Moby Dick (Film)

[roo_ster]

Just saw it again.  This has got to be Gregory Peck's best role.  He manages to meld both charisma and a most forbidding mien.  Oh, and a heaping helping of self-destructive obsession.

Whenever I see movies about the old sailing ships, mining, farming, and such, what strikes me is just how astoundingly hard and dangerous that work was.

Really ought to read the book some day. 

The kids love it, especially my son.  But, he has always been a bit of a hard case when it comes to literature/literary content.  He is much more likely to enjoy the old-school classic kid's books or kid-oriented re-writes of adult classics. OTOH, you need to push & prod him to read some of the drek that passes for contemporary children's literature.  "The Vibrant Twins and Their Multicultural Inoffensive Caper" is not going to keep his attention. 

[MillCreek]

"Multicultural Inoffensive Caper" would be an excellent name for a band.

[lee n. field]

And, Ray Bradbury wrote the script.

(Please, please, please let there not be a reboot.)

[TommyGunn]

"For the sake of hate I spit my last breath at thee!!!!!!"
 
"Call me Ishmael." ~~ Richard Basehart, who would chase a few whales of his own years later in Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea.

Great old film.   One of the few successes at adapting a book to a movie accomplished by Hollywood.  

[onions!]

Really ought to read the book some day. 

I read it about ten years ago.It was quickly apparent that I couldn't read it like most books.Between the archaic language and the sheer volume of it I had to really slow down from my normal reading style.I swear that Melville was paid by the word.Why use twenty lines to describe a scene when you can do it in twenty pages?!Never again.

I think the movie is one that you can watch w/o sound and it doesn't change how you feel about it much.

[makattak]

Just saw it again.  This has got to be Gregory Peck's best role.  He manages to meld both charisma and a most forbidding mien.  Oh, and a heaping helping of self-destructive obsession.

Whenever I see movies about the old sailing ships, mining, farming, and such, what strikes me is just how astoundingly hard and dangerous that work was.

Really ought to read the book some day. 

The kids love it, especially my son.  But, he has always been a bit of a hard case when it comes to literature/literary content.  He is much more likely to enjoy the old-school classic kid's books or kid-oriented re-writes of adult classics. OTOH, you need to push & prod him to read some of the drek that passes for contemporary children's literature.  "The Vibrant Twins and Their Multicultural Inoffensive Caper" is not going to keep his attention. 

I've started Moby Dick (again) and fell off reading it about a quarter of the way through (again). It is quite a hefty tome. (Note: this is coming from someone whose favorite book is The Count of Monte Cristo.)

However, you (and your son) may enjoy "In the Heart of the Sea" which is about the incident that inspired Moby Dick. You want to see the dangers of sailing? That encompasses pretty much all of them. (Ok, I think it doesn't have a hurricane, but otherwise...)

Not a novel, which makes it all the more powerful.

[roo_ster]

I read it about ten years ago.It was quickly apparent that I couldn't read it like most books.Between the archaic language and the sheer volume of it I had to really slow down from my normal reading style.I swear that Melville was paid by the word.Why use twenty lines to describe a scene when you can do it in twenty pages?!Never again.

I think the movie is one that you can watch w/o sound and it doesn't change how you feel about it much.

Archaic language doesn't bother me.  The excessive verbiage might be a stickler.

I've started Moby Dick (again) and fell off reading it about a quarter of the way through (again). It is quite a hefty tome. (Note: this is coming from someone whose favorite book is The Count of Monte Cristo.)

That gives one pause.

[fifth_column]

I found Moby Dick to be surprisingly light-hearted.  I literally chuckled out loud at a couple of sections in the beginning.

[Marnoot]

I think a lot of writers from that period were paid by the word (or alternately, paid by the installment for newspaper serials, which amounts to the same thing by the time it's all done). I know Alexandre Dumas was, believe Charles Dickens was, and wouldn't be surprised if the same were true of Herman Melville.

Re: The Count of Monte Cristo, if anyone wants to read the unabridged version I can't recommend highly enough you do not use the older, public domain translation. Despite being the translation foisted upon most students (see public domain), it really isn't a very good one, makes for difficult and awkward reading. The newer Buss translation (published by Penguin Classics) is much, much better.

[zahc]

Moby Dick is one of my favorite reads,  not because of any of the literary BS they make you write papers about but purely because the descriptions of the whaling trade are so fascinating to me. The writing itself is actually remarkably bad if you ask me; just bad enough that English teachers love it despite the fact that they would bleed all over it if one of their students wrote it.

[fifth_column]

I like the honesty of it.  Melville was working through those philosophical concepts as he wrote the book.  I don't think he even intended it for publication, just an expository investigation into topics of interest.  The story of Ahab/Ishmael seemed to be of secondary importance to him.  The best thing about the book is the fact that none of the literary types can agree with just what it's actually about.

[onions!]

A long,run-on story though it may be,there are lots of good quotes hidden amongst the fill.

http://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/2409320-moby-dick-or-the-white-whale

[fifth_column]

Chock full of quotes.  Here's a couple of my favorites, not on the above website.

Swerve me? The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails, whereon my soul is grooved to run. Over unsounded gorges, through the rifled hearts of mountains, under torrents' beds, unerringly I rush! Naught's an obstacle, naught's an angle to the iron way!

All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event--in the living act, the undoubted deed--there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike through the mask! How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall?