Until recently, I didn’t know that a The Dark is Rising Movie was in the works, until I heard it was slated for an October release this year. When I first saw the IMDB listing I thought “Cool.” Then I watched the trailer.

Okay, this movie is not The Dark is Rising (read the book yourself). Here are a a few points:

• In the book, Will Stanton lives in a Buckinghamshire, England. In the movie, he’s an American who just moved to England.
• Merriman Lyon is supposed to be an old, wise, Merlin-like character. Why does he look like Aragorn in the movie?
• The Dark is Rising has a serious Arthurian base. Does the movie? NO!
• The Old Ones’ magic is subtle and powerful, they don’t throw fireballs and blow things up.
• Will Stanton doesn’t have an iPod. Why the heck did the “modernize” it?
• Will Stanton is supposed to be wise, despite being only 11. In the movie he’s 13, and very un-wise. He’s too “typical American 12-year-old.” Sorry, Walden Media, thanks for playing.
• What happened to keeping the powers of the Light secret? In the film, Will (”disgusted at not being able to tell anyone”) blows up a car.
• Will Stanton, in the movie, is basically Superman without the power of flight. Oh, andhere’s a quote from the actual movie: “Can I fly?”
• Merriman Lyon “relies on wit, magic, other Old Ones, knowledge, experience, etc.” In the movie he relies on a bit of magic and a mace, his favorite weapon.

You can see more differences here.

Maybe they should change the name to “The Seeker: A film loosely based on The Dark is Rising Sequence by Susan Cooper.” How can they get rid of the Arthurian base? The whole series revolves around that! Why did they think they had to change the characters beyond recognition? Hollywood magic instead of the subtle variety in the books? How could they?

The Seeker: The Dark is Rising is yet another movie “based” off an otherwise great book. Thank you, Walden Media, for giving us a Narnia/Harry Potter/Lord of the Rings/Superman/any fantasy film on the planet knockoff instead of The Dark is Rising.

Edit: Just a note. A bunch of IMDB forum users have been saying that the Dark is Rising series is “basically Harry Potter,” except DIR has been around since the ’70s. If you know how to read, then it’s apparent that they’re in no way similar.

Just a quick heads-up. The upcoming Indiana Jones film (May 2008 release) has been given the title “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.” IMDB Page.

The Netflix plan where you get one DVD at a time, and an unlimited amount in a month, is a great deal. The only problem is you end up waiting for Netflix to get the disc your returning, and for them to send you a new one.

While you’re waiting for your next disc, take a look at Netflix’s new “Play Instantly” function. If you have broadband and Internet Explorer (it doesn’t support the much better Firefox browser) you can watch select movies over the internet. Only a fraction of Netflix’s selection is available for instant playback unfortunately, but that will change eventually. I think that in ten years, Netflix will mainly be streaming movies over the web, though the mailing service will still be available.

To play the instant playback films, just look around Netflix as usual. On the movie details pages, there should be a blue “Play” button below the movie thumbnail. If you see such a button, click it to play the movie. Netflix will download a plugin required for playback, and will then measure your internet connection speed. Within five minutes, your movie will be playing. Click the “Full Screen” button for a bigger picture.

Bonus Tip: If your video card has an S-Video output, run it over to your TV so you can watch the full screen movie over there. On a standard TV set, the quality generally appears higher than on your computer monitor, where it looks more compressed.

I was pleasantly surprised at the video quality. During playback, the movie did not stop to buffer more data, nor did it lose connection and halt entirely. There audio was fine, and there weren’t too many compression problems. It was somewhere between VHS and DVD quality. You definitely won’t confuse it with a DVD, but it’s better than a VHS.