If you put us on a spot and said who was our favourite author, we would say without hesitation that it was Danny Wallace!
Every Thursday you will find us heading straight to his weekly Shortlist magazine column: http://www.shortlist.com/cool-stuff/danny-wallace-is-a-man and as if to encourage us, his profile picture includes a Chihuahua!
The first time we heard about him was in an interview about his book Yes Man, which intrigued by, we went out and read it straight away and thought it was fantastic,so much so that we found his other 2 books at the time, Join Me and Are You Dave Gorman and have brought all his other books to date, from his further adventure of trying to get all his school friends back together, the excellent Friends Like These to his works of fiction, the excellent Charlotte Street and Who is Tom Ditto? But there is also no end to his talents, as he is now a great writer for children as his debut novel Hamish and the Worldstoppers has shown.
A recent article from the British Comedy Guide this week, alerted us to the fact that Yes Man, the book that started it all off for us was 10 years old this week http://www.comedy.co.uk/features/danny_wallace_ten_years_of_yes_man/ but it then got us pondering to the film version again, when I took Mrs Barking Mad to see it in 2008 I was incredibly excited but sadly left the cinema feeling it just wasn’t the book I loved, luckily the Mrs enjoyed it though =)
I mentioned previously in a blog that we own the film, simply because I picked it up very cheap on BluRay, as amongst the special features was an interview with Danny himself, but now I felt the time was right to say Yes to watching the main feature again.
Having watched it again I actually really enjoyed it, the book will always be our favourite and we definitely can recommend you reading it, but the film has a lot going for it too, if you take it for what it is, not an adventure like Danny did but a big screen romantic comedy.
It’s cast is fantastic and includes: Jim Carrey (who we have liked since his In Living Color TV show, never mind before he found movie stardom from wearing a mask and finding lost pets =) Zooey Deschanel (our favourite TV new girl) as the love interest, best friends in Bradley Cooper (way before he got famous for a hangover) and Danny Masterson , John Michael Higgins and Rhys Darby both have some great scene stealing moments and as the man to send Jim on his Yes Man journey, well you can’t get much better than Terence Stamp!
The film, written by Jarrad Paul and Nicholas Stoller (who brought us the Muppets back in 2011) and directed by Peyton Reed, who brought us this year’s Ant-Man this year, send our movie Yes Man on some great journeys from learning Korean, playing the guitar, answering every phone and email message, saving Luis Guzman, getting into bar fights, giving out lots of loans in his bank job, getting closer to his friends and making new ones as well as get very close to his elderly neighbour, it all bring great laughs and move the story along nicely bringing the love story to a conclusion and above all give a great message that being positive can only be good.
Danny, himself has a cameo in the Wedding Shower scene so something to look out for there but I certainly I’m glad I said Yes to re-watching Yes Man.
Did you like Yes Man, are you a Danny Wallace fan, what book of his would you love to see on the big screen next? We would love to hear from you
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