The Princes of Idaho
May. 17th, 2007 01:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
John M. Ford, The Princes of the Air
An early work. The cover looks like bad late-sixties space opera. It's actually really really good early-eighties space opera wrapped around several cons and a lot of political intrigue. There's no knock-yer-socks-off OMG moment, just constantly building action and tension and joy in the ease with which the characters plot and carry out their schemes.
The book is hardly perfect, even for what it is. The main antagonist is introduced late in the book (a flaw it arguably shares with the otherwise transcendent _Dragon Waiting_), and only one of the three around-for-more-than-two-pages female characters is much more than a cipher. But it's a fun quick romp.
Gus van Sant (dir.), My Own Private Idaho
I'm not sure I would have been able to figure out that this was based on _Henry IV_ if I hadn't known that going into it. Van Sant stripped out all the plot in the play and turned it into a character study of Prince Hal. Which works alright; he's basically slumming until such time as he's ready to assume his role in upper-crust society, at which time he discards all his previous friends.
Including River Phoenix's gay prostitute who's searching for his mother and in love with the Hal character. I guess adding in the unrequited love story gives Hal a bit more dimension to his utterly cold calculation? It's definitely necessary for Hal to have someone other than Falstaff to play off of if you're removing Hotspur from the script entirely.
It's a neat idea, and it mostly works. It doesn't always make sense if you try and analyse it from the perspective of having a coherent plot but if you can relax and watch the characters unfold, you get some perspective on parts of human nature.
I'm about ninety-five percent certain that the scene in which River Phoenix and Udo Kier meet for the first time takes place on Capital Hill . . . the slope and the waterfront and the houses are just too familiar. But since the movie was made in 1991 I didn't actually recognise anything.
An early work. The cover looks like bad late-sixties space opera. It's actually really really good early-eighties space opera wrapped around several cons and a lot of political intrigue. There's no knock-yer-socks-off OMG moment, just constantly building action and tension and joy in the ease with which the characters plot and carry out their schemes.
The book is hardly perfect, even for what it is. The main antagonist is introduced late in the book (a flaw it arguably shares with the otherwise transcendent _Dragon Waiting_), and only one of the three around-for-more-than-two-pages female characters is much more than a cipher. But it's a fun quick romp.
Gus van Sant (dir.), My Own Private Idaho
I'm not sure I would have been able to figure out that this was based on _Henry IV_ if I hadn't known that going into it. Van Sant stripped out all the plot in the play and turned it into a character study of Prince Hal. Which works alright; he's basically slumming until such time as he's ready to assume his role in upper-crust society, at which time he discards all his previous friends.
Including River Phoenix's gay prostitute who's searching for his mother and in love with the Hal character. I guess adding in the unrequited love story gives Hal a bit more dimension to his utterly cold calculation? It's definitely necessary for Hal to have someone other than Falstaff to play off of if you're removing Hotspur from the script entirely.
It's a neat idea, and it mostly works. It doesn't always make sense if you try and analyse it from the perspective of having a coherent plot but if you can relax and watch the characters unfold, you get some perspective on parts of human nature.
I'm about ninety-five percent certain that the scene in which River Phoenix and Udo Kier meet for the first time takes place on Capital Hill . . . the slope and the waterfront and the houses are just too familiar. But since the movie was made in 1991 I didn't actually recognise anything.