Two different approaches to blowing things up

[davidn]

I'm afraid I've got some bad news, boys. Undeterred by their track record over the last fifty years or so, some Americans have decided to wheel out their world-renowned powers of adapting British television again and are doing a version of Top Gear that's to be broadcast on The History Channel for some reason.

There have been rumours about this for a long time, but having not heard about it for a while, I thought some sensible person involved with the project had gone "No, let's just leave it alone - clearly the British do everything much better, so let's start showing the UK version in its entirety rather than the edited-down cut-up version that we fob them off with just now.". But after a period of silence, a trailer for an adaptation starring some people you've never heard of, some jeans and two dazzling chequered shirts has emerged - you're welcome to draw your own conclusions.

I found out about this thanks to a preview that we saw in the cinema, where we had actually gone to see Red. I hadn't ever heard of the graphic novel that it was based on, but it's basically about a group of balding men and HM the Queen on the run from the CIA - they come after Bruce Willis, forgetting that he's Bruce Willis and can beat everyone up easily with bad Photoshop powers on his side.

It wasn't quite as hilarious as I had been expecting from the concept - the highlight comes somewhere in the middle where there's a nicely impossible part involving batting grenades back to the thrower with a rifle and shooting a rocket in mid-air, but it's still worth watching to see Helen Mirren with a Gatling gun.

Comments

[e-to-the-ipi.livejournal.com]

Red was a three issue mini Ellis put out around 2003, when he was doing a lot of that sort of thing. It's one of those times he stops being a self-parody, and produces something that's jsut really rather good.

Of course, there was essentially no plot to it, and one's been invented for the film, which looks like it could be excellent, if nothing like you'd expect a Warren Ellis film to be. [Well, except that it's about old spies.]

[kjorteo]

Hey, now. Ellis did Transmet. That alone makes him God-tier among writers pretty much forever.

[e-to-the-ipi.livejournal.com]

I know, I'm a fan. He just does have a tendancy to write a very specific niche to the point of self-parody

[e-to-the-ipi.livejournal.com]

Also, aetheric mechanics is also by him and awesome. Or PLanetary, but the other's cooler because no one knows.