journal features

movie review - Tales of Earthsea

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Toronto, 2017.12.07

This is a (very rough) adaptation of Ursula K Leguin's novels that spanned decades of the world of Earthsea (as well as taking decades to write). Unfortunately, the story appears to stitch together a number of concepts from those novels in a loose form that doesn't really add up. I have to admit, I didn't realize that I was watching the story that I was actually seeing until the thing ended, and when it dawned on me I wasn't delighted with the result.

Not recommended.

rand()m quote

Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.

—Michael Crichton