I just finished watching the Hogfather TV special. It was actually pretty good, in a kind of BBC-low-budget way, except with a budget fairy *jingle jingle* providing a bit of a budget to a few things. It's charming, in that it feels very un-hollywood. Some thoughts:
- There was a hilarious joke based on the Intel Inside logo that I did not expect.
- Death of Rats was very well done. It's a pity it didn't have more of a role.
- Death was only moderately well done -- at the very least it wasn't much like I expected.
- Susan was well-cast
- Albert was not at all well-cast
- Mr Teatime's voice was almost identical to Johnny Depp in the Willy Wonka remake. The rest of him was pretty creepy too.
- The wizards were pretty close to right in some ways, but there were not enough of them and Ridcully was completely miscast.
- The sets and scenery were well-done given the budget - some parts used Dr Who style tricks to make sets seem bigger, but that's charming in the way that theatre is - the audience and directors have an unspoken agreement to ignore some tricky elements
- It was fairly faithful to the book. Perhaps a bit too much so - some elements were probably unclear to people who had not read the book.
- Some scene transitions were kind of awkward
- Death's speech is beautifully preserved. I suspect this would make a lot of Americans uncomfortable :)
Added bonus: Beefalo cuddled with me for the whole thing.
Recent random thought - I both spend far too much time alone and get far too many headaches. It would be nice if either of these were to change.
