This title format that drives me bonkers - Big Little Lies etc.

btw we tried to watch Tiny Pretty Things last night and it was so poorly written and acted we turned it off after 15 minutes, and we never stop watching anything no matter how dumb it is.

when i was a little kid watching all those bond movies on cable i often wasnt familiar with the idioms and familiar phrases those titles were tweaking and just internalized them at face value - it wasnt until years later that really dawned on me how many of them are complete nonsense

Fine Young Cannibals?

LittleBigPlanet

Meaty Beaty Big and Bouncy

Little Big League

I just remembered that's both a movie and a band.

littleBIGMAN

That hasn’t been posted yet?

Meaty Beaty Big and Bouncy

John Crowley, Little, Big
Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things
Little Big Town (band)
Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

Oh great, HBO has a show coming just called "The Little Things". I'm going to boycott it.

Never Rarely Sometimes Always seems like a questionable title, but the scene where you find out what it refers to is the emotional high point of the film

Before I saw that movie I assumed the title referred to survey options.

I just came to post about my ambivalence to the second season of Big Little Lies and then I realized I’d forgotten the thread theme, so anyway.

Grateful Dead - Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodleloo

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

thanks Zing

https://offtheshelf.com/app/uploads/2016/09/A-Million-Little-Pieces.jpg

A Million Little Pieces

https://i.watch.cbc.ca/p/categoryThumbnails/8ff393e7-610d-4d42-b078-ff1049045e2d.jpg?impolicy=poster3x&imwidth=412

fuck sake.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCs1rkAXZ9o

Working title was apparently "Lady Dicks," so this may be for the better.

http://celebmafia.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/kathryn-newton-the-map-of-tiny-perfect-things-poster-2021-0.jpg

LMAO!

Wait what?

https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/a-million-big-pretty-tiny-little-lies-everywhere

watched this a few months back, it was not my choice, some interesting ideas in there i guess

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMjQ1MjM0OTE2Ml5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTgwMzgwMDY4NzM@._V1_.jpg

Bigby, The Littlest Big Dog in the World

https://www.reeloneent.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/47736-_1_PRETTY_LITTLE_VICTIM_KEY_ART_V4-scaled.jpg

I saw an article about the upcoming TV series Tiny Beautiful Things and was like, didn't they make a show called that a few years ago? No, that was Tiny Pretty Things

This trend started with Little Bighorn

https://www.applewoodbooks.com/Assets/ProductImages/9781557095916.jpg

https://www.applewoodbooks.com/Assets/ProductImages/9781557095916.jpg

See also--

The God of Small Things (perhaps the book that kicked this off?)
Small Great Things
Scrappy Little Nobody
Little Earthquakes
Ten Tiny Breaths
Shiny Broken Pieces
Tiny Dark Seeds
Each Tiny Spark
This Tiny Perfect World
The Association of Small Bombs
The Ministry of Utmost Happiness
The Dazzling Truth
A Teeny Bit of Trouble
A Teeny Taste of Scandal

Big Lies in a Small Town
Bright Shiny Morning
The Queen of Bright and Shiny Things
Every Shiny Thing
Nine Shiny Objects
Tiny Ladies in Shiny Pants

haha i was just thinking about this but i couldn't really articulate it, of course there's an ilx thread.

it is annoying.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Map_of_Tiny_Perfect_Things?wprov=sfla1

How many books have titles like this and the front cover is just large type white font with a background of interlaced CGI flowers

this title convention is like a mash-up of grown-up YA, multicult Chick Lit, McSweeney's sincere-core and cutesy crime fiction.

The God of Small Things (perhaps the book that kicked this off?)

Well, Thomas Berger published the western novel Little Big Man in 1964. It was a Dustin Hoffman film in 1970.

John Crowley published the fantasy novel Little, Big in 1981.

Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things came out in 1997.

So I get the annoyance with a twee cliché (tweeché?), but comic juxtaposition and cognitive dissonance are as old as literature. (Cf. Shakespeare, "Though she be but little, she is fierce.")

