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My Lovely Horse posted:The thing is, it takes place in the present day, but they didn't change any of the details that firmly tie it to 1990, except Crowley's got CDs in his car now instead of tapes. I was afraid of all of that. I’ll still watch it though it seems like it has a lot of problems that many adaptations of Discworld material also shares: too much twee, not enough focus on the philosophical aspects. It’s easy to let the cleverness of the prose overwhelm the adaptation and not take it seriously when the story calls for it (because again the people doing the adaptation were too taken with the prose.) The only adaptation I recall enjoying was Hogfather and that’s because the antagonists were treated with real drama and menace instead of endless rehashing and parroting of the prose and making it “cute” because that was supposed to be comedy. The first episode of Good Omens really gave me bad vibes on the cutesification aspect and the narrator kept running over the drama of the scenes as a crutch instead of letting it breath for themselves. If that continues throughout the series then that’s super disappointing, the story is strong enough to be dramatic on its own without a narrator going LOOK LOOK HOW DRAMATIC THIS ALSO I’M REPEATING ALL THAT CLEVER STUFF FROM THE NOVEL BECAUSE OF HOW CLEVER IT WAS BECAUSE WE DIDN’T TRUST THE ACTORS OR THE SCENES TO CONVEY IT. Hurff. HIJK fucked around with this message at 18:04 on Jun 22, 2019 |
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Jun 22, 2019 18:02
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I mean it's the actual Neil Gaiman writing it and with one thing or another I completely understand and empathize why he'd be driven to keep as much of Terry Pratchett's original prose and phrasing in there as possible just still doesn't really work as a TV show is the thing.
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Jun 22, 2019 20:25
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I think it would have worked better with a different narrator, she kind of fell flat to me.
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Jun 22, 2019 21:29
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Madame Tracy was inspired casting and needs to play Nanny Ogg in a big budget Wyrd Sisters
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Jun 22, 2019 22:26
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My Lovely Horse posted:The thing is, it takes place in the present day, but they didn't change any of the details that firmly tie it to 1990, except Crowley's got CDs in his car now instead of tapes. This topic reminded me of the fact that since Sue Grafton made her protagonist in the alphabet crime novels age much slower than real time, she had to research the 80s on line by the latest books because she couldn't loving remember how they were.
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Jun 23, 2019 03:03
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Jerry Cotton posted:This topic reminded me of the fact that since Sue Grafton made her protagonist in the alphabet crime novels age much slower than real time, she had to research the 80s on line by the latest books because she couldn't loving remember how they were. Ellis Peters got round this by setting the Cadfael novels in the 12th century. (They're also really good and I recommend them. The TV adaptations with Derek Jacobi are solid if you can't find the books.)
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Jun 23, 2019 10:17
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HIJK posted:The only adaptation I recall enjoying was Hogfather Same, but I also really enjoy the animated Soul Music adaption with Christopher Lee as Death.
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Jun 23, 2019 22:06
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precision posted:Madame Tracy was inspired casting and needs to play Nanny Ogg in a big budget Wyrd Sisters Not unless she can beat Miriam Margolyes. (She can't).
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Jun 25, 2019 23:12
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I halfway liked it. We didn't get to spend enough time with the kids as normal kids, and enough time with the horsemen to really get a sense of them. Giving War a little more time to play the fem fatale would have made her end appearance more shocking. They tried to do the CHOW stuff with Famine, but it was so brief that it didn't make any sense. A lot of things looked a little cheap, in a bad way. Specifically the aliens, which were also very rushed. I also don't know why they felt it necessary to actually show Satan at the end when they should have just done the Earth shaking and maybe some glowing cracks in the ground.
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Jun 26, 2019 02:14
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Beachcomber posted:A lot of things looked a little cheap, in a bad way. Specifically the aliens, which were also very rushed. I also don't know why they felt it necessary to actually show Satan at the end when they should have just done the Earth shaking and maybe some glowing cracks in the ground. The book kind of implies the aliens look a bit dime-store, doesn't it? They're not even sure why they're there, and they're literally the products of a child's imagination anyway. I give it credit 
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Jun 26, 2019 06:03
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They had more character with the helmets on. When the helmet came off it looked like some oval office's first go at blender. Sometimes less is more.
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Jun 26, 2019 07:07
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tooterfish posted:They had more character with the helmets on. This. This is how I feel about Satan at the end too. God knows how much budget they blew on that alone. I also disliked the opening credits.
