Red Dwarf Goes To Hollywood News Posted by John Hoare on 8th September 2006, 12:58 After much hinting, the designs for the 2007 Red Dwarf calendar are revealed. Now, the reason we’ve been crap at reporting on this up until now is because of our relaunch – but I must admit, I did have a slight doubt in my mind about the idea. I can’t quite put into words what that doubt was… but the end result was that I was simply worried that a collection of movie poster parodies would look crap and embarrassing. I needn’t have worried. It looks great. The cover is probably the worst bit (as with the 2006 one, I’m not keen on the cast montage), but once you get inside it’s fantastic. I think my favourites are GoitFellas (I actually did a LOL!), Body/Swap (I’m a sucker for anything that references an episode so specifically), Morphbusters (the logo takeoff is BRILLIANT), and R.D. (just beautiful). As for the Dwarfspotting poster – well, that’s going up as soon as I get it. AND SO IS THE POSTER. As for the rejected designs – I’m not keen on the other two, but I like Saturnian Smeg, if only because the tagline sounds vaguely dirty. As for the actual calendar itself – remember my moan about the 2006 calendar that “the way the numbers are presented in the actual calendar squares themselves doesn’t look quite right to me – centred, with a bit of awkward white space round them… I think it would have worked better if they’d been in the left-hand corner”? Well, clearly, GNP hang onto my every word. Except: they don’t. I was all set to complain about the huge SAMPLE over the designs (I’ve never been entirely convinced that watermarking images achieves a huge amount) – but to be honest, I don’t care hugely. Yeah, it’s back to the Andrew and the Webboard again: “Global have plans to make a screensaver/image folder available to people who buy the calendar from their site, or on CD at Dimension Jump”. This isn’t confirmed yet, but if it happens it’ll be FANTASTICALLY BRILLIANT NEWS – the kind of thing you often think would be great, but never actually happens. Especially the image folder thing, so I can use it as a screensaver on my beautiful Mac Mini as well. Release date will be around the 25th September according to TOS; copies should be available at DJ, and Play has it for £4.99. I’m in. One final thing: if you like the calendar, please, please buy it full-price before Christmas, if you want to see more Dwarf calendars in the future. Bargain bins full of Red Dwarf calendars for 99p won’t be helpful in convincing companies to do a 2008 calendar. I know that sounds a bit crap – the only way I can really afford the DVDs I want is by waiting for them to come down in price, which doesn’t help further DVDs being released either – but this is £4.99, not £19.99. It’s very good value as it is considering you’re using it for the entire year…
Yeah this looks very good indeed. I haven’t gotten the RD calendar for a good few years but I reckon I’ll be getting this one. Best ever? It’s a shame the cover’s a bit shite, really doesn’t do justice to it. I hope it won’t put too many people off buying the thing. The Da Ve Lister Code and The Hollys Reloaded are my favourites.
Hugely excellent. What amazes me most, is that I honestly thought there’d be more than one which I’d end up saying “hmm, I can see what they were trying to do, but that’s dodgy” but not, they all seems really wqell pollished. It’s a shame they couldn’t find series III pictures for the Body/Swap one, though. At least the effort was made to change Rimmer’s blue series VII top to green, though.
Not too keen (although I guess I’m not a big fan of this kind of merchandise). The Body/Swap one works really well as it’s actually relevant to the episode. Likewise with the ones for Gunmen and Polymorph. A lot of the others remind me of the kind of fan-artwork that used to appear in BTL – just far better produced. And ripping off the Trainspotting poster is getting kinda old.
