Too much of a Ringfest

Peter Jackson to direct the last two Harry Potter films? Or failing that, the Ring cycle (on the assumption that one ring is very much like another, presumably?) -- so muses BRIAN SIBLEY : my blog: RING-TONES in response to a few rumours wafting about.

I also read in the Times yesterday that, before he and New Line fell out, Peter Jackson was (allegedly) set to split the Hobbit into two movies, which would feature "prequels" to the stories of members of the fellowship from the Lord of the Rings book(s).

Hmm. One thing is true: Peter Jackson is directing an adaptation of Alice Sebold's "The Lovely Bones", a book that started out in a uniquely harrowing and mesmerising way but fell away after the first half. (My view is not a majority one; most people I know who have read the book think it is brilliant all the way through. My theory is that most readers of this book haven't read as much crime fiction as me.)

After that, who knows? Mr Jackson can't do Narnia or His Dark Materials, but maybe the "Rings of the Little House on the Prairie"? "Anne of the Rings Gables"? "The Jewel in the Crown of Rings"? "The Herries Ring Chronicles"? (That's enough Rings, ed.)

Comments

[Brian Sibley]

As you surmise, the Jackson Ring Cycle is clearly an early-April-Fools-Day jest...

As for 'The Hobbit' which was being contemplated as two movies (Part One: The Book; Part Two: What Happened between the End of the Book and the beginning of the Next Three) there is clearly no chance of that now being done by PJ!

So, yes, 'The Lovely Bones' will presumably be next, though I am not too bothered to know how that turns out unless he does something to sort out what I thought was a mess of a book!

You are the only person I have ever read or heard say exactly what I thought about the novel --- a brillaint (if violently unpleasant) opening followed by a tense first half which promises a denouement that, in the end, it fails to deliver...

Greetings from my blog to yours! :-)

[Maxine]

Great minds think alike, Brian. Not a film I will rush to see (knowing PJ's love of splatter). Thanks for popping over. I have started your PJ book and am enjoying it so far, very much.

[Susan Balée]

Hmm, I beg to differ. I enjoyed _The Lovely Bones_ quite a bit. Found it a wonderful meditation on life-after-death, the kind of thing people whose children have been murdered or otherwise disappeared might imagine. It did seem to go on a bit too long, but it was so well written, that didn't bother me.

I did meet Alice Sebold a few years ago when she was chosen by Barnes & Noble for their "Discover New Writers" series and the awards ceremony was at a bookstore in NYC. My friend Ted Kooser was winning an award for his memoir about Nebraska, "Local Wonders," and Sebold had been chosen -- for second place in fiction -- for _The Lovely Bones_. Sadly, she got her nose out of joint because she didn't win first (that was Anthony Doerr, a lovely young man) and she made a snarky acceptance speech wondering what "discovered" really meant since her book had been on top of the NYTIMES best seller list for months. Oops.

But she was very nice when she signed my copy for me and is lovely, too, in the flesh (couldn't see her bones, thank heavens). The movie is to be filmed in one of the suburbs of Philly, and Jackson was here awhile ago to check it out. To his credit, he recognized the power of using the actual setting of the tale as opposed to a sound studio.

[Maxine]

Are you back, Susan? Welcome home, if so. Thanks for the comment-- I didn't "not" like Lovely Bones, but I did not feel it lived up to the considerable hype and the mesmerising first third. Definitely a book that sticks in the memory, but I did feel that it let itself down in the second half and failed to live up to its initial promise. Boring, frankly, once you had finished the "original idea" part.