Moving Pictures

If you have read Terry Pratchett, you already know that any of his books will make you snort with laughter when you least expect it, and this one is no exception. All Pratchett’s books are 5 star in my estimation. This one has even more elements of parody than some of them. You can probably guess of what. If you have not read Pratchett, I would not necessarily recommend this as the first book to read. He has lots of repeating characters and some of the humor in his works comes from the reader’s familiarity with them. Oddly, I would also not recommend the first Disc World book (The Color of Magic). He was just getting traction then. I personally like the Weird Sisters series, Mort and its sequels, and the Men of the Nightwatch series. Also Going Postal and Making Money. But frankly, all of Pratchett’s work is charming, whimsical, ironic and just plain hysterical, so you really can’t go wrong with any of them. Nobody can turn a phrase like the Brits, from Saki to Wodehouse to Pratchett to a lot more I probably don’t know about.

One of my favorite Pratchett books! This is actually a re-purchase as my old paperback copy fell apart from being read so many times. I’m a big fan of hollywood history, and I love the fantasy spin on in that Pratchett has put on it here. It’s funny and inventive, full of fun anachronisms, and even a little sweet at times.

Though this discworld novel falls outside of the various groupings of books Pratchett has created (such as the group of night watch books, or Rincewind books), there are still several familiar faces. Cut Me Own Throat Dibler makes a memorable appearance as one of the discs first movie producers, and I believe this is the first book to feature Gaspode the Wonder Dog. You’ll also see some cameos from Ankh-Morpork, including old Windle Poons and the other wizards at Unseen University.

It’s a great standalone story, though, and a good jumping-in point for anyone new to the discworld series. There were several passages that really did make me laugh out loud on one or two occasions, and grin widely on several others. Despite always being classified as a “humor writer”, Terry Pratchett’s stories also have a warmth to them that many other authors lack. The characters are well-written and are the types of characters that feel instantly familiar as soon as you meet them. This isn’t just a funny book–it’s smart, witty, touching, intriguing, and sometimes a little zany. And well worth reading.

Up til now, “The Truth” and “Twisted Sisters” (hell, they’re all good, find a really bad one, just one!) were my favorite discworlds. But this … this insane sendup of Hollywood grabbed me by the medulla oblongata, wrung it in 3D, and I KNEW that, verdad, this IS the stuff that dreams are made of.
Pratchett’s captured the very spirit of the Thing emanating out of that hillside in Socal and created a hilarious sendup of it. From page one, you know the game is afoot, magic will be made, and, and, The Show Must Go On.
Moving Pictures premiers my most beloved Discworld character, Gaspode. Why Gaspode? one may ask. Because for me it’s personal. I am a Gaspode in real life, the horrible bulletheaded fleabit plain as mud mutt whose intelligence, wit and competence everyone ignores, looks over (literally, in this case) while they remain entranced with the beautiful, grace and magnificence of Lassie, cleft-chinned, handsome wonder dog to whom the gods gave less brains than a head of lettuce.
As Gaspode, green with jealousy (and probably other things) grumbled of Laddie under his horrid breathe,
“A star is whelped.”
Oddly, Picture’s weakest characters are the bigger than life stars Victor and Ginger. Off screen, two dimensional, passionless, not the sharpest tacks in the board, these two. But the magic of cellulose has created from them Characters Bigger Than Life. So, though other reviewers here have criticized Pictures for this seeming fault, I believe Pratchett, displaying subtlety finer than a footnote, penned the two just that way with Great Purpose~ in order to frame, to display, to PROJECT the dissonance twixt the reality of stardom’s real lives and the magic of fame born of the silver screen.
The closest I can get to an actual Critical Review* would be to mention that Pictures transparently** reveals The Formula which Pratchett employs in several of his works such as The Truth and Soul Music. And we, the audience, are NEVER to look at The Man Behind The Screen, right? Right?
*Everyone’s a critic, right?
**It’s part of the … entertainment value that reality is suspended and being able to see the backside of the props, er, REsuspends it, so to speak.

The evil spirit of Tinseltown invades Discworld. Lots of fun movie references. Unfortunately, many are to very old films, that are meaningful to old film fans. If you remember the half-clad strongman who began every J. Arthur Rank (British) film in the mid-20th century by bashing a huge disc-shaped brass gong, you will chuckle at the allusion. If you are not old enough, you are actually better off!

Gaspode the Wonder Dog is the hero of the story, and the wisest character, though he’s the only one who knows it. But Sir Terry and I appreciate him, and, despair not, he appears on several later stories.

This was a re-read for me, but I read it so long ago that I’d almost forgotten it. The last guardian of the Holy Wood slips into death without appointing a successor and so the gate between the Discworld and the dark realms beyond begins to leak ideas and so the moving picture industry inserts itself into the lives of Ankh Morpork’s citizenry with Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler becoming a movie magnate. Everyone wants to be a star, though Victor, perpetual student at the Unseen University, doesn’t (because it’s too much like hard work). He gets to be a star anyway, and proves to be quite good at it. He’s one of the few who realises the growing problem as whatever it is, gets closer to breaking through. This is Pratchett’s satire on the movie industry and the idea of being famous for being famous. It features some characters we know already, including the Librarian and DEATH, and also introduces a few more including Gaspode the talking dog and Archchancellor Mustrum Ridcully. Though not quite a five star Pratchett this one is a solid four.