Watership Down

I should really re-read.

The sequel, unfortunately, was just ... well, even the parts that weren't bad didn't seem to fit, and made you wonder why he bothered.

The book, meanwhile, is one of the four or five in my life I reread about once every year or couple of years. I can't NOT reread it, it being that good.

The movie I've only seen a few times, but it does have moments...

"There's NOWHERE left to run!"

... is there really no thread on this? That's bizarre. The language stuff alone, you can talk about all night, and the invented mythology, etc.

i remember the character 'fiver' best (fifth of his litter, a runt) but i pronounced his name 'fivver' as if to rhyme with 'quiver' instead of 'fiver' to rhyme with 'diver.' when i had to deliver a book report on the first day of school and pronounced it this way my teacher refused to believe i'd read the book -- citing such an egregious mispronunciation as proof -- and accused me of lying for the reset of the year.

but. prior to school starting, after finishing the book, i implored my parents to let me get a pet rabbit. they must've figured i already had like 20 animals, so they said what the hell. i bought a small dutch bunny, runty and thin and asthmatic, and it died within a week. i held it most of the time it was alive and fed it from a bottle and cradled it nightly to sleep, woke in the morning to feed it. it's buried in my backyard.

later the same year i got a replacement bunny and soon 'released' it into the wild with the expectation it would lead me to some secret bunny haven... maybe marxist, leninist, whatever... but all it did was hop beneath a wild blueberry bush and eat itself sick. that afternoon my vet's dog ripped off the bunny's foot as we waited for the syrup of ipecac the vet had administered to take effect, and i had to play bunny tug-of-war with a rottweiler to get my pet back. at the end of the day the critter was fine, but he always had a hard-bitten, piratey look about him and when i woke one morning his cage was open, there were shit-pellets everywhere, and the dog-door in the back of the house was swinging. so i guess the legend lives on.

Go hang, bitch. I read more before 9am than most do all day.

Anyway, fabulous book, and I will be reading it starting next Friday. My mother in law has a copy I'm starting 9am Friday morning.

also, a pretty damn violent film routinely screened for children

http://g-images.amazon.com/images/G/01/ciu/d0/d0/6384124128a0ef734c236010.L.jpg

There's at least 6 of them fuckers.

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B000083C89.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/B00004CRV4.02.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

"All the world will be your enemy, Prince of a Thousand enemies. And when they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you; digger, listener, runner, Prince with a swift warren. Be cunning, and full of tricks, and your people will never be destroyed."

Sounds bit like Israel's position in the Middle East, y'see. And "the children of El-Ahrairah", whom everyone in the locale wants to kill, are ACTUALLY the children of Moses.

But then some say that Efrafa represents Israel and wants to conquer the plucky little Palestinian bunnies who were driven out of Sandleford Warren.

I first had "Watership Down" read to me at 7 then read it myself the next year, and I vowed I would read it every single year until I died (I think that vow lasted until I was 13). When I was 9 my parents, seeing I was such a Richard Adams fan, decided to get me a Plague Dogs poster. Now, did anyone ever see the Plague Dogs poster? It's got a picture of the two dogs on it, and one of them has a large section of its skull missing (the experiments, y'see). I had insta-nightmares for a week straight, until it dawned on my parents what the problem was, and said poster was removed.

My sons loved the film and watched it frequently until they both started having nightmares about the Black Rabbit of Inlé coming to take them in their sleep.

They have the "Watership Down Treasury" by Diane Redmond which is a set of bite size adaptations of the original story with some extra bits that may have come from the TV series. It doesn't have any of the mythology and doesn't have the black rabbit so they can sleep at night after reading it. Hopefully when they're a bit older they'll tackle the proper novel.

It's notable that the film is so popular with kids, given that it's a fairly oppresive, intense and for the most part depressing adventure. Okay there's a happy ending but until you get to it there's very little of the light hearted comic relief which is deemed necessary in just about every animated film that comes out these days.

wait, who on LOST is fiver?

xpost and I wonder if the same happened for A Wrinkle In Time?

Or possibly vice versa.

What Tep said earlier about the language and mythology was spot on, you *can* go on all night. As a meditation and explanation about how folklore works it's simply perfect.

And very much a product of its time in a good way -- that window where there was an enormously increased awareness of folklore, of folklore tropes, of the cultural uses of mythology (and likewise I suppose you could toss a Sapir-Whorf argument around when it comes to the language stuff, though outside a classroom I'd rather not) -- but without any overly clever deconstruction of those things like I think we'd've gotten in the 90s. The underlying thinking is very simple -- "oh okay, folklore verbs like this, culture verbs and is verbed by folklore like that, let me make something up that demonstrates it" -- and very compelling, and the fact that they're rabbits makes it work better than some sci fi book's constructed alien culture (we're familiar with the rabbit world, but experience it differently -- and it's easier to swallow the differences in worldview that will result from the human/rabbit difference than the Anglo/Eskimo difference and "four hundred words for snow" type hooey).

That was a very long sentence.

I agree about the memorable phrases and so on, too, and that strengthens the effect that the rabbit-language words like tharn have -- he's just good with language, and it soaks through.

Yes, yes you will.

You will read it, and Plague Dogs, and then come back here and tell us how many fl oz of tears you wept.

Fun fact, the wonderful score for the WD film is by Angela Morley, Wally Stott in her former life. Stott was one of the primary orchestral architects of Scott Walker's classic 60s tetralogy.

Now that I didn't know!

That is a tremendous piece of trivia!

