Monday, March 23, 2009

Damn you, Lifetime casting agents!

Excuse me for a moment while I geek out about something completely ridiculous.

Fact: I read Nora Roberts books. Yeah, yeah, insert judgment and mockery here.

Fact: Lifetime has been making a good number of Nora Roberts books into TV movies. Which is kind of cool, because I like movies made from books I like, even if they're kind of crappy.

Where am I going with this?

Someone over at Lifetime is a complete moron who has no interest in being true to the books they're converting to film.

Here's the thing that severely pisses me off:

In Northern Lights, the most recent of Roberts' books to be made into a film, the female character, Meg, is a feisty bush pilot. She has BLACK hair and blue eyes and is quite exotic, is standoffish and super independent, doesn't take any crap from anyone, and is 200% able to take care of herself. A good part of her background/character is that she strongly identifies with the Native culture in Alaska.

And who do they cast as Meg in the movie?

Fucking Leann Rimes.

Are you kidding me? Could they have picked a more generic, blonde, absolutely the opposite from the character in the book "actress" to play this part? Leann Rimes is not "tough." She's not "feisty." She is soft and silly.

I am already irritated with this movie, and am pissed off at Lifetime for making it impossible for me to enjoy a movie that I should have gotten at least a little entertainment from by so massively messing up their casting.

Hell, even JEWEL would have been better! Sure, she's still blonde, but at least she's actually been to Alaska before!

Also, upon more research, it seems like they also changed the following details:
- the main character's last name is "Burns" instead of "Burke" <-- WHY? Burke is much better.
- instead of having two huskies, Meg has pitbulls. In Alaska. Really? Which dog makes better sense?

Ugh. So disappointing.

I shake my fist at you, Lifetime!

2 comments:

A pretty nice little Saturday said...

Oh wow! Bad, bad, bad! Sorry Lifetime is making movies from books you actually enjoy! The only way to survive Lifetime is to appreciate it for what it is: BAD! Great, bad movies are their specialty!

Chris said...

Inserted judgment and mockery.

You should come to my library sometime. We might as well rename ourselves the Nora Roberts Library with as many books of hers we have. There's the bias of the Senior Librarian in developing the branch's collection for ya.