aren't that many male Old Ones singled out either, there's Merriman and a few key players, the old man who gives Stephen the Hunter's mask in...Jamaica? the West Indies? wherever, he only figures for about two seconds of narrative time, the local farmer at whose house Maggie the Dark has been hiding...anyway, memory fails. But gender is never made an issue.

yeah I saw that trailer when I saw Stardust, it was cringe-inducing. the trailer for the Pullman movie looked pretty good though.

the movie was total garbage.

i didn't read any of the books but i assume they are much better.

i mean, this movie was so fuckin bad. holy shit it was bad.

s1ocki, can we talk about the hamfisted attempts at humor, and how out of place they were? at least, the things i think were attempts at humor?

there were attempts at humour?

can we talk about when he googled "light and dark"?

i've read all of em, fantastic, except for Greenwitch

I only realised recently that the ghost ship in Greenwitch was a true story. Not the ghost bit itself; the story of how it was caught smuggling and one of the crew was accused of being a traitor.

There's a film version of Susan Cooper's "The Dark Is Rising" coming out this autumn.