I loved in Hodgman's book when he referred to the 18981 Art Garfunkel album Songs for Dead and Dying Rabbits.

I mean...1981.

Did any of you ever read Adams' sort of dirty novel Maia that he wrote in like 83 or 84?

I'm reading this to my son now (who is almost 10). I think he likes it; I'm loving it though, having not read it since I was his age. The descriptive passages in it are beautifully written and the characterizations are awfully well done considering these are rabbits who can't really do much to differentiate themselves from one another.

Spot the gaffe where one of the rabbits mentions petrol, despite hrududus being entirely mysterious entities to them.

i'm not to fussed about those kinds of bloopers

Well, Bluebell mentions petrol, but his thing is spouting nonsense so it's not clear he really understands combustion engines.

RIP

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/dec/27/watership-down-author-richard-adams-dies-aged-96

Wonder if he got a chance to see the new adaptation.

So, anyway, we're finally getting that new BBC/Netflix adaptation in a couple of weeks and...hm.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3gQ117IKkM

I guess I shouldn't be expecting Pixar technical levels, granted, but this does kinda feel more like a digital storyboarding version rather than a final cut, so I dunno. And it debuts in two and a half weeks so I doubt we're getting any better than this. But, it's still Watership Down, the trailer has the ever note perfect "All the world will be your enemy..." construction, and etc.

it's always possible the animation kinda sucks but they get the storytelling right, idk

At least give the actual thing a chance. Trailers are invariably not representative of the final cut *hemhem*

Hey I never said I wouldn't watch it.

Wish DreamWorks had gotten ahold of this. Not enough skateboards or farting for my taste.

I believe it's more of a direct adaptation of the book than the previous film was

xp Reservoir Bunnies.

I like it, it has a stop-motion flavor that is right for the story. Never cared for Pixar's style.

I'd sign off on at least a theoretical adaptation of most fantastical fiction, but I think WD is the rare instance where I would've preferred it to have always remained just a book.

really weak visuals indeed, but i think this can still work...the readings sound pretty awesome. seems like the visuals are really just there to bolster the performances rather than stun on their own, which i am ok with if it's well adapted

i do love the film. plague dogs film too. both have made me cry multiple times. as have the books obv (especially PG)

The seventies film is pretty damn good, I think. But some books employ silence and stillness in a way that simply cannot be turned into a film - A Wrinkle in Time being a good example, or the Dark is Rising. Just essentially incompatible with modern filmmaking which has a high minimum spectacle threshold. BBC could still pull it off though, fingers crossed.

saw the trailer last week, my immediate and ongoing response is

what is the fucking point?

Rabbitry demands it

just bitter the Beeb didn't run with Duncton Wood uncensored

they were gonna do Shardik but bears are too big to animate on a budget

xps well, it's a tv miniseries rather than a feature film, so will have more room to be more faithful to the book, I imagine.

also the trailer you saw last week will have been the teaser which ime tend to just chuck moving lights and sounds at you regardless of how the thing actually feels.

the thing is, and ok it's a long time since i've read the book, but i don't see the point of an ever more faithful faithfulness from one kind of medium to another. the point of films and TV is to adapt, otherwise just read the book (for any given book), which no TV show can ever replicate as the same experience.

i'm not fussed about this, i'm not doing an angry "they're ruining my childhood" spiel, i just heaved a sigh of weary boredom that it's the same limited canon of stuff being recycled and just wishing a broadcaster with freedom like the BBC's would take more chances

I feel the same way about novelizations

Ugh this is ugly

I sat through the first half hour, just to check I wasn't seeing things. The animation was so awful, I found it hard to believe that the BBC went ahead and put it out over two nights at Christmas.

Watched the first half which was then weirdly followed immediately by part 2. I wonder if they realised how bad it is and have rushed it out in two nights instead of a planned 4?

CGI is painful in the wrong hands

this is a nice little precursor to the lion king isn't it, except of course much more sacrilegious

maybe the plague dogs would actually benefit even more from uncanny-valley horrorising

maybe as part of its public service remit the Beeb are just trying to drive people to read the book

I adore the book but have been afraid to watch any of the screen adaptations.

1978 one is p much the best animated movie ever fyi

I can't remember if the animated Plague Dogs was any cop but my grandma was a big fan.

it's amazing and also features the single most shocking shot in the history of kids' movies. n.b. might not be a kids' movie

basically, martin rosen is a hero

just a guy who wanted to make richard adams' books into movies and when his director died he realised the vision himself and delivered it straight. nobody was ready

Seeing plague dogs in a theater when i was like 13 an unforgettable experience

I've been looking at the children's section of bookstores recently and I'm amazed by what's in there, lots of books I assumed just weren't in bookshops anymore, because I never thought to look there. Why is Jekyll & Hyde there? Is Treasure Island really a kids book?

I really appreciate that Puffin Classics and Vintage note at the back cover "complete and unabridged" but now I fear that the regular Puffin Books line titles without that note at the back (like Watership Down) have been fucked with.
Have any of you known this book to be altered before? Are there other altered childrens classics to beware of? Stealthy abridgements that aren't announced clearly like "a classic reimagined by A. Fuckface"?

Treasure Island was written for children and and I certainly read it when I was a kid

Jekyll, I'll give you

There have been bowdlerized children's abridgements of Gulliver's Travels almost as long as the book's existed

yep; the book is mainly known for Lilliput and nothing else and what kid is going to want to read those dire final sections?

Even in the Lilliput section, Gulliver puts out a fire in the king's quarters by pissing on it. Horrors!

Those dire final sections are the best bits of the book