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Hitchhikers Movie Update
DaViking writes "Over at Yahoo Movies there are a few more pictures, including one of the Heart of Gold, and an updated trailer for up coming Hitchhikers movie." I'm hoping this film will inspire some sequels, too!
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Just too bad that Mr. Adams died too early! He had a lot of satiric writing left to do! Or as a friend of mine that I lent a book of Adams to stated; "I wonder what he smoked..."
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
there's very little to be said for artistic license. I, for one, am just happy that this is making its way into the visual realm, and relish the thought of getting to see what the disney artists concepts of adams' work end up looking like. perhaps holding one's tongue and putting judgement by the wayside until it's been released would be a pragmatic thing to do?
;)
nevermind...that's not a shoe!
"How like you to drag your keyboard to a gun fight." - Aaron Bedard (BANE)
You have a point. It looks like the Disney execs decided to make Marvin 'cute', which is a really stupid thing. Marvin is supposed to be a whiny character you laugh at because he's always complaining; the fun comes from looking down on his impotence. Making him sympathetic like a puppy is completely antithetical to the role. Worst, those money grubbing bastards will probably make a cutesy Marvin toy and stick it in a McD 'Brain the Size of a Small Planet' Happy Meal. I just hope the clueless execs at Disney don't remake this by formula as another Mermaid or Hercules with happy little sidekicks. Just wait until you see the Marvin in costume at Disneyland. - puke -
I think it's cause for concern when the release is 7 months away and all they have so far is CONCEPT ART!!!
Or is it possible to produce a film of this proportion in that span of time???
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Of course it's going to be a huge disappointment. Name one book to movie conversion that wasn't a disappointment to someone who read the book previously. That doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to be a bad film, just not the one you envisioned. But what the movie will definitely do is give the book a ton more readership.
The problem I see with the film concepts so far is that it seems like it's taking itself too seriously. Those concepts for the Heart of Gold and Marvin are too mainstream and contemporary. They don't scream "HHGTTG!" and look as if they could be placed in any sci-fi movie coming out today. If they actually took a chance and *GASP* took ideas from the book and made the Heart of Gold look like a "sleek running shoe" then perhaps people would be able to recognize the design as a part of the film.
Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
Of course, Hollywood appears to know about as much about what a blog is as what the Heart of Gold is really supposed to look like. Just because you take your standard production news site run by some faceless intern with no community feedback features and CALL it a blog, doesn't make it a blog...
Soemthing to remember is that to someone who hasnt read the books and/or doesnt "get" the particular style of humor Douglas Adams uses, a spaceship shaped like a running shoe might look stupid/lame.
Yes, like in the Hebrew cover of the book.
(BTW: Any female H2G2 fans here? I'm looking for a girlfriend!)
Slashdot community, please notice: I am looking for a girlfriend.
Nave H. Weiss
The series is already one of the more genre-busting SF stories out there. It started out as a radio play, was done as a series of books, a TV miniseries, a text adventure game, and finally another radio play. Making a movie hardly seems worse than any of the other transitions.
In case you're stuck with the idea that Doug Adams wrote the books and everything else was just trying to make a buck with cheap work, it started as a radio play, and Adams has had a hand in every adaptation to date, including this new movie. (Yes, he's dead, but that doesn't seem to stop him.)
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
Name one book to movie conversion that wasn't a disappointment to someone who read the book previously.
Stand By Me and Shawshank Redemption were both based on Stephen King novellas. Stand By Me is an almost letter perfect adaptation of "The Body". There were some deviations in Shawshank Redemption but they were tolerable and weren't total "re-imaginings" of the essential story. The mere mention of Harry Potter does seem to shut some minds down but those movies are faithful to their source material. Come to think of it, The Andromeda Strain was also a good adaptation and a rare example of good cinematic sci-fi.
Nonethess, I agree with you. Most book to movie adaptations go beyond what is necessary to bring a detailed novel to a two hour movie. 9 times out 10, the story will be cheapened so that all the tired Hollywood cliches can be crammed into what could have been a good movie. Even worse, you have things like I Robot which have almost nothing to do with the books they come from. I Robot was originally to be called Livewire and had some character names from I Robot grafted onto it so they could rape Asimov's corpse for a few extra bucks.
DNA never specified it was shaped like a shoe to fit a human foot, did he? :)
Duct tape is like the Force. It has a light side, a dark side, and it holds the universe together.
For those who hadn't noticed yet: try reloading the http://hitchhikers.movies.go.com site a few times. (Hm... Would that be considered a Serial-Slashdotting?) There are a number of different fashions in which the earth gets obliterated -- Not sure how many there are total, but I've seen at least 7 different ones.
Having admired the videos of Hammer & Tongs and see that they were suggested to direct by Spike Jones when Jay "Austin Powers" Roach couldn't commit, I am not too worried. Even if this is under the Disney banner, I don't think it is doomed. Just like Pixar films, don't suck (yet).
[boostventilator]
Before any US /.-ers mod me down for that remark on patriotic grounds (I'm not a Brit, but Aussie, btw), consider this:
The original Arthur Dent was very, very, very English - meaning that, no matter what happened, he approached it with the traditional (and much stereotyped) British "stiff upper lip".
Case in point: refer to the tale he told Fenchurch in "So Long and Thanks for All the Fish" about the biscuits in the railway station.
Adams' delightfully dry humour will only translate well if Arthur maintains the original Dent nature.
And let's face it, the dialogue is the best part about HHGTTG, in all it's forms - radio program, book, TV series, LP series, stage show and (hopefully) this movie! I doesn't need to be about great special effects as long as it's funny :)
Adams himself said the TV series was his least favourite adaption, but he was happy enough at the time to keep a heap of the main actors (Jones, Jones, Wing-Davey and Moore) and my guess it was he wanted the TV show (and presumably the movie) to have the same feel.
I know that's not possible right now, but I'm sure he intended it to keep its original look and feel.
I'm really looking forward to seeing if this movie version measures up to the dream :)
I devised my sig. going around Hyde Park corner on a moped
That is truly sad!
I was in a job interview before, and the interviewer-would-be-boss said to me:
"I'd like to ask you some questions.."
So I responded: "Go ahead, ask me anything.. life, the universe, everything" (or something similiar)..
He laughed.. I laughed, we shared some stories.. and then he warned me that the job would probably be eliminated in 2-3 months, and I'd probably be on my ass if I took it. It was great.
Another time I was interviewing for a contract and the person wanted to "test my personality".. he was obviously unimpressed with the corporate template questions. He asked me what my favorite color was. A super-intelligent shade of blue, of course. He laughed. He knew.
No, I fret. Everyone and their lame-ass over the hill friends are going to be walking around spouting how 42 is the answer. Fark.
Agreed. Too bad Pixar isn't doing HHGTTG instead. I know they prefer to do their own stuff, but I think their creativity would strongly complement Adam's flippantly brilliant style, and they'd probably enjoy such a unique challenge as well. Oh well, coulda shoulda woulda...
Flying is easy, just throw yourself at the ground and miss. -Douglas Adams