I don't know whom to blame but it seems unfair to blame Arundhati Roy.

Maybe giving atomic bombs cute names Fat Man and Little Boy was in poor taste.

of course there are antecedents but having worked in a bookstore from the late 90s to the late 00s there was a definite in titles like this in that era. The God of Small Things sounded kind of profound and cozy at the same time, which is the vibe I get from a lot of these.

One time when something bad failed to happen - like I dropped a glass and it didn't break - my girlfriend said "thank the thousand little gods."

I don't know where that came from but I found it charming and I married her.

Shit, maybe I'm the problem.

Also, Little Earthquakes rocks. Do not mess with 90s Tori.

Big Trouble in Little China?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KClygZtp8mA

A little bit of Monica in my life
A little bit of Erica by my side

Just saw this tweet and came to revive. Glad to see we're already on top of it.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this the seventh thing with this title to have been released in the past five years pic.twitter.com/4E3jYU7y7j

— Charles Bramesco (@intothecrevasse) April 5, 2023

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/fb/13/be/fb13be08624cd5b136fa66951f715abb.jpg

Damn, guess I need to retitle my forthcoming novel A Heartbreaking Work of Diminuitive Shiny Objects. Maybe I will call it Small Items that Are Actually Big instead.

Bummer because Wes Anderson was set to direct and Michael Cera had expressed interest.

pic.twitter.com/1QlU1wrhbd

— John Levenstein (@johnlevenstein) March 26, 2024

How did we make it this far without anyone mentioning Eat, Pray, Love

We should combine them
Eat all the big little lies I never told you, pray everywhere in the house of ivy and sorrow, love all at once

overly long ones are next, lets say fried green tomatoes at the whistlestop cafe as an exemplar

They combined the titles that’s crazy https://t.co/XhyCrw75qZ pic.twitter.com/tvvm7Px09o

— Nick Stellini (@StelliniTweets) March 26, 2024

All the

small wives

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1435452849i/90619.jpg

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61Vf2vo2IqL._SL1200_.jpg

Remember all the book covers that were just, like, shoes?

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/817iFfLhJ+L._AC_UF1000,1000_QL80_FMwebp_.jpg

https://books.google.com/books/content?id=M86PhpoehBAC&pg=PP1&img=1&zoom=3&hl=en&sig=ACfU3U2B9KEeH3mVPMWU7HGtr5DdvQ0e8Q&w=1280

if James Herriot were writing today, his book would be called Little Big Animals

All Creatures are Small

Dirty Sexy Money (2007)

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1387741079i/18079552.jpg

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1311978825i/8789529.jpg

xp The ad for Dirty Sexy Money started with a bunch of random words on the screen, and they disappear one by one until only "dirty" "sexy" and "money" remain. Probably exactly the way creators and execs come up with these half-assed titles

I wonder if the title for Dirty Sexy Money was inspired by this British TV movie?

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMTY5MjIxODk2MV5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwNTgwOTgyMQ@@._V1_FMjpg_UX1000_.jpg

Tell me lies, tell me Sweet Little Filthy Sexy Tiny Big Lies

Lionsgate has acquired the rights to ‘SMALL THINGS LIKE THESE’ starring Cillian Murphy.

The film takes place over Christmas in 1985, when a devoted father (Murphy) discovers the startling secrets being kept by the convent in his town, and shocking truths about his own life too. pic.twitter.com/0SqxR3FW2T

— Film Updates (@FilmUpdates) June 5, 2024

startling secrets AND shocking truths? I'm in.

https://www.nurseriesandschools.org/listing/little-big-steps-private-day-nursery-and-pre-school-knowle-the-park-centre-bs4-1dq

My kid's Christmas show is called Big Little Nativity

BBC has suggested that I might want to watch either "A Very Modern Tudor" or "A Very Royal Crisis," along with "A Very British Scandal" a screen or two later.

Luv ya Beebs, but this is getting to be "A Very Tired Formula" and "A Very Twee Title Format."

Let me see if anybody is streaming "A Very Brady Christmas."