Oddly enough, those *exact* three points were in the original draft of this article, which I then edited out in favour of more gushing. (Oo-er.) It *is* a concept that definitely won’t appeal to everyone. I don’t think it’s split down rabid fan/casual fan lines – more just that some people like this kind of thing, and some people don’t. And it is a bit of a fannish thing to do… but I have no problem with that at all. And yeah, the Trainspotting poster has been done before. But it’s one of my favourite versions of it, so I have no problem with it either…
> And ripping off the Trainspotting poster is getting kinda old. We did have doubts, but decided that, actually, it’s gone around again. It become so old-hat that people stopped doing it, so became rare, so is okay to do again. I haven’t seen a Trainspotting parody in years. You’ll notice we avoided Tarantino entirely, though… > The Body/Swap one works really well as it’s actually relevant to the episode. Likewise with the ones for Gunmen and Polymorph. But while it’s a bit of a fan-calendar, we also wanted to appeal to more general, unspecific viewers. Which is why you have a balance between those and more directly recognisable Dwarfy things like Dorkfather, Being Arnold Rimmer and R.D. Still, if it’s not to your taste, it’s not to your taste. Which begs the question – what WOULD you have done? Side note: It’s interesting that people have several favouites, but there’s no definitive ‘number one’ emerging. I like that.
>Which begs the question – what WOULD you have done? There must be some unused stills from Chloe’s various photoshoots, surely? ;-) As I say, this type of merchandise (anything aside from the DVDs and novels, I guess) really isn’t my bag but, as someone who used to buy pretty much anything with a Grant Naylor logo, I thought I’d chuck in my two cents worth. With calendars of a semi-defunct TV Show, I guess you have your work cut out as we’ve all seen most of the publicity shots thousands of times before. For what it’s worth, the calendar is bound to have more creativity than 95% of the ones released this December.
GoitFellas looks brilliant. Which makes me think that a full-length extrapolation of Back to Reality would be *excellent*.
By the by, the ‘Dwarf Spotter’ poster wouldn’t have anything to do with the almost hinted at poster on the webboard would it?
Maybe there is something a little sad in someone my age gushing about a calendar, But I’m really impressed with it all. I cant choose a favourite at all but I’m sure my least favourite is the rejected ‘Beer Hunter’, and I also love the ‘Smegging Hell’ one, as I think it works on all fronts and the pictures of Chloe and Craig suit it down to the ground (still, I know some have to be rejected and I guess it was a hard choice). The ‘Dwarf Spotting’ poster is special and looks to be the perfect object for a DJ signing (and future cast get togethers). Once again, the powers that be have turned an ordinary object into a must have for many of us. It may only be a calendar, but it’s so different to the usual churned out stock photos that everyone uses, and this one should knock spots off its rivals.
Smegging Hell was almost too perfect. I’d almost (almost) have rather lost any of the others for the sake of it. What’s in there is far, far better than I expected…but I’d just like to get across just how well I think Smegging Hell would have worked. It’s appropriate, and very, very funny. You know, the fact is…I skipped the RD calendar last year for the Futurama one…and I figured I’d get the Futurama one from here on out since every day is labelled with birthdays, events, obscure local festivals and even short-story reading suggestions. How could I pass that up again next year? Well, this has certainly got me considering. Damn you, Andrew. Damn you with all seriousness to the place bad calculators go.
It looks excellent, doesn’t it? Perhaps I’ll buy two and take one into work. Better than “Pink – the calendar” that we have this year…
>We did have doubts, but decided that, actually, it’s gone around again. It become so old-hat that people stopped doing it, so became rare, so is okay to do again. I haven’t seen a Trainspotting parody in years. There’s one in today’s Grauniad ;-) My favourite, by quite some way, is Being Arnold Rimmer… Loving it generally, though! I think Cappsy and I will have to get one each for each of our rooms, and then one for the living room. And one for the kitchen. And one for the bog…
> My favourite, by quite some way, is Being Arnold Rimmer… Loving it generally, though! I think Cappsy and I will have to get one each for each of our rooms, and then one for the living room. And one for the kitchen. And one for the bog… See, when you talk about this flat-share thing, for me it just conjures up images of Bert and Ernie…or possible Morecambe and Wise. :-)
The Body/Swap and R.D. ones are awesome. Smegging Hell just didn’t do it for me, but I guess the appeal is that there’s something for everyone.
