"The world is more interesting with you in it."

[katernater]

Todd is away at the wedding of a mutual friend, so I've taken most of this afternoon and evening as a "mental health experiment," during which time I've pretty much bummed around and done nothing but fix a little dinner, read, and watch movies I've been meaning to push through my queue. I finally gave Hannibal Rising a go, having avoided it in theaters after I read the book. It was about what I expected. I admired Gaspard Ulliel's performance as Hannibal Lecter, but I really didn't need all of that character backstory -- what made the man so damn scary in The Silence of the Lambs and Red Dragon was the fact that his absolute nutjobbiness seemed to come out of nowhere. Once you tack on a sad backstory about baby sister's teeth in a stool pit, you start to empathize with him and that takes all of the fun out of it. It has, however, made me consider going back to give Hannibal a re-read. I love that book. It's pure poetry.

I picked up my cap, gown, tassel and hood at the campus bookstore yesterday. Graduation is exactly one month from today. I can't believe it's really almost over.

Comments

[hannahrorlove.livejournal.com]

As seen on TV Tropes, which I won't link to out of general courtesy: "A mass murderer is scary; a mass murderer who kills because he had a crappy childhood is merely pathetic."

[katernater.livejournal.com]

Exactly. And I was biased against the film/novel to begin with, because it was assumed that Dino De Laurentiis (who owned the rights to the character), sort of pushed Thomas Harris into writing a hackneyed screenplay so he could cash in on the franchise. Harris has always been one of my favorite authors, so Hannibal Rising was a particular disappointment.