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Jun 26, 2019 07:17
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Just finished binging the Good Omens series, after having reread the book a couple days ago. For someone who enjoyed the book, it was pretty good, but idk how good it would be to the uninitiated. David Tennant in particular does a fantastic job as Crowley, and most of the other actors were pretty good too. But much like Hogfather, it seriously suffered from being too faithful an adaptation. Most of the stuff with Adam and the Them does not work very well in film, and really ought to have been rewritten considerably. I find that's true of most stories involving kids under the age of fourteen or so - kids in books simply do not behave like kids in reality, and when you put it into a visual medium without substantial rewriting, it becomes jarring. And besides kids, there were quite a few other minor bits that I felt didn't really work without having read the book ahead of time. I don't think there were more than a dozen or so lines that weren't directly lifted from the book. The book is not a television script, and should not have been taken as one. As is, lots of connecting stuff that makes everything make sense has to be cut for time, but if they didn't cut that stuff and made it fifteen hours long instead of six, it'd be boring. So overall I enjoyed it, but probably wouldn't recommend it to most people.
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Jul 5, 2019 08:28
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The Them aren't meant to behave like real kids. It's the point.
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Jul 5, 2019 09:26
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Jedit posted:Everything in Lower Tadfield aren't meant to behave like it does. It's the point. Fixed that for you
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Jul 6, 2019 07:17
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Stroth posted:Fixed that for you It wasn't broken, it was intentionally specific for the sake of clarity.
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Jul 6, 2019 09:13
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Gaiman also said in an interview that most of the stuff with Them was Pratchett's, and that Gaiman realizes that because Pratchett wasn't there, they played a smaller part of the story on the movie than they should have.
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Jul 6, 2019 13:52
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I liked it overall, but it feels like you could have easily cut some of the Hastur stuff, or the invented for the show Crowley/Aziraphale capper at the end, in order to deliver the Other Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Besides being one of the funniest parts of the book, it would have fleshed out the Horsemen, who were kind of a lot of flat in the series compared to the other characters.
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Jul 7, 2019 05:11
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Jedit posted:The Them aren't meant to behave like real kids. It's the point. ADAM: S'no point in havin' a gang if your friends can't keep up.
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Jul 7, 2019 08:18
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Old Kentucky Shark posted:I liked it overall, but it feels like you could have easily cut some of the Hastur stuff, or the invented for the show Crowley/Aziraphale capper at the end, in order to deliver the Other Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Besides being one of the funniest parts of the book, it would have fleshed out the Horsemen, who were kind of a lot of flat in the series compared to the other characters. I actually quite liked the added Crowley/Aziraphale ending, but I agree that I would have loved to see the Other Four Horsemen.
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Jul 7, 2019 08:40
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Beachcomber posted:A lot of things looked a little cheap, in a bad way. Specifically the aliens, which were also very rushed. I also don't know why they felt it necessary to actually show Satan at the end when they should have just done the Earth shaking and maybe some glowing cracks in the ground. Apparently the show's budget was cut quite close to starting the production. Gaiman said that just days before the read-through of the script they were forced to cut both budget and shooting days so he had to edit the script pretty fast to make the cuts.
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Jul 7, 2019 11:01
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Huh I guess voiceovers would be either a cheap patching method or the bits that get cut last in that scenario
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Jul 7, 2019 15:34
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yo here's how loving stupid I am: I just reread The Lost Continent for easily like the 18th time in 15 years. Only on this most recent reread, at the age of 30, did I realize that in the final page when the creator guy throws the multicolored boomerang into the air and it sticks there, it's meant to be a rainbow.
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Jul 31, 2019 00:16
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Cicadalek posted:yo here's how loving stupid I am: I just reread The Lost Continent for easily like the 18th time in 15 years. Only on this most recent reread, at the age of 30, did I realize that in the final page when the creator guy throws the multicolored boomerang into the air and it sticks there, it's meant to be a rainbow. oh poo poo
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Jul 31, 2019 01:20
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I dunno if I've posted in this thread before, but I ended up getting a kindle regifted to me last January and I said gently caress it why don't I go re-read Discworld in publication order, revisit some old favourites and read some of the ones I wasn't interested in as a kid or that I couldn't get my hands on because every book I read before I was 15ish was from Oxfam or the library. Anyhow, I've been at it at various speeds from voracious to full on page-a-day (Eric) depending on the book and I'm finally up to the cloudy, murky late twenties when I was full on skipping books. Started The Amazing Maurice last week and holy baby jesus this is a kid's book? I was expecting some kind of silly stuff about the pied piper, and basically Gaspode but a cat, and some rat hijinx, and I guess I've gotten a bit of all that (especially Sardines). But it's been on a slippery slope, so slippery I'm not quite sure where it started even, probably that line about how humans couldn't possibly be bad enough to write books about a happy talking rat AND put down rat poison every night. All I know is, by the point Dangerous Beans was upset at their clan falling apart and Peaches very kindly read to him from the book I was in bits, which I don't usually feel when I read books to be honest. And then in the super goofy, almost slapstick rat poison in the tea scene when suddenly one of the rat catchers admits that he made a Rat King a load of blocks fell into place in my mind about WHO that was and I was like, "ok maybe I'll go to bed an read this later.." Anyway TL;DR thought book bad, book actually really good
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Aug 6, 2019 15:13
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Pterry famously commented that you could tell when he was writing a book for children because it was darker.
