Video Sunday: Trolls, clowns, Harry Potter and drones

Happy Video Sunday to you!  I’m pleased to report that I had so many delightful videos today that I had to save some for an upcoming weekend.  Woo-hoo!

So I’ve been pretty unaware of this Movies in Real Life series the improv folks started.  More fool I since they created a pretty realistic Harry Potter doing his best British accent at Penn Station not too long ago.

Certainly it beat the Lord of the Rings one.  For some background information on this you can check out the corresponding Gothamist article.  Thanks to Marci for the link.

Me with the talkety talk.  If you are curious about the nature of my upcoming book with Candlewick, co-authored with Jules Danielson and Peter Sieruta, Rocco Staino was kind enough to tape me talking about it at a recent Candlewick preview.  I find that no matter where I pause it, my eyes are bugging out in some fashion.  Fantastico.

Speaking of Rocco, I do believe he is responsible for (thankfully) taping Barbara Cooney’s son Barnaby Porter (a great name in and of itself) speaking on her behalf at the recent Society of Illustrators Gala.  This guy was amazing.  I could have listened to him all night.  And just because I’m mean, I’m going to save the follow-up video to this where he discusses what his mom used to do for Halloween for a Halloween post.  It’ll be worth the wait.

And now, our feature presentation.  I like to call it:

BRITISH CHILDREN’S BOOKS YOU DIDN’T READ

AND DIDN’T KNOW THEY WERE TURNING INTO FILMS.

You doubt me?  Example A:  The film is called The Adventurer: The Curse of the Midas Box but it’s based on a G.P. Taylor novel (I kid you not) Mariah Mundi.  A show of hands from all you Yanks who read that one.

Example B:  I cannot believe this is happening but I’m thrilled.  Years and years ago (2006, to be exact) I adored the Alan Snow novel Here Be Monsters, but nobody else seemed to care about it (sentient cheese notwithstanding).  So you can imagine my shock and delight when I was in the movie theater the other day and saw a poster for a film slated to be released in September of 2014.  They’re calling it The Boxtrolls but they couldn’t hide it from me.  I can tell it’s the same dang book.  And after watching this trailer, I already love it:

This one’s oddly lovely.  Someone flew a drone around my library (“my library” is apparently how I now will be referring to the main branch of NYPL until the day I die).  The lingering in front of the Gutenberg is a bit harrowing, but otherwise it’s entirely peaceful.

And finally, for today’s off-topic video, if you’re not a fan of French clowning you could well miss this one.  At least I think it’s French.  Whatever it is it’s mighty well done, and not just because the fellow playing the woman somehow manages to keep the same expression on his face the entire time.

Die Maiers- trapeze from Joachim Mohr on Vimeo.

Thanks to mom for the link!

Filed under: Videos