Earthsea Screening

I really love events at the Science Fiction Fiction museum. Today, Toni and Katie and I went to a screening of Ursula LeGuin's "A Wizard of Earthsea." As usual, we saw some friends and the audience was interesting. Surprisingly, not full.
Katie won an Earthsea T-Shirt, which she was happy about. The movie was decidedly more violent than the books (or to be more correct - emphasized the violent bits more than the books), and Katie was not happy with that. The violence was enough to make it a PG-13 or so if it was rated (I really don't know if they rate TV movies), so be careful - kids old enough to like the books may not like the movie. The screenwriters seem to have taken stuff that happened offstage in a sentence or two in the book and turned it into whole scenes, and those scenes were the ones that made the movie tough to watch for a few moments (most of it was fine - great scenery, funny lines, important lines, good lessons).
I had been trying to figure out how they would do the three books as two movies, and was pretty happy with the approach they took, which wove the first two books in together, and added tension. Ged was well-cast, and so was Ogion, and both actors did a nice job. The movie was well done in its own way (books almost never translate well to movies). It was also a little sad, as it could have been done truly well with a bigger budget - like the great job they just did on Lord of the Rings. Some of the more important dialogue is preserved almost word for word. It is worth seeing, and I'm glad the Sci Fi Channel allowed the pre-screening. I think the movie is showing Monday and Wednesday on the Sci Fi Channel.