A is for Adaptions

[selenak]

Good fannish news to look forward to in a busy life: there will be an adaption of Good Omens for tv, by Terry Jones, no less. The combinaton of Terry Prattchet, Neil Gaiman and an ex-Monty Python sounds almost too good to be true. Incidentally, while I love individual works by either writer better than this collaboration, Good Omens is definitely

Comments

[trcunning]

At least with Terry Jones at the head we can be sure they won't do what "The Dark is Rising" did & ape all the people that had aped them. (That bastard of a movie tried to retroactively ruin my childhood >:| )

Casting will be hard though, so many people that have been talked about thru the years are too old now (ie Pete Postlethwaite).

[selenak]

Well, there is no lack of talented younger British actors, and I don't have any particular image in my head, so I'm open to anything.

[airie_fairy]

I'm so jazzed for this Good Omens thing. Terry freaking Jones! And I'm thrilled its going to be a series, so it can sprawl. I'm already curious about casting. I'm very attached to the images in my head.

I haven't read any Gaiman yet, but I've read a ton of Discworld at this point and I think Good Omens, for its particular combination of wit and gravity of philosophical themes and a cast probably among the most memorable one-off characters of Pratchett's (I think he generally does way better as a series writer), might still win for me. Possibly Reaper Man could beat it.

[selenak]

Terry freaking Jones indeed!

Re: one shot Pterrys: I think my favourite is Small Gods.

Re: Neil Gaiman - you haven't? Hmmmm. Where to start... Well, his opus magnum is of course Sandman, which is to Gaiman what Discworld is to Prattchet, but if you want to start with the novels and don't have time for a series right now, well, here's a more recent one shot, The Graveyard Book, as an entry.

[airie_fairy]

In retrospect, I like Small Gods a lot more than I did at the time of reading -- it was more impactful than most of the other one-offs, Vorbis is probably the best villain figure he wrote, and I still want a series about the Ephebian philosophers -- but I still feel like he didn't say anything too challenging on the themes he was writing about, which is a shame. I think some other books did better on them.

I'm very curious about The Graveyard Book. I started Stardust, I just never really got anywhere. Most of my familiarity with Gaiman is movie adaptations (Stardust, Coraline) or projects he's been involved with (Mirrormask). And his blog.

[selenak]

Stardust the book is okay-ish but nothing great by Gaiman standards; it always gave me a throwaway feeling. Coraline the film has one crucial difference to the book which I'm still torn about, and that's a whole new character - in the book, it's solely Coraline and the cat, the film adds what's his name, and I can see one of the reasons - it gives Coraline someone other than the cat to talk to, thus revealing her feelings, which in a book you can do via descriptions of state of mind, which is not a cinematic thing. But the addition also gives Coraline's crowning moment of awesome (the very deliberate trap she makes for the Other Mother's hand, with no one's help) to a boy, and, well, not really happy about that.

My favourite Gaiman novels are American Gods and The Graveyard Book; but as I said, Sandman is the opus magnum and the one he'll be remembered for, and really made me see comics in a whole new light back when I read it, newly appreciating them as a narrative art form. Despite now having read many more great comic book

[ffutures]

Damn - that means I really need to get on with my Jessica Jones story because everyone will be writing her once the show airs!

[selenak]

They will.:) It's as good a muse call as any!

[wee_warrior]

Alias gets turned into a TV show? I'm very tentatively optimistic, but it really depends who is writing and producing (and here's hoping they cast a competent lead and not the latest fashionable face).

[selenak]

Like I said, Melissa Rosenberg as writer/producer sounds good, and yes, here's hoping for a good leading actress... so if they manage to stay true to the character, it might be great.

[fallingtowers]

I was delighted to hear the Good Omens news -- I have high hopes for that one.

Since I'm not into comics at all, I hadn't even heard about Jessica Jones before, but your description of her as a classic female noir detective intrigues me. If they keep that on the show, as you would want them to, I think I might watch it as it airs. I quite like the noir genre, but it's often very male-centric and even misogynist, so that would be a breath of fresh air for me.

[selenak]

Here's a key scene from the first Alias (that's the name of Jessica's original comic book) volume, which an enthusiastic actress plays out. (Nothing to do with the planned tv series, the clip is two years old.) Jessica, originally hired to investigate what she thought would be a simple case of concerned woman not wanting her sister with the wrong guy, came across a murder scene instead and thus ends up being interrogated by the police:

[fallingtowers]

Thanks a lot for linking it -- that was awesome! Now I'm even more curious to see Jessica as a heroine gracing my TV screen (or, rather, PC screen).