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Aug 6, 2019 15:31
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Shoehead posted:I dunno if I've posted in this thread before, but I ended up getting a kindle regifted to me last January and I said gently caress it why don't I go re-read Discworld in publication order, revisit some old favourites and read some of the ones I wasn't interested in as a kid or that I couldn't get my hands on because every book I read before I was 15ish was from Oxfam or the library. Yes, Pratchett's YA stuff is really top shelf. The only thing that distinguishes it from his main stuff is the age of the protagonist. Don't skip the Tiffany Aching series or Nation either.
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Aug 6, 2019 15:32
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DontMockMySmock posted:Yes, Pratchett's YA stuff is really top shelf. The only thing that distinguishes it from his main stuff is the age of the protagonist. Don't skip the Tiffany Aching series or Nation either. He's also less referential and punny in his YA stuff, which isn't really a bad thing.
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Aug 7, 2019 15:45
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The disassociation scene on the beach in Nation is easily one of the most grim things he's ever written
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Aug 10, 2019 11:45
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Gravitas Shortfall posted:The disassociation scene on the beach in Nation is easily one of the most grim things he's ever written His writing in the YA books tend to be a bit more grim than the other books. One of the Tiffany Aching books for example starts with her having to try and stop a lynchmob that wants to kill a father who raped his own daughter for example.
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Aug 10, 2019 15:25
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He had a very high opinion of what children are capable of understanding and enjoying. You may recall the beginning of Hogfather where Susan basically says outright that the best way to interest a child in reading is to give them something dark or violent enough that most adults would insist that it's far too mature for them, and then just leave them to it. edit: quote:There were lessons later on. These were going a lot better now she’d got rid of the reading books about bouncy balls and dogs called Spot. She’d got Gawain on to the military campaigns of General Tacticus, which were suitably bloodthirsty but, more importantly, considered too difficult for a child. As a result his vocabulary was doubling every week and he could already use words like “disemboweled” in everyday conversation. After all, what was the point of teaching children to be children? They were naturally good at it. Stroth fucked around with this message at 19:31 on Aug 10, 2019 |
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Aug 10, 2019 19:29
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Alhazred posted:His writing in the YA books tend to be a bit more grim than the other books. One of the Tiffany Aching books for example starts with her having to try and stop a lynchmob that wants to kill a father who raped his own daughter for example. I don't think he raped his daughter. I think he beat her until she miscarried. I distinctly remember there being a dead baby in that scene. (fake edit: I looked it up. https://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/Amber_Petty ) That was a HELL of a jarring first chapter.
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Aug 10, 2019 22:10
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Space Butler posted:I don't think he raped his daughter. I think he beat her until she miscarried. I distinctly remember there being a dead baby in that scene. (fake edit: I looked it up. https://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/Amber_Petty ) I misremembered it, but it's still much darker than pretty much all the "main" Discworld books. Alhazred fucked around with this message at 17:07 on Aug 16, 2019 |
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Aug 10, 2019 22:56
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Gravitas Shortfall posted:The disassociation scene on the beach in Nation is easily one of the most grim things he's ever written Nation is my favorite Pratchett novel, period, and a large part of it is precisely that it pulls no punches.
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Aug 12, 2019 04:51
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I bought Nation recently and hearing all this about it makes me excited to start it, but my book backlog is incredibly long.
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Aug 12, 2019 17:28
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Arist posted:I bought Nation recently and hearing all this about it makes me excited to start it, but my book backlog is incredibly long. Don't get too hyped up or you might be disappointed. Nation is fine, I guess.
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Aug 16, 2019 15:27
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Beachcomber posted:Don't get too hyped up or you might be disappointed. Nation is fine, I guess. Nation has an amazing start and an okay finish.
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Aug 16, 2019 15:44
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Arist posted:I bought Nation recently and hearing all this about it makes me excited to start it, but my book backlog is incredibly long. I would park it for a while until you can get out from under the weight of those of us who want to rave about it.
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Aug 18, 2019 00:04
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The Queen saying Tiffany doesn't love her brother and Tiffany almost exactly saying "what's love got to do with it?"
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Sep 6, 2019 03:47
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Shoehead posted:The Queen saying Tiffany doesn't love her brother and Tiffany almost exactly saying "what's love got to do with it?" "War. Huh! What is it good for? Absolutely nothing." Fred Colon, I think.
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Sep 6, 2019 15:15
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