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Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Trailer
Rakkis writes "A new Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trailer is available on the frontpage of Amazon.com. From IMDb: "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy follows the travels of Arthur Dent (Martin Freeman), who is saved from the demolition of the Earth by his pal Ford Prefect (Mos Def). Ford is really an alien doing research for an updated edition of the universe's ultimate travel companion, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." -- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy opens April 29th.""
Direct link to SWF and a download?
AmazonFilms.swf
broken link to mov file
to screw the fans over by forcing a site like Aint-It-Cool to shut down their download of the trailer just so that Amazon can have non-downloadable, lower resolution, crappier version up "exclusively."
Bite me, Eisner.
Opening on April 1 would have been more appropriate.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
I have mixed feelings about this. I mean every new adaptation of DNA's work is open to interpretation but....
when did Ford's thumb become a magic hitchhiking device?!?
Beyond that, It's not as bad as I feared although not as good as I hoped. I think Marvin looks kinda neat, different from the comic book version. Arthur looks about right although Zaphod I think is gonna kill me. I think they're also gonna play up a Arthur, Trillian romance more which I think will hurt it.
My bum will definitly be in a theater seat the moment this hits theaters though.
-Teiresias
I think you ought to know I'm feeling very depressed...
Phil
I sure hope not. Generally trying to force even one novel into a movie results in lots being cut (See also: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban), trying to fit a whole series would be disastrous.
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
...That they appear to be running around a quarry. This has not yet proven successful for British SF ;-)
Ford is really an alien doing research for an updated edition of the universe's ultimate travel companion, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy."
Belgium, my cover's blown. That's it, I'm off home. Your planet sucked anyway, monkeymen!
Except for the ale, of course. And the cheese biscuits, you know those octagonal ones with the sesame seeds on, they were quite nice too. Still, anyway, I'm back to