I’m rather fond of online-to-real-life publishing successes such as two of those previously featured in this column. Sharing origins with Everything Matters and RealLivePreacher.com, Movies in Fifteen Minutes (M15M) hails from one user on LiveJournal.com (LJ), who came back from watching Van Helsing and wrote an entry that somehow became a 2500-word parody.

Her friends loved it, linked to it in their own LJs and emailed it to their friends. This LJ user, who goes by the name Cleolinda Jones, saw Troy the following week and “Troy in Fifteen Minutes” followed.

Through the very viral nature of the online community, the M15M phenomena hit nearly every corner of the Internet and Jones was approached for book deal.

This resulting tome, aptly subtitled “Hollywood Blockbusters for people who can’t be bothered”, contain the parodies of 10 movies (12, if you want to count all LotR movies individually) - Braveheart, Gladiator, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, Independence Day, Jurassic Park, The Matrix, Spider-Man, Star Wars II, Titanic and of course, all three Lord of the Rings… which may run a little over 15 minutes.

To the uninitiated, the book looks like a collection of bizarre scripts at first glance. If you’ve never ventured into that side of the internet chat language, I have no room to explain the lingo to you here.

But once you get into it, you realize that Jones has it nailed. Take a movie, whit it down to its barest minimum and rewrite the script with appropriate amounts of irreverence, sarcasm and wit. Instant quotables.

Now she doesn’t hate the movies here. In her Acknowledgements in front of the book, she states that this book is for everyone who loves movies so much they can laugh at them anyway. Laugh they did.

Picture this: Harry Potter asking a muggle porter how to get to Platform Nine and Three-Quarters, and the porter retorting with, “God, I hate this time of the year.”

There were jokes that reoccurred throughout the chapter, like Legolas and his habit of staring the obvious. There were jokes that crossed over into other movies, like Darth Saruman. There are section titles like “The Cliff of Manly Weeping” in the Fellowship of the Rings chapter (I’ll leave you to guess what scene that is!).

Van Helsing, Troy, Phantom of the Opera and a slew of other M15M parodies do not appear in the print version. Thanks to the fact that M15M was first seen on the Internet, you can still read them at http://community.livejournal.com/m15m... if you poke around a little for them.

Read it, laugh and share it with a friend. And no, you can’t borrow my book.

(2006)

Incredibly hilarious--the kind of thing you can go back to and read, again and again, perfect for any idle hour.

My brother was reading this book aloud to his friend. There was some kind of technician there, on a job, and apparently she went straight home and bought her own copy. Not that I blame her; the book's smart, surreal, and unfailingly funny. For example: Ever wondered what "Balrog" meant? It's Elvish for "You are so screwed." Or remember that part in the Matrix where--
"NEO takes the HIPSTER'S money and digs out a book called Obscure Allusions to Modern Philosophy. The tenth chapter, 'Baudrillard: We've Read Him and You Haven't'..."

Genius. ( )

#60, 2006

This. Is. The. Funniest. Book.

Ever.

Seriously. This book is so hysterically funny I can hardly begin to describe the funniness. I could go through and pull out a few great moments, but there are SO MANY, it’s impossible to choose. The author has taken several blockbuster films and parodied the heck out of them to great effect, exploting dodgy dialogue and exposing almost every gaping plot hole in all the films (although she missed what I think is a big one in the LotR trilogy, but I’m willing to be forgiving). She’s especially good at pointing out where the film strayed from the original book (where applicable).

I’ll admit I was nervous when I opened the book to find one of my all-time favourite films (“Jurassic Park”) on the chopping block, but she did a great job with it – yeah, she’s making hella fun of everything, but in such a light-hearted way it never seems mean, and I think even the truest of fans will find these funny, not offensive.

I laughed out loud – seriously laughed hard and out loud – more times than I can count. Like I said, too many great moments to try and give a sampling, but what the heck, I’ll give my personal favourite for inspired use of language, from “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone:”

DUMBLEDORE: We have to leave the baby with his only remaining blood relative – his aunt – in order for him to be safe.

McGONAGALL: But Albus – I’ve been watching them, and these people are total asshats!

DUMBLEDORE: Yes, but it’s really the best thing for the boy – subjection to asshaberdashery builds character, you’ll see.

*falls over ded* I’m sorry, but I can’t think of a funny world in all of history than “asshaberdashery.”

So, the good news is that this book is hilarious. The bad news (for some, anyway), is that I’m not sure it’s available from a U.S. seller/distributer yet. But, I bought my copy from Amazon.co.uk, and it was worth the cost to have it shipped across the pond. So, if you’re looking for something that will make you laugh your ass off, I’d recommend this book.

And if you’d like a preview, the author has a LiveJournal, and she’s posted other parodies there for public consumption. Her LJ username is cleolinda, but I believe the movie parodies are located at an LJ community called m15m.

Go and have a good laugh.

LJ Discussion ( )

Since I wrote it, it hardly seems fair to review it.

http://books.moonsoar.com/archives/20... ( )