Smile Please and Again and Again and Again . . .
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Terry Pratchett has become one of the most popular authors alive today and his popularity is richly deserved. But not even with his fertile mind could ever have envisaged the heights to which his Discworld series would rise. This book was first published in 1990 and is number ten in the Discworld novels.
You would think that a fantasy world full of trolls, zombies, witches, vampires would be an alien concept to most readers. Werewolves and dwarves in the Ank Morpork city watch. Wizards running a university. All this born in the mind of one of the funniest minds writing today. Surely this style of writing would have a limited readership? But no the books are loved by anybody and everybody and are read by people who would not normally allow fantasy fiction anywhere near their book shelves. This is the Discworld of Terry Pratchett.
It's the turn of the alchemists to make you chortle through the pages of yet another winner from Terry Pratchett. Is it Hollywood, no, is it Bollywood, no, but it's the next best thing. Moving pictures are about to hit the silver screen on the Discworld. What this means in real terms is that the imps that used to paint really fast in the still cameras, now have to paint really really really fast. All of a sudden there is a whole new life form on the Discworld. Not vampires, werewolves, or even trolls, it is the birth of the filmstar and oh what a messy birth it is.
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Moving Pictures review.
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Moving Pictures is an extremely hilarious book.In Moving Pictures the alchemists guild have invented films and now the oddest civil war film ever made is being shot in Holy Wood.However all is not well and Victor and Ginger,the stars of the film,have to save the Disc from the dungeon dimensions with a bit of help from Gaspode the wonder dog.If you like reading sci-fi and fantasy or if you simply enjoy watching films then read Moving Pictures.If you enjoy this book then try the rest of Terry Prattchett's Discworld series.
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Brilliant Entertainment!
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IF you dont like this book, then theres something wrong with you. This novel is one of my favourite Pratchett's so far. how does he dream this up? The man's a genius. Couldnt put it down. Classic Pratchett at his best.
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Imp-powered cameras, what ever next?
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A stray idea leaks into the discworld through a portal that had been sealed and guarded for hundreds of years, until the last guardian passed away. This idea gravitates towards the bright lights of Ankh-Morpork where it penetrates the unconscious of some of the more receptive minds it finds there. As a result, a very discworldish sort of film industry is born. Soon there are movie-moguls, film stars, fast-food and bad attitudes. And if all that wasn't bad (or good) enough, the horrors from the dungeon dimension are (as usual) trying to elbow (figuratively speaking, as tentacles don't have bony joints) their way in through the leaky portal. Will anyone notice the danger before it's too late? An alert hero and heroine and a wonder dog or two would be useful. It's a very funny and entertaining story, well written by Terry Pratchett and well read by Tony Robinson. Even so, I'm going to have to read the book too. After listening to the audiobook twice, I still have a sense of something missing. The 339 page book has been abridged to a 3 hour reading and I can't help thinking some vital connective tissue has been excised. Why can't the rascals make unabridged readings? I wouldn't mind paying a bit more for the full glory of the whole story.
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Almost perfect....
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Moving Pictures, the 10th Discworld novel, finds Pratchett continuing to move away from satirising the fantasy genre, and marks the first occasion where he uses the device of introducing a real world concept into his fantasy world (later examples include popular music (Soul Music), guns (Men At Arms), and newspapers (The Truth)), in effect using the Discworld as a distorting mirror to hold up against our own world.
In Moving Pictures the concept borrowed from our reality (in this case literally slipping through the cracks of the multiverse) is that of cinema, with the invention of the moving picture sending Ankh-Morpork film crazy. The novel itself plays well with the concept of the power of dreams to influence reality, with the Holy Wood dreams providing a gateway to Lovecraftian Things, complete with a sunken cinema from ancient times that is straight out of Lovecraft's Call of Cthulhu story. The main cast are either original to this book (such as the hero's Victor Tugelbend and Theda Withel) or had previously only been supporting characters (this marks the emergence of Cut-Me-Own-Throat-Dibbler from a one-joke supporting character to a starring role), which means this book is very accessible to those who haven't read every single previous book in the series. Moving Pictures is also the first novel where Pratchett tidies up the supporting cast of wizards from the Unseen University, so that instead of changing from book to book they actually become a strong cast of recurring characters.
When I first read this novel I was convinced that this was as good as the Discworld novels got - re-reading it however does highlight one flaw, which is the amount Pratchett milks his one main idea. There are moments when Pratchett provides a great spin on his concept of Hollywood hitting the Discworld, such a the brilliant finale where thanks to the orang-utan Librarian and a 50-foot woman the climax of King Kong is turned on it's head, or the brain-dead Lassie dog getting all the attention while a real talking dog is ignored, but at other times Pratchett's lampooning of Hollywood seems rather lazy - there is nothing intrinsically funny in his renaming of popcorn as banged corn, or the Oscar statuette as Oswald, or Gone With the Wind as Blow Away - and after about the 100th movie quote Pratchett's one joke stops being amusing.
Still, while it may occasionally seem to be more a collection of homage's to Hollywood and H.P. Lovecraft more than any original concepts, Moving Picture is nevertheless one of Pratchett's better novels, and a good choice for a reader introduction to the insanity of the Discworld.
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