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More on "Good Omens" the Movie and Coraline
In a recent e-mail exchange I had with Neil Gaiman he confirmed that Terry Gilliam is the director for the adapation of Good Omens to the screen. On a side note, Gaiman has been working on Coraline and will be doing a signing of the book in the Barnes and Noble in Union
Square, NYC on Thursday the 11th. That's today. Update: 07/11 13:15 GMT by CT : I just wanted to
say 'Curse Your Terry Gilliam'! Ever since I read Good Omens, I wished I
was a film director just so I could direct that book. I guess
Terry will do a good job too ;)
That's not a good omen...
I have been pwned because my
Excuse me? Terry is primarily a director, responsible for cinematic masterpieces like Brazil, Time Bandits, Twelve Monkeys, and the (underrated, IMHO) Adventures of Baron Munchausen. Perhaps you're thinking of Terry Pratchett, who co-wrote the book with Gaiman?
Perhaps you meant here, or perhaps here.
The only thing you can accurately describe as "Scotch" is a sticky tape made by 3M. And it's
Choosing Terry Gilliam to do Good Omens is perfect. His style and dark humour complement Pratchett and Gaiman's wierd little epic. Although Terry Gilliam is American, he is one of the few directors I'd trust to do this with the right British touch (not too much, but not too little as well).
Now we can hope for an intelligent comedy that doesn't resort to butt (fart) jokes.
Clearly whoever wrote that hasn't read one or either of those books.
ISTR PTerry saying that Mort had been optioned, and certainly Soul Music and Wyrd Sisters have already been turned into (reasonably good) animated films.
The only thing you can accurately describe as "Scotch" is a sticky tape made by 3M. And it's
I pushed the Good Omens on my son last year, and in conversations realized something...
Much of the humor is rooted in the 70's. He enjoyed the book, and much of the humor is not rooted in the 70's. But he wasn't culturally equipped to enjoy it as much as I did.
OTOH, he did get into Bohemian Rhapsody after that.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Dont mean to put a damper on things but this is old news. Good Omens has been in pre-production for 3 years now and Terry Gilliam was always going to direct it. The Hold ups have been with money and financing, not the production team or cast list. Last I saw Terry was waiting to see if the finance would be tied up in time to shoot Good Omens or wether it would get moved down the list a way while he shot Tideland.
If you have actually read this book you would know that the footnotes are often the best and funniest parts of a all around good tale about the biblical apocalypse. How will any director mention the different misprint versions of the bible that the angel and sonetimes bookstore owner has collected?
I'm actually very interested to see if this thing pans out. I just hope that the history of the british monetary system actually makes it into the movie
I thought you were refering to a forth part to "The Omen" series...
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
I hope this isn't too far off topic... but if you want to see Terry Giliams flair for darkness & humor combined... go out and rent 'Brazil'. I think he's the man do to this movie right.
Blender And Linux Fan
To get a lot of the jokes in Good Omens it helps if you have read any of Richmal Compton's Just William books.
Read them to your kids; but do read a little bit. Your appreciation of the satire in Good Omens will increase.
StrutterX
Umm, what? Two decades ago would be 1982. In that year, he wrote some of the sketches Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl and the year after, he directed Monty Python's The Meaning of Life. Doesn't sound too distant to me. But, let's give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you meant "18 years" when you said "two decades". In the last 18 years, he's done Brazil, Baron Munchausen, The Fisher King, Twelve Monkeys, and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. You mentioned Munchausen already, but, really, if you didn't think all the rest (with the exception of Fisher King) where comedies, well, then, you didn't understand them. They may not be as outright silly as Python, but they're still comedies, and with Twelve Monkeys, it even approaches Pythonesque silliness in some places. Saying Brazil isn't a comedy is like saying Fight Club isn't a comedy. If you didn't think it was funny, you didn't get it...
This is a self-referential sig
Due to a lack of any posts on this article, and a few ignorant posts that are here, it would seem that Slashdotters don't really know or care about "Good Omens" or what it is. Here's a post to clue you all in. (If you've actually read the book, stop reading. No really! Go read something about Donald Knuth or some rant about Microsoft. Shoo!)
Good Omens is a book co-written by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett in (I believe) the early 90's. Neil Gaiman is most famous for writing the Sandman comics (graphic novellas?). Terry Pratchett is most famous for writing the many books in the Discworld series. Basically, Gaiman writes dark and brooding stories, Pratchett writes intensely clever and funny stories. "Good Omens" is the brilliant collaboration of these two minds, producing a hilarious account of Armageddon. The book has been most compared to "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", and while they do share many common qualities, "Good Omens" is more readable and enjoyable to me.
Why should you care? Because the book is THAT good, and Terry Gilliam is THAT good of a director, and the combination of the two could produce a movie that is THAT good. What's the last movie that came out in the theaters that is a genuine cult classic and will be for years to come? It's been a while. Several years. It's hard to come up with one, isn't it? Well, a movie based on "Good Omens" directed by Terry Gilliam has a lot of potential to be just that: a genuine quotable flick that we can watch dozens of times over and enjoy it each and every time.
Again, what I'm saying is important here is that the *potential* is there for a really great movie that we could all love and enjoy, and we should all be pushing for it's release. Wouldn't it be much cooler if we built up hype about this potentially great movie rather than lamenting about how much George Lucas sucks and how he flushed Star Wars down the toilet?
I suggest consulting Gaiman's weblog which he tends to update at least daily. That way you get his writing without having to wait for the next book, comments, opinions, essays, little short stori es he throws in just because, cool things he's found, etc. a
I had the good fortune to go to Gaiman's reading of Coraline last week in Berkeley (the day the book was released, he did a full 3-hour reading of the text to a packed cathedral of 800 people).
Before he began, he confirmed that Henry Selick (Nightmare Before Christmas, James and the Giant Peach, Monkeybone), who was in attendance, would be directing the movie version of Coraline, and that Michelle Pfeiffer was signed on to play the Mother/Other Mother roles.
It's a great story, and is sort of a shift for Gaiman, targeting a broader aged audience, while remaining dark but more polished (no footnotes, and a more constant narrative tone). The reading was fabulous, and I could totally visualize the movie version.
A friend of mine did a more thorough write-up of the reading for those interseted.
Kevin Fox
No, because I feel the great strength of Watchmen is in how perfectly suited it is to its medium. I think Watchmen is a damn near perfect example of what a graphic novel ought to be. And I know, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that most of what I love about Watchmen would not survive the transition to film. Hollywood has never hesitated to take a chainsaw to a good story.
I seriously hope Watchmen never becomes a movie.
If they want a short title for the film they could try: "Apocalypse? Now?"