Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Discworld Holiday

As soon as Thanksgiving was over, we felt entitled to a Christmas movie: Terry Pratchett's Discworld movie Hogfather. As I explained in my review of The Colour of Magic, Discworld is a flat planet, carried through space on the back of a giant turtle, where magic works. And every midwinter, on Hogwatch Night, the people of Discworld wait for the Hogfather to come and bring toys to all the boys and girls.

But this year, someone has taken out a contract on the Hogfather with the Guild of Assassins. The guild has assigned a young Mr. Teatime (pronounced Tay-a-ti-may) to the job. A chubby faced Michael J. Pollard type, who seems nice enough, except to his black glass eye and all-white natural one. He immediately sets out to get the Tooth Fairy under his control and sets the process going.

Since the Hogfather seems to be missing on the night, someone has to take his place - so this year Death will be delivering the presents. And his granddaughter, Susan, has to find out what is going on.

This disc contains 2 90-minute made-for-Sky-TV episodes, so there's lots of Discworld for your money. Watch for Tony "Baldrick" Robinson in a small part.

2 comments:

mr. schprock said...

I read Night Watch and thoroughly enjoyed it. The main thing I remember from it is that the police like to drink cocoa instead of coffee or tea. Maybe this will get me back into his books.

Beveridge D. Spenser said...

He wrote 35 Discworld books and 5-6 non-Discworld. I recommend them all, but the Wee Free Men series is particularly nice.

Sadly, Mr. Pratchett has been diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's. He is still doing well, but fears he has no more than a few books left in him. So if you do start reading them, pace yourself.