The half-life on an in-joke

[alexsarll]

Came online with every intention of musing on the joy of having friends where, even when you've not seen them for a couple of years, you can pick up from where you left off as though it had been, at most, a week. Time slips away, and I like that. But I was greeted by the news that the inventor of the remote control and Sheridan Morley have both gone and died, and now I don't feel quite so heartwarmed.

Joss Whedon on the imminent Buffy Season 8 comic; no major spoilers, but anyone getting too excited should bear in mind that whereas he's a master when it comes to TV, in comics he alternates moments of brilliance with severe defects in his storytelling craftsmanship.

There seems to be general delight that the best film ever is to be adapted for the London stage, but I find myself unable to share it. The trend for stage versions of screen hits has always seemed fairly pointless to me; as with the band-based musicals, it's more about bums on seats than art. And even beyond that, while some films can easily be imagined as plays, from its colour/monochrome switches to the immensity of its Heaven, A Matter of Life and Death is not one of them. Add to this that the CV of this 'Tristan Sturrock' hardly reads like that of a man who can fill David Niven's shoes, and I shan't be rushing for tickets.

Possibly the best summary I have ever seen of the classic fantasy races:
Orcs: "English football fans; blokes who come out a football match and like to fight people"
Dwarves: "The northern working class... very proud of their holes in the ground. A proud people whose power has passed and faded"
Elves: "English posh people... lots of times to practise lah-de-dah magic and fighting... think they owe a debt to the great unclean"
Dark Elves: "English posh people who have taken drugs. Lord Byron. English posh people who realise they're above the law and cannot be stopped"
Yes, I've always been rather a fan of dark elves, why do you ask?

Comments

[jermynsavile.livejournal.com]

Of course Robert Adler probably died a few days ago but slid down the back of the sofa and no-one could bloody find him.

[sparkish.livejournal.com]

I'm slightly curious about how the wonder A Matter of Life and Death is going to translate to the stage, but not really enough to get a ticket. I don't know if I want to see some bloke out of Doc Martin pretending to be David Niven...

[magik76.livejournal.com]

Oh go on, A Matter of Life and Death is only £10, I promise to give you good seats when you book ;)

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

I'm honestly not sure I'd go even were it free.

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

Pratchett's dwarfs are clearly Jews though aren't they? Live by a complicated set of rules that make perfect sense to them, have an elite religious class who dress peculiarly and believe that liberal dwarves are 'not really dwarves', fight an ongoing battle with a race of dullards that nobody can exactly remember who started, invest bread with a religious significance... flailing a bit here, umm, like gold?

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

That's certainly one way of reading them now (though given things like the whole subterranean terror aspect, I think he's deliberately left some leeway whereby they could also be muslims, so as not to let the whole thing get too soapboxy). But then except maybe in the first couple of books, Pratchett's dwarves aren't the standard high fantasy dwarves. And even then the Discworld wasn't quite a spoof of the standard fantasy conventions; his elves, for instance, have always been a long way off that set of ideas, and he doesn't even have orcs.

You Glooming tonight or still in the Midlands?

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

Midlands. I suppose I ought to come back to London eventualy.