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Ratatouille (A French rat chef who can cook complements a French human chef who has hands and is allowed in restaurants)

I generally like animated films. And I used to like stories about talking rats. But somehow I felt I'd reached a limit, and this looked insipid. However, several people watching it had said it was very good, so maybe I'll have to see it after all.

Transformers

I quite like the idea of making the movie seriously. The story of the transformers, while hokey, has a lot of depth. The trailer looks promising.

Unfortunately, people who've seen it tend to say it doesn't work, that cool effects try to carry the movie, but don't.

Stardust by Neil Gaiman

Ooh. I liked Stardust a lot more the second time I read it. I feel it could work well as a movie; there's not much *plot* but a lot of exciting things and character interaction and sparkly impressive things happen. And Gaiman seems excited, so you assume you got it right.

I'd *like* to see American Gods, but that probably has a heft more appropriate to an opera than a few hours of movie :)

Good Omens would be *amazing* but ever so difficult to get right.

Hellboy 2

OK, now Guillermo del Toro directed Pan's Labyrinth, am I allowed to think Hellboy has artistic merit? Actually, it was just a classic superhero film, though I tend to like those. But I love Hellboy and Abe, and the Nazi mysticism is ominous rather than ridiculous. I do hope the sequel is good, I could see it being entirely empty, or more fleshed than the first.

Date: 2007-07-19 02:47 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] the-alchemist.livejournal.com
Good Omens would be *amazing* but ever so difficult to get right.

Also, they almost certainly wouldn't let me play War even though I have the right hair and everything.

Date: 2007-07-19 03:25 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com
ROFL. We'll all have to make sacrifices to bring this about :)

Date: 2007-07-19 03:12 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] http://users.livejournal.com/vitriol_/
I agree how difficult Good Omens would be to get right, but Terry Gilliam (who's been trying to get it made for years now) is certainly someone I'd trust to at least give it a decent try. Unfortunately he's never been able to raise the funding. I suspect he usually gets as far in his pitch as "Well, it's a comedy about the apocalypse where the Antichrist is the hero..."

Date: 2007-07-19 03:22 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com
LOL. *I'd* fund that. Though that doesn't tell it all, it's considerably more serious than I'd *expect* a comedy about the apocalypse to be :)

For that matter, if I was just thinking in terms of money, I'd think I could do worse than filming an adoption of a Pratchett, if I thought it could be done well.

After all, there have been great adaptions of Hitchhikers, and that's REALLY difficult to do right, though admittedly they were done partly by Douglas Adams :)

Date: 2007-07-23 11:31 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] minipoppy.livejournal.com
And yet Gilliam apparently managed to get the funding for Tidelands with the pitch: so it's about a little girl, and her friends; depacitated dolls, her dead moudly father, a sexually mature, mentally handicapped teenage boy and an insane lady who stuffs and has sex with the dead father. Oh yeah, and I'll have some talking squirrels, for the kids.
Shudder.

Date: 2007-07-19 03:13 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] pogodragon.livejournal.com
I'd love to see Good Omens - that was the book that convinced me that both Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett were worth persevering with, I wasn't convinced by either of them until I read that one.

Date: 2007-07-19 03:25 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com
Someone once said of collaborations that both parties feel it's unfair because they feel they're doing 90% of the work. And why was that? Because they are; it's a whole lot more work.

The only time it makes sense commercially is when a famous author writes an outline and an aspiring author fills in the gaps, but that's not very satisfying artistically.

But Good Omens is a great example. I think both authors said never again, but it's a wonderful book because they manage to combine their strengths.

Date: 2007-07-19 03:33 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] pogodragon.livejournal.com
Absolutely - TP got a storyline, and NG got some humour (ok, I admit I'm in the minority in my opinion of both of those writers), which I think they both badly needed at that point.

I still find NG's prose hard to read, TP I enjoy in bursts every few years or so now.

Date: 2007-07-23 09:39 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com
Yes. Although, funnily enough, Pratchett does pretty nice stories, and Gaiman *is* humorous, but somehow the melding makes those not just good but permeate every aspect of the book :)

I've a habit of thinking of authors who would complement each other (eg. JKR, gripping read, decent mystery plots, entertaining if sometimes stereotyped characters, magical world, but the plots are a little inconsistent out, and the world terribly so. Piers Anthony, vice versa: decent read, kind of wayward plots, interesting characters with the most painful sexual stereotypes imaginable, magical world, but some great ideas about making magic predictable). I wouldn't have considered TP/NG because they're both quite good, with no complete gaping holes crying to be filled, but that means their collaberation worked in the end.

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