DC

Top 5 You’d Like to See Be Movies/TV shows

| mlatimerridley
Latimer musing over her Top 5's (kawaii artwork inspired by Miss Wah)
Latimer musing over her Top 5’s (kawaii artwork inspired by Miss Wah)

Latimer: There are some fantastic BookTubers on YouTube.

One of them is The Readables. She does this great Tag every Wednesday, called Top 5 Wednesday. This Tag was started by Lainey on Goodreads; and it’s basically a weekly prompt of ‘Top 5’s’. Here’s the link if you want to check it out: Lainey!

And this is a complete list of everyone partaking in the Tag if you want to check them out! 

I’m taking some inspiration for posts from this Tag, though I won’t be doing it in any particular order (and it will be on a Sunday!). It’s just for fun, because some of the prompts are quite interesting and force you to think a bit, plus maybe it will inspire me to read a bit more!

For this Tag, I also won’t necessarily be using books as my main basis; I’m going to include characters and situations in graphic novels, comic series, books, TV shows and movies!

So! On to the first Top 5:

Top Books/Comics You’d Like to See Be Movies/TV shows

This is a hard one! But well, let’s see how ole Latimer gets on!

1. The Sandman by Neil Gaiman – TV SERIES

joseph-gordon-levitt-sandman

To this day I have lots of mixed feeling about the series. There were things I loved and things I didn’t, as with all experiences! But I do think it would make a very interesting TV Show. There does seem to be some whispers again that something might be happening with The Sandman in the future, but we’ll wait and see.

Anyways, I think HBO could do amazing things with this material. The Endless as a character set would be pretty interesting to see in the flesh; the unstable Delirium; wise Destiny, who has a book called the Cosmic Log chained to his hand; bitchy Desire, who is neither man nor a woman (called Sister-Brother by the others) and lives in Threshold, a giant flesh and blood replica of itself; Despair (twin of Desire, nice touch!), who wears no clothes and is always in pain; Death a Goth girl who once a year, for one day, lives and dies as a moral; and the protagonist Dream, the Sandman.

The series spans all of space and time, there’s lots of stories to tell along with the main story arc. There are plenty of crazy out-there concepts that could only come from the mind of Neil Gaiman; and they are very cinematic! It could be a great TV show.

2. Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett – MOVIE

goodomens

I love this book! These two writers are a perfect complement to one another – you can tell they must have had fun plotting this story out.

The story is about the coming apocalypse which is supposed to happen at the hands of Adam Young, the son of the Devil, who doesn’t know who he really is and doesn’t behave as the Anti-Christ should.

There are four horsepeople (Pestilence is now Pollution because Pestilence had to retire due to the discovery of penicillin; and War is a woman); the unlikely team up of an angel and demon;; and the descendant of Angus Nutter, a witch who predicted all of this happening, all racing to find the Anti-Christ.

This would be such a funny, quirky movie – they could make it in a British film style. I think it would be great.

3. Discworld series by Terry Pratchett – TV SERIES

discworld

Okay, so technically there have been a few TV specials of various different Discworld novels, but I think it would make a great ongoing TV show, with new stories; or even a totally new group of characters set in the Discworld. There could be a new/original main story arc, with the new characters interacting with various classic Discworld characters.

It could be made in the same style as Doctor Who, quirky and off-beat, serious but not serious. It would definitely need Terry Pratchett to develop the new story line though.

4. Wildwood Dancing by Juliet Marillier – STOP-MOTION MOVIE

Wildwood-Dancing

This would be a get stop-motion movie; made by Laika. It’s the story of the 12 dancing princesses, or a take on that idea.

It’s set in maybe 1600’s Romania. The book follows these five sisters who every night go dancing in the fairy realm with lots of magical creatures, then return home before the gates close between the two worlds. The main character Jaina has a pet frog (more a friend) that she found in the woods; they have a telepathic link to one another.

Trouble starts when her older sister falls in love with a vampire from the fairy world. It would make an amazing stop-motion movie. I just made myself sad now because I’ll never get to see it – *sigh*

5. A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson – TV SERIES

Bill_bryson_a_short_history

This was a really amazing book. It’s full of information and it was a damn struggle to read, but so worth it in the end. I actually need to re-read it, there’s so much in it that you start to forget it almost straightaway.

