Thursday, March 17, 2005

Whereas 'Constantine' is actually just a small village in Cornwall.

Moving on from the recent shock revelation that the Seven Pillars of Wisdom in Thing are not in fact magic, but rather metaphorical, here are five books that would make fantastic movies if you made an adaptation based on the title rather than the contents:

THE CODE OF THE WOOSTERS: CIA cryptologist Keanu Reeves must prevent the crowning of Vaticania's first clone pope by decoding the cryptic scribbles left down the back of at least three different sofas in France by the beautiful but deadly Wooster twins, Ambrosia and McNulty.

'TIME OUT LOS ANGELES GUIDE!' cry the inhabitants of that famous city as a holidaying british lass, only recently promoted from the Brownies, tries rather too hard to get every craft badge available in one afternoon. May contain crazy dancing.

LITTLE WOMEN: Actual little women. Only in space, like.

THESAURUS: Prequel to the popular 'Thesaurus Destroys MechaThesaurus' film of 1963.

THE LOOKING GLASS WAR: Duelling mages in modern-day New York fight an underground war using enchanted mirrors. Protagonist discovers himself to be merely one of many reflections of the evil head wizard, who lives in a secret apartment underneath Central Park, and can only be killed by having a fragment from the broken remains of the First Mirror (created by, I dunno, the Angel Gabriel prob'ly) pushed into his heart by an animal with a symmetrical name. Protagonist rejoices when he discovers both his and the villain's name is Mr. Snore Herons, but is nearly thwarted when a close re-reading of an ancient prophecy specifies true visual symmetry rather than a simple palindrome. Fortunately, quick-witted protagonist realizes he is but moments away from a fish stall, and the film climaxes with him slapping the villain to death with a dab.*

*Yes all right. Matt's pointed it out now in the comments (within seconds, may I add, so if your websites are late, that's why), and the blog subheading has been revised accordingly.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Visual symmetry of the word or the animal? 'cos the 'a' is going to be a bit of a bugger, as someone once very amusingly said about the letter a... or something.

James Henry said...

It's the very ususual Constantine dAb.

An excellent point though. Once again my basic lack of research send an otherwise promising project down, basically, the shitter.

James Henry said...

Not so much. A dab is a small, inoffensive flatfish, whereas a john dory is sort-of-flat, but with more spiky bits, and generally a bit more scary-looking.

Anonymous said...

Well, I loved "The Code of the Woosters". Not Keanu though - maybe Steven Seagal making his comeback?

patroclus said...

Ah, Mr Henry. The Thesaurus and MechaThesaurus thing had them (well, me) rolling in the aisles here at Quinquireme Towers. Here's a comedy craft badge for you to sew on to the left sleeve of your cod-militaristic mini shirt-dress.