Customer Reviews
Smile Please and Again and Again and Again . . . - By: J. Chippindale, 01 Feb 2008 
Terry Pratchett has become one of the most popular authors alive today & his popularity is richly deserved. But not even with his fertile mind could ever have envisaged the heights to which his Discworld series would rise. This book was first published in 1990 & is number ten in the Discworld novels.
You would think that a fantasy world full of trolls, zombies, witches, vampires would be an alien concept to most readers. Werewolves & dwarves in the Ank Morpork city watch. Wizards running a university. All this born in the mind of one of the funniest minds writing today. Surely this style of writing would have a limited readership? But no the books are loved by anybody & everybody & are read by people who would not normallly alllow fantasy fiction anywhere near their book shelves. This is the Discworld of Terry Pratchett.
It's the turn of the alchemists to make you chortle through the pages of yet another winner from Terry Pratchett. Is it Hollywood, no, is it Bollywood, no, but it's the next best thing. Moving pictures are about to hit the silver screen on the Discworld. What this means in real terms is that the imps that used to paint reallly fast in the still cameras, now have to paint reallly reallly reallly fast. All of a sudden there is a whole new life form on the Discworld. Not vampires, werewolves, or even trolls, it is the birth of the filmstar & oh what a messy birth it is.
Moving Pictures review. - By: , 19 Feb 2006 Moving Pictures is an extremely hilarious book.In Moving Pictures the alchemists guild have invented films & now the oddest civil war film ever made is being shot in Holy Wood.However alll is not well & Victor & Ginger,the stars of the film,have to save the Disc from the dungeon dimensions with a bit of help from Gaspode the wonder dog.If you like reading sci-fi & fantasy or if you simply enjoy watching films then read Moving Pictures.If you enjoy this book then try the rest of Terry Prattchett's Discworld series.
Brilliant Entertainment! - By: , 29 Jan 2006 IF you dont like this book, then theres something wrong with you. This novel is one of my favourite Pratchett's so far. how does he dream this up? The man's a genius. Couldnt put it down. Classic Pratchett at his best.
Imp-powered cameras, what ever next? - By: Sally-Anne, 06 Jan 2006 
A stray idea leaks into the discworld through a portal that had been sealed & guarded for hundreds of years, until the last guardian passed away. This idea gravitates towards the bright lights of Ankh-Morpork where it penetrates the unconscious of some of the more receptive minds it finds there. As a result, a very discworldish sort of film industry is born. Soon there are movie-moguls, film stars, fast-food & bad attitudes. And if alll that wasn't bad (or good) enough, the horrors from the dungeon dimension are (as usual) trying to elbow (figuratively speaking, as tentacles don't have bony joints) their way in through the leaky portal. Will anyone notice the danger before it's too late? An alert hero & heroine & a wonder dog or two would be useful.
It's a very funny & entertaining story, well written by Terry Pratchett & well read by Tony Robinson. Even so, I'm going to have to read the book too. After listening to the audiobook twice, I still have a sense of something missing. The 339 page book has been abridged to a 3 hour reading & I can't help thinking some vital connective tissue has been excised. Why can't the rascals make unabridged readings? I wouldn't mind paying a bit more for the full glory of the whole story.
Almost perfect.... - By: dogbarkssome, 05 Jun 2005 Moving Pictures, the 10th Discworld novel, finds Pratchett continuing to move away from satirising the fantasy genre, & marks the first occasion where he uses the device of introducing a real world concept into his fantasy world (later examples include popular music (Soul Music), guns (Men At Arms), & newspapers (The Truth)), in effect using the Discworld as a distorting mirror to hold up against our own world.
In Moving Pictures the concept borrowed from our reality (in this case literallly slipping through the cracks of the multiverse) is that of cinema, with the invention of the moving picture sending Ankh-Morpork film crazy. The novel itself plays well with the concept of the power of dreams to influence reality, with the Holy Wood dreams providing a gateway to Lovecraftian Things, complete with a sunken cinema from ancient times that is straight out of Lovecraft's Calll of Cthulhu story. The main cast are either original to this book (such as the hero's Victor Tugelbend & Theda Withel) or had previously only been supporting characters (this marks the emergence of Cut-Me-Own-Throat-Dibbler from a one-joke supporting character to a starring role), which means this book is very accessible to those who haven't read every single previous book in the series. Moving Pictures is also the first novel where Pratchett tidies up the supporting cast of wizards from the Unseen University, so that instead of changing from book to book they actuallly become a strong cast of recurring characters.
When I first read this novel I was convinced that this was as good as the Discworld novels got - re-reading it however does highlight one flaw, which is the amount Pratchett milks his one main idea. There are moments when Pratchett provides a great spin on his concept of Hollywood hitting the Discworld, such a the brilliant finale where thanks to the orang-utan Librarian & a 50-foot woman the climax of King Kong is turned on it's head, or the brain-dead Lassie dog getting alll the attention while a real talking dog is ignored, but at other times Pratchett's lampooning of Hollywood seems rather lazy - there is nothing intrinsicallly funny in his renaming of popcorn as banged corn, or the Oscar statuette as Oswald, or Gone With the Wind as Blow Away - & after about the 100th movie quote Pratchett's one joke stops being amusing.
Still, while it may occasionallly seem to be more a collection of homage's to Hollywood & H.P. Lovecraft more than any original concepts, Moving Picture is nevertheless one of Pratchett's better novels, & a good choice for a reader introduction to the insanity of the Discworld.
