Well, have done a bit of blog template editing. Re-formatting archive links & setting up "permalinks" so my many fans :) <ahem> can make proper links to particular entries they might like to send people from within their site or blog. As far as I know only one person has seen this apart from me, but you've got to live in hope or die in despair. Let's see how things work out.

Interesting to consider what other popular films might be redone in similar ways to this (below) - Harry the Clayworker (I have seen a parody book recently called Barry Trotter) or The Matrix. There's a grand tradition of these folk parodies. This sounds a bit like the Mystery Science Theatre (or whatever it is called) that they have in America - have seen tapes/DVDs for sale on US sites, but have only seen one version on really late (taped it) here a year or three back. It was an 'annotated' version of This Island Earth, which is actually a rather better film than the junky ones they apparently usually redo.

Wish I could remember which one I saw done recently as a sketch in a Strine/Blokey Australian way. There was a group here a few years back that did similar things 'live' in movie theatres as the film played. Their name was a pun on one of the movies.

Russia's cult video pirate rescripts Lord of the Rings as gangster film
film.guardian.co.uk/lordoftherings/news/0,11016,983354,00.html
Nick Paton Walsh in Moscow
Sunday June 22, 2003
The Observer

They call him the Goblin. He is the new toast of Russia's massive pirate video industry, his films sought all over Moscow. The trick of his silver screen success is that the Goblin redubs Hollywood movies, using his own 'better' Russian alternative to the script.

A former senior police investigator from St Petersburg, Dmitri Puchkov began by making fresh translations to replace the appalling subtitles on pirated films. But now his cult following has found pan-Russian appeal, with a ground-breaking rewrite of the first two parts of The Lord of the Rings ...

The new, irreverent version of The Lord of the Rings is set in Russia. Frodo Baggins is renamed Frodo Sumkin (a derivative from the Russian word sumka, or bag). The Ranger, Aragorn, is called Agronom (Russian for farm worker). Legolas is renamed Logovaz, after a Russian car company famed for its Ladas. Boromir becomes Baralgin, after a Russian type of paracetemol.

Gandalf spends much of the film trying to impress others with his in-depth knowledge of Karl Marx, and Frodo is cursed with the filthy tongue of a Russian criminal...

(There's a copy of this article at Buzzle too www.buzzle.com/editorials/6-22-2003-42004.asp )
[permalink][comment] - posted by Mez @ 6/28/2003 03:12:00 am