It covers geology, physics, chemistry and biology and how all the various major discovers in each field were developed; it also has lots of stories about all the quirky and down-right strange people who made all these discoveries and how they did.

It would be an amazing TV series.

Do you guys have any thoughts on what you’d like to see as a movie or TV show?

If you want to start using this Tag, check out the link to Lainey’s thread on Goodreads – anyone can use it!

Get Animated!

| mlatimerridley

Latimer: We went to an event in the Science Gallery on Friday night (the Science Gallery is located in Trinity college). It was held by the PEGBAR Irish animators network. I was late… and word to the wise, DO NOT try and run on wet cobblestones (of which there are many in Trinity) – it doesn’t end well!

Ridley: While she was slipping and sliding her way to the event, I was already there waiting for her, with a name badge on and surrounded by very friendly strangers. Picture, crowds milling around with glasses of wine at the reception, everyone grinning, laughing and waving towards people who they hadn’t seen in ages, it was like one big reunion. I think the animation world, in Ireland anyway, is a small one. And then there was me, not even a proper hobbyist animator never mind a professional, trying to look like I belonged. I was doing the ‘I‘m texting lots of people and looking up important things on my phone, not desperate for anyone to talk to me, nope nope‘…in the corner! I was going for busy but still approachable look! It worked in the end, I randomly made a new friend who was also waiting around near me. It turned out he was a freelance animator, so I got to pepper him with questions and see some of his cool artwork. It was really great to get an insight into the job by someone ‘in the biz’ and to hear what he thought of it.

Beware the cobblestones! Beware!

Latimer: I arrived for the talk, which started with a colourist from Marvel comics, Jordie Bellaire (she worked for DC and others, very lucky :)).

Marvelous Marvel 🙂

She was talking about the importance of colours and mood, and this can also be seen in movies. She was so enthusiastic and animated about her work; even when she wasn’t ‘working’, her mind was fixed on colours. She would watch movies and list out the colours in the scenes. It’s always really cool to see someone so inspired by what they do 🙂

Ridley: Really inspiring! She seemed like a really cool person too. Her talk opened my eyes to seeing films and images in a different way! Who knew the use of colour could have so much impact on a scene and on the feelings of the audience, really interesting!

Latimer: Then there was a talk from Nora Twomey, she is a director from the Irish animation studio, Cartoon Saloon. (Ridley: One of my favourite Irish studios! I love their work! I was dying to hear what she had to say!) She was showing some of the short films she had worked on and talking about getting them funded and the compromises you have to make with scenes and moments you have to leave out.

It made me think of when you’re writing and there are times you want to say more and show another scene, but in the end, the story is better off without it (no matter how in love with the moment you were!). It’s hard to cut them out, but it makes a tighter story in the end. (Ridley: Very true!)

There was this one film she showed; it really stuck with me, it was really atmospheric and drew me in. (Ridley: Creepy too…in a delightful way…is that possible, to be delightfully creepy? haha) 

The studio also did some work for TG4 (that’s TG Ceathair, an all-Irish-speaking TV channel we have here in Ireland). The cartoon studio were asked to do some short animations to Irish songs, the series called Anam an Amhráin (Soul of the Song).

This song is about a young 9 year old girl who is in love with a shoemaker, wants to marry him and runs away from home to be with him! In the actual animation, they felt this was a bit too much, so instead they made her dream of the shoe maker when she slips on the hill! (Ridley: It’s an absolutely gorgeous song. This is Irish at it’s best and most beautiful.)

I got caught up with these and wanted to know what other songs had been animated… this is what I found…

This one is about a woman to wants to be Paddy’s wife and wishes his actual wife ill… her struggles are desperate but pretty funny! (Ridley: Haha, this is good, she even wishes a broken foot and hand on the wife!!)

This next one is about the Irish pirate queen Gráinne Mhaol, or Grace O’Malley… ‘Óró Sé do Bheatha ‘Bhaile’ is an interesting song, it started out originally about Bonnie Prince Charlie and was a Jacobite rebel song.. then later in the 1900s it became a rebel song about Grace O’Malley coming to Ireland with her warriors to free the land from English rule. In the video it seems mostly about Grace’s life.

All and all, pretty interesting, particularly because the event made me look for these videos :)! 

Ridley: It was a great night, I loved seeing all the Irish language work that’s being done! Not to mention, we went for yummy Korean food afterwards, it was so tasty *happy sigh*.