- Ask me two questions wizard, and I will give you the answers
- Isn't it usually three?
- Yes, but with that you're back to two

Earlier this month the Sci-Fi channel ran an original mini-series based on Ursala K LeGuin's works called The Legend of Earthsea. I just got around to watching it this week (yay for TiVo!)

I've read some of LeGuin's novels, and I'm pretty sure I've read some based in Earthsea, but I've read so many of those basic "entertainment value only" fantasy novels they all kind of run together in my memory. While I was watching this the story kept feeling very familiar. It's possible this is because I'd read it before, but more likely I think it was just so formulaic that all those other stories I'd read were converging with it.

That said, this was still fun. Despite The Lord of the Rings there's a pretty serious drought of fantasy movies out there (and science fiction isn't much better.) I'm hopeful that the success of LOTR will encourage more entries in the genre. The key to success of the this Earthsea miniseries is it still had the attributes of TV I talked about a few weeks ago. Namely, it's not very dense. This meant I could watch it in several different sittings: only have 20 minutes before I have to run to the store, watch 20 minutes of Earthsea. It's jarring for me to watch movies in bits and pieces, there's too much going on. But something like this breaks down very nicely.

Yeah, the dialog was a little rough, and there were no award winning perfomances in there (although Danny Glover showed his pedigree, and really stood out against the others.) The plot was formulaic, but the story arcs were well conceived and worked well.

Sci-Fi will likely rerun this a whole lot in the near future, and I expect they'll release it on DVD before too long. If you're a fantasy fan, this is worthwhile from a fluff standpoint. My one caution, push through the bland first 45 minutes, it gets better.

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