Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler The Princess Bride

I know a few people here are Princess Bride fans, so this is for you.

The latest edition of the book came out not too long ago, so I found myself running into the official site for it:

http://www.harcourtbooks.com/princessbride/

If you've never read the book, I highly recommend it. There's more backstory on the main characters, which is very worthwhile, and the tone of the presentation is a little more sophisticated than the movie's. My recommendation is to skip the included introductions to the 25th anniversary and 30th anniversary editions of the book, and go straight to the original introduction. Ha ha. At the end, there is one chapter of the unreleased sequel, Buttercup's Baby: S. Morgenstern's Glorious Examination of Courage Matched Against the Death of the Heart. Read the 25th anniversary introduction before that chapter. Finally, read the introduction to the 30th anniversary edition. That's the order you would have read them in if you'd followed each release.

Since a new DVD edition of the movie was also released (still no Blu-ray, like they were going to), I found myself finding the official site for that as well, at:

http://www.theprincessbride.com/

Of note is a link to the forthcoming downloadable game's site (coming Spring of '08):

http://www.princessbridegame.com/

I don't have the new DVD, or the two previous releases (Buttercup and Dread Pirate Roberts editions), but I'll get around to them someday, as I still like to collect. The new DVD supposedly comes with a limited form of the game. I assume the game will be bad, but just in case, I've preordered it.

Anyway, seeing this resurgence of sorts made me take a look at my own Princess Bride fansite, which I spent many hours over many years building. I haven't done anything with it in forever, but I still host it, though it's faded from the top search results. For a while I think I was the top result for "princess bride" on the main search engines, when it was located at smorgenstern.com. Now it's merely a subsite at my new domain name, and the once active message board has died off completely. Being outdated in both code and content, I'm getting ready to put it to rest. However, there ARE a couple of sections of the site that I'll probably retain. I plan on distilling my love for The Princess Bride into a single page, and I'll include Humiliations Galore (for embarrassing stories related to TPB) and Prepare to Die (where you could complain about people who didn't recognize TPB's greatness). Some of the stories are pretty cool, and the feedback I used to get from the site is a testament to how much William Goldman's book and movie mean to people.

In any case, my site is still the best source for images relating to The Princess Bride, so if you think you're going to be needing any of those for upcoming Photoshop projects, now's the time to grab them.

http://twinbabyoracles.com/goodparts/

Have fun storming the castle!

Thanks for the links and the work on the site. I love the movie, I think it’s my second most watched movie, I guess I’ll have to give the books a try.

The book is, dare I say it, better than the movie. However, it also takes nothing away from the movie. I'm not sure which came out first, but the book is just marvelous.

The book came out in 1973, and the movie came out in 1987.

For a little while there they were going to make a musical, but Goldman and composer Adam Guettel parted ways over the financial aspect. I'm kind of relieved it didn't happen.

Read the book in college after it was recommended to me by a friend. Oh, Tom Henderson, where are you now? He also taught me how to juggle and how to play a wicked riff on the bass.

awesome!!!!

So I picked up the 20th Anniversary Edition DVD, and the game on it is absolutely godawful. Also, the booklet is terribly written, although the middle of the book is somewhat clever. It says "True Love," and if you flip it over, it still says "True Love," thanks to some creative font work. Still, pretty underwhelming. I was scared the movie would look horrible, too, considering how oversaturated the color is in the menus, but it seemed better when I played the main feature.