The fourth entry in the little series celebrating the 30th anniversary of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld is admittedly not a good choice for the season, but Hogfather is next in the order of adapted books. The two-part, three hour television movie was actually the first live-action ever of a Discworld novel – after a long search, Terry Pratchett had finally found the right kind of filmmakers to bring his ideas to life in 2006. Hogfather was more or less a test balloon, but with a carefully written script, an inspired casting and brilliant design, this film really nailed it and opened up the door for more great live-action Discworld adaptations. The british DVD release came from Fox since the movie was a SkyOne production, but the studio really made a good effort and put together the great special features this movie deserved.

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Today, instead of a new review, I want to rant a little about a trailer that surfaced this weekend. Apparently there’s a movie called Gravity from Alfonso Cuarón being released this Autumn and the trailer, actually more a teaser, first promises to be about the experiences of two astronauts on some unidentified Space Shuttle mission. But then all hell breaks loose, the shuttle and the space station seem to be destroyed and the two astronauts, played by Sandra Bullock and George Clooney, are marooned in space. This is all that’s known about the movie at the moment, but even based on this, my first reaction was: why does it always have to be destruction? So many great stories could be told on the ISS and generally in the realms of current human space exploration, but Hollywood has always got to be negative and serious. 

The third entry in the little series for the 30th anniversary of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld is the animated adaption of Soul Music, one of his most fascinating novels. The story about the evolution of music on the Discworld had been considered as completely unfilmable because of the musical requirements, but Cosgrove Hall nevertheless did the impossible and came up with not only brilliant animation and wonderful voice actors, but also a fantastic soundtrack with a lot of amazing songs. All this makes Soul Music much more than just an average animated television series besides being one of the most creative Discworld adaptations. The British DVD release is much better than the simultaneously produced Wyrd Sisters, but unfortunately it is also still out of print at the moment in England.

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