It only takes one match...

It's been a bit strange today to say the least, so let me start at the beginning.

When I finally get up this morning, as with every weekend morning, I disturb Phil from his slumber with my faffing around. So, when I've woken him up today, he tells me that he had the strangest dream. In this dream he thought that the boiler had blown up, and quite dramatically so. In fact it went up with such a bang the whole house shook and it felt as if the side of the house had fallen down. So realistic was this dream he even woke up and checked to see if the boiler was working ok by feeling the radiators and making sure they were still working. Assured that they were piping hot, he went back to sleep and casually noticed that the time was about 6.03 am.

Now step ahead a few hours. After I've gotten up and Phil decides he's had enough sleep, he checks out the BBC news website to see what's going on in the world, and low and behold what should he read? A petrol storage facility went BOOM this morning, at exactly 6.03 am, and this explosion happened at Hemel Hampstead, 34 miles away from our house.

So the dream was no longer a dream, the explosion had woken Phil up as the shock waves and sound emanating from the bang ripped through our place, some 34 miles away. Of course I slept through the whole thing (I sleep like the next dead person most nights), but I find it amazing that we felt the blast, but you can put it all into perspective when you find out that the explosion has been the biggest in 60 years in Europe (that's like since the last war), and it was heard as far away as the Netherlands and France - pretty darn big then.

That was the exciting part of the day, the rest was relatively humdrum. We watched Ray, which was way to long and very slow (despite being mildly interesting) and then in the latter part of the afternoon we went to the cinema to watch The Chronicles of Narnia. Well that was the plan, but on arriving we discover the showing we wanted to watch was sold out and we'd have to wait over an hour for the next one. Not a problem, we just get some food and wait around. I almost wish we hadn't. The film wasn't nearly as good as I expected it to be, and was very drawn out and somewhat empty in parts (which amazes me because from what I remember of the book there could have been plenty more interesting bits of the tale to tell, which would have cemented the whole thing together a little better and made it a pleasure to watch, rather than ending up with the audience thinking "so when will something happen".

In light of that, I think I've come to the conclusion that there are some books which just don't translate that well to film. What makes books like Narnia special, is that the imagination you need to fully appreciate what it is that the author is trying to describe, or lead you to believe. When you impose a directors view of that world on to a wider audience it just doesn't work because everyone imagines and translates text from a book differently. Consequently if you make a film you're guaranteed not to meet everyones expectations if they have imagined something better.

Posted by Abi on the December 11, 2005 9:48 PM

sjon at December 14, 2005 7:30 AM