I'm reading "The White Mountains" to my kids, because I remembered loving the books so much as a kid myself. In the book, the french boy Beanpole labels a train with a word the main character interprets as "shmand-fair," but I don't know what french word or phrase this is a bastardization of. Can anybody clarify for me?
"...And far away in his cage, the monkey smiled with his all-seeing eyes."
The word confused me until I did French in secondary school! 'Shmand Fair' is a bastardised rendition of the French words 'Chemin de fer'. The literal translation is 'Road of iron' but a more colloquial version would be 'railway/road'. Hence what you see on the sides of French trains, 'SNCF'= 'Syndicat Nationale Chemins-de-fer Francaises' ('French National Railway Board')
Whit sad old loser'd be thick enough to don thon get-up?
You know, this is just one of many reasons I love the internet and IMDB. Thanks, Carlzere!
"...And far away in his cage, the monkey smiled with his all-seeing eyes."
You're welcome...btw, in the last episode of Series One of the TV show, there's a scene where Will, Henry and Beanpole are being taken into the Freemen's fortress and they see a mountain train. Will says, 'A shmand-fair!'. One of the Freemen soldier types says ' Non, chemin DE fer!' with a little Gallic gesture, and Ozymandias says 'A railway!'. I'm guessing the writers of the TV show thought it worth explaining the meaning too!
Whit sad old loser'd be thick enough to don thon get-up?
So, how does this series hold up? I've only read the books, never watched the show. I thought the trailer on YouTube looked pretty good, but both my wife and my 11 year old think it looks cheesy.
"...And far away in his cage, the monkey smiled with his all-seeing eyes."
The SFX are pretty darn good by early-to-mid '80s standards. Especially because they used digital compositing special effects for the first time on British television because they got their hands on one of the two Quantel Paintbox computer graphics compositing workstations which were imported to the UK at the time. Of course this couldn't improve some of the hammy acting but effects-wise the show was state of the art at the time of its release.
shareSo, how does this series hold up? I've only read the books, never watched the show. I thought the trailer on YouTube looked pretty good, but both my wife and my 11 year old think it looks cheesy.
"...And far away in his cage, the monkey smiled with his all-seeing eyes."
That's a subjective thing.. I tend to watch it while mentally transposing the book over it! Some of the episodes seem to be heavily padded out, presumably due to the fact that the books are quite short and need additional dialogue and so on to stretch them out...Having said that, some of the additions seem to work better on a TV show, such as the red 'killer' Tripods, with their laser type weapon doodads..Also parts of some of the episodes in the first series are set in Portmerion, a faux Italianate villlage in Wales, most famously seen in 'The Prisoner'. This makes the atmosphere that bit wackier, IMO, giving a deeper sense of dislocation from 'our' time.
You could watch it and think that the dated effects make it look cheesy and cheap, but I find, as with so many other old shows, that if you let the story take precedence over the effects , and forgive the limitations of an earlier time, they're just fine.
Whit sad old loser'd be thick enough to don thon get-up?
".Having said that, some of the additions seem to work better on a TV show, such as the red 'killer' Tripods"
Killer tripods make no sense - the whole concept is that you're either capped or a vagrant, and either case, you're harmless. There's no need to kill people after the war is over; now you can focus on CONTROLLING and enslaving them to make them work for you and to make sure they never reach intelligence or regain 'ancient' knowledge.
I mean, if they were going to kill people, who would those people be? 'Troublemakers'? That's what the cap is for. They don't even kill those that cap just messes up, because they become mad. Who is there left to have killer tripods for?
That kind of thing makes no sense at all.
Yeah. I don't remember if it was an interview with John Christopher or a foreword, but he did talk about the adaptation and said that they made changes that didn't make sense to him either, but also that writing on paper and writing for the screen were very different things. He also said that by the time they got to the second book they changed so much that he didn't even recognize his story anymore. I think it was then cancelled. But yeah, killer tripods really make no sense,
shareWell, there are liberties with the show, since the books are nararrated by Will. You can't have Will onscreen all the time. Also, some of the stuff you can put in your mind, but couldn't on screen, like the heavy lead of the Master's Cities. It is still interesting to watch, especially the locations in the first book.
shareIt is French for railway or railroad tracks, from what I get from the book and TV series.
shareIt is, just try to say "chemin de fer" out loud. Which is French for railway.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemin_de_Fer