The heard world

Movie • THE LOST WORLD • 1995 Audio book • Original book publication - 1912
Having seen the movie for the first time, I decided to listen to the audio book while I baked some cookies. Wow! The audio was almost 9 hours long, but I was entirely engrossed for the duration. The old writing made it amusing at times, but old-school racist also. If you can get past that, and listen knowing the sensibilities are archaeic you may enjoy the in depth descriptions, and playful commentary.
The love story is completely different, and almost completely absent once it’s established. I understand why they played up the love story in the movie, but I expected that there would be better resolution in the book.
The pterodactyl was the main dinosaur, and the ape men were the antagonists virtually missing from the movie. I was disheartened to see that the explorers were more concerned with conquering the Lost World and its inhabitants than preserving it. Still, though — it was a brilliant story everyone should “read.” You will hear all the inspirations for modern dinosaur movies.I downloaded this unabridged recording of The Lost World by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and narrated by Paul Hecht. Audible.com has a great selection of audio books. They don’t take up space on the shelf where you may rather display your bone collection.

Crafty music

Music • THE CRAFT • Soundtrack • 1996
Woosa, I’ve been in pieces lately. Sorry for the delay in posting. I haven’t been able to do much movie watching lately so, as a treat I’m going to talk music for a bit.
Music, when packaged well with a movie can be a way to experience the movie in small parts. Scenes can be recalled because of the perfect song. When you hear that song, the scene can pop up in your mind. My crush Quentin Tarrantino knows this.
The Craft soundtrack is really better than that. It serves to make me remember the movie more fondly. While it was a pretty cool movie, the music collection is a fantastic gift while the movie is just beautiful wrapping paper: enjoyable for the present, but not something to hold on to.
This soundtrack has some phenomenal cover songs. I hope you like covers the way I do. Updating or re-imagining music is a great compliment to the original artist as well as a refresh for us who appreciate the different takes.
All in all, I’d have liked a more spooky or haunting sound to the music like Mathew Sweet’s Dark Secret, but I understand how important it is to appeal to a wider audience. I do like that they stick with mostly outside the mainstream bands or independent artists like Juliana Hatfield (she happens to be one of our MySpace friends). Jewel is a bit out of place for my taste, but I like the song. Except for the rap part (she should lay off the rap) it reminds me of the 7o’s. That’s when my toesies are from, so they do some tapping.

Below is a track listing

1. Tomorrow Never Knows - Our Lady Peace
2. I Have the Touch - Heather Nova
3. All This and Nothing - Sponge
4. Dangerous Type - Letters to Cleo
5. How Soon Is Now? - Love Spit Love
6. Dark Secret - Matthew Sweet
7. Witches' Song - Juliana Hatfield
8. Jump into the Fire - Tripping Daisy
9. Under the Water - Jewel
10. Warning - All Too Much
11. Spastica - Elastica
12. Horror - Spacehog
13. Bells, Books and Candles - Graeme Revell