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The Last Hero (Discworld, #27; Rincewind #7)
The Last Hero (Discworld, #27; Rincewind #7)
Terry Pratchett | 2002 | Fiction & Poetry
8
8.0 (2 Ratings)
Book Rating
<i>Fable (noun): a story about supernatural or extraordinary persons or incidents; legend: the fables of gods and heroes.

[from http://dictionary.reference.com]</i>;

This short story by Terry Pratchett ticks all those boxes with the blurb on my edition reading:

"He's been a legend in his own lifetime.

He can remember the great days of high adventure.

He can remember when a hero didn't have to worry about fences and lawyers and civilisation.

He can remember when people didn't tell you off for killing dragons.

But he can't alwyas remember, these days, where he put his teeth ...

He's not really happy about that bit.

.... He's going to climb the highest mountain in the Discworld and meet his gods. He doesn't like the way they let men grow old and die ... "

What ensues is, by the standards of Discworld novels, perhaps a return to the earlier novels that featured the gods (and Cohen the Barbarian) more prominently than the more recent. Also involved prominently in this story are the Wiz(z)ard Rincewind, Captain Carrot and Leonard of Quirm, with that latter character given more of a role than in the few previous he has been in (excepting, maybe, Jingo).

This is also unusual in that it is an illustrated story: whereas I've always found illustrations to be inferior to imagination when it comes to visualising events and characters, it does add an extra layer to this story - particularly where it concerns Leonard's creations.
  
Ex-Futur Album by Veronique Vincent and Aksak Maboul
(0 Ratings)
Album Favorite

"This is a fascinating record and it has such an amazing story. Marc Hollander was Aksak Maboul, they were his crew in the 80s, and he started Crammed Discs in Belgium. He was married (still is) to Veronique Vincent [of the Honeymoon Killers]and they were recording an album in I think about 1983, and then a baby arrived, so that took over. So they left the record practically finished but not quite finished, in the drawer. And then another baby arrived, so that record got even further and deeper into its drawer! It got forgotten. And then some years ago they discovered it, and played it and thought okay, this is good stuff. Obviously Marc had the label, so they mixed it and released it, and there it was: the Ex-Futur Album. My personal connection to this record is that people kept saying oh, it sounds like Stereolab, except they did it ten years before we did! They're sort of our parents, and that's really amazing to me. We've been separated and found again later on; it's a really lovely experience, and it also makes so much sense with the kind of label that Marc is running. It's very open, and they're very open-minded people, accepting the differences, and it's what I find most attractive: the fusion, when you go get some DNA from here and there and over here and then cram it all into a song."

Source
  
Lake Placid (1999)
Lake Placid (1999)
1999 | Action, Comedy, Horror
So-so freshwater Jaws spoof with lots of extra irony; somehow managed to spawn a gajillion sequels, all of them made by and featuring much less distinguished people. Folk start turning up dead in a lake in Maine; various scientists and eccentrics descend, annoying the local police and game wardens; culprit proves to be a giant Asian crocodile which has somehow found its way to North America (this is not the kind of film which worries too much about the details). All the usual tropes and plot twists ensue, played very much tongue in cheek.

You get the sense this is a film everybody involved made on a week off as a kind of joke - the snappy dialogue between the characters is the only bit of the film which truly shines, and it's the gory bits - beheadings and dismemberments which feel out of place (even some of these are played for laughs). Sort of mildly amusing and the croc model is good, but not funny and certainly not scary enough to linger in the memory. I seem to recall the 1980 movie Alligator being a lot more fun.