The Enid Blyton Society

Fiona1986 wrote:Those do include the three half hour specials, so I'd better tell my mum! She's had her DVDs for several years and they were single disks containing just the regular length episodes, and when those were released the specials were not included.

Ah, they've had the sneaky "repackage & resell" method have they?

JP wrote: As soon as he withdrew the toothbrushes from his ears, that was enough for me

And me! I shut my eyes at that point.

Deej wrote:Is that really supposed to be the Paddington that I know?

As far as I know from memory, Paddington is the only London terminus that FGW trains pull into. Of course, it might be Bristol Temple Meads?

Poppy wrote:Me and my sister were in fits of laughter watching this!!

Maybe us oldies are making the same mistake (if it is a mistake) in wallowing in nostalgia as we do with Blyton covers and illustrations. This film is for children, not 60 year olds who still read children's books.

Will definitely watch this film!

Never really been a fan of Paddington Bear, but my daughter did buy the bear itself, one year when we visited London, at Paddington Station. They've got loads of Paddington Bear in their shop.

Moonraker wrote: Maybe us oldies are making the same mistake (if it is a mistake) in wallowing in nostalgia as we do with Blyton covers and illustrations. This film is for children, not 60 year olds who still read children's books.

I'm only just over half that age, Nigel, and I was just as disgusted by the film trailer. (Am I getting old already?? )

Seriously, I don't mind children enjoying a film like that on its own merits (if they see any therein). What saddens me is that for those of us who are familiar with Michael Bond's own creation, it is simply not Paddington. I felt exactly the same way about the Narnia films a few years ago. I guess the film industry is convinced that children just won't get into something that's so old fashioned as to not include hyper-speed action and crass humour!

That said, thinking back, when I was little, I loved the Disney cartoons of Winnie-the-Pooh and thought the original A.A. Milne and Ernest Shepard books were a bit boring by comparison. Now I'm (a little) older, I adore the originals and can't stand the Disney version!! So maybe there's hope for us all yet.

This looks like just about every children's film I've seen in the last 10 years. If I see another scene with water cascading out of the bathroom I shall scream!

What puzzles me is why use the name Paddington Bear as it clearly bears (no pun intended) no resemblance to it? They could've called the film anything. Fans of Paddington will hate it and most Children won't know who Paddington Bear is.

Not all children's film adaptations are bad. I think the most recent version of the Chronicles of Narnia (The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe) is excellent.

We'll just have to agree to disagree on that one, Deej. I agree that the film of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (I haven't seen the two sequels) was pretty good as a film in and of itself. But it was utterly unlike the book, which is one of my biggest favourites. The film-makers seemed to be bent on inserting as many dramatic chase scenes, battle scenes, extra characters etc. as they could think up in order to make the story more "exciting" - completely losing the warm, gentle, understated tone of the original Narnia books in the process. The result is a quite spectacular and gripping film, but it's not what it purports to be - it's not Narnia, just as, in Danger Bird's words, this new film is not Paddington Bear.

That's the other thing that saddens me, apart from the lack of faith in children's ability to warm to anything that's not packed with hyped-up visuals and/or stupid slapstick humour - the total lack of respect for the author's original work and intentions. When a film interpretation strays so far from what Michael Bond or C.S. Lewis actually created, does it really have a right to be called the same thing?

Fair play, Courtenay, you have the right to an opinion. I think it's always more difficult to accurately convey a classic book into a film lasting 90/120 minutes. You only have to look at how poor the Harry Potter film series is compared to the books.

I can accept that my taste will be different to that of a younger generation. What saddened me was the need for the potential 'toilet humour' bit regarding the ear wax. Maybe I've conveniently forgotten such incidents when I was younger, but as far as I can remember, toilet humour was something whispered behind our hands in the playground, and which we grew out of. Certainly not something to be shared with adults if we went to the cinema. My teenage son watched the clip and found the whole thing quite amusing, he did call my attention to the dog on the escalator scene. Admittedly I found that rather funny, but would a young child get that humour?

I've never read the books, in fact I had no idea until I read this thread that there were books about Paddington. I remember a girl at school had a Paddington Bear which I admired longingly - I think they were pretty expensive. As I've not read the books, I've no idea whether the film, or the cartoons I watched as a child are anything like the books. It's quite possible that the TV programme I remember which such nostalgia was nothing like the books.

The best bit I remember about watching the programmes was the narrator's voice. As regular forumites know, I love to listen to well spoken voices. I think he was Michael Horton who was also the King in a film called The Slipper and The Rose, but I can't be bothered to Google it at the moment.

Nearly - it was Michael Hordern! Children's TV programmes in the 1970s relied a great deal on narration, even in scenes where it was all but redundant because the pictures and the characters' speeches would have been enough to tell the story. I'm thinking particularly of when the narrator keeps saying "said Paddington" or "explained Mr. Brown" or "called Mrs. Bird", even though it's fairly obvious who is speaking, or when the narrator begins the story by saying something like "Paddington was sitting up in bed" - when that's perfectly clear from looking at the screen. Of course, if you only have one person voicing all the characters, coupled with relatively slow-moving pictures, you need to keep things moving and make it clear which character is talking, so narration was probably the best way. Like you, Katharine, I used to love narrated programmes because you have the feeling of someone telling you a story, their voice lulling and luring you into another world. I think such an approach also encourages the programme-makers to stay closer to the words of the original books. There's less temptation to tamper with things if you're telling a story in a way that's not very different from picking up the book and reading it.

Anita Bensoussane wrote:....their voice lulling and luring you into another world.

I know I don't watch a great deal of children's TV programmes, but I am left with the impression that nowadays the aim is to hype children up as much as possible. It's the same in schools. I've been to concerts where the children sing 'crazy' songs, often with actions. One teacher a few years back used to show the children a cartoon song of 'The Lion Sleeps Tonight' at the end of school which meant they came out of class really wound up. I'd often find mine then had an 'ear worm' of the song, and would just keep singing the same refrain over and over again.

I wonder what, if any the long term effects of this will have on these children in the future. Already teachers have difficulty with children unable to sit still in class. I'm constantly amazed by how informal lessons are these days. I still can't get used to how much noise is generated during lessons at school, and how much wandering in and out of classrooms there is. Do children learn better in such an environment? Or will the next couple of generations find it difficult to stick at their careers, as they lack the discipline that I and previous generations had to learn at school?

I'm out of touch with TV programmes for little children now, as my two are 18 and 14. There were some rather silly programmes on when they were young (I recall one in which two young male TV presenters would go each week to a public place such as a gallery or museum or similar, and take it in turns to shout "Bogies" as loudly as they dared). However, there were also some gentle, thoughtful stories (Little Bear and Spider! were favourites), so hopefully soothing programmes like that are still being shown as well.

There's probably a similar mix to what there was in my day, I'm just being nostalgic. I know my husband got the DVD of 'The Banana Splits' at Christmas, and we all settled down as a family to watch this master piece from our childhood. So far we've only watched the first episode . The children looked at us as if to say 'what on earth was that all about?' and my husband and I were of the opinion that our memories had tinted things a rather rosy colour!! I think the only one who really enjoyed it was our 8 year old, which I suppose proves what age the programme was aimed at.

I think you are quite safe with CBeebies. I have watched a few of our grandson's favourites, and have been most entertained! However, some of the commercial children's channels are pretty horrific, but he doesn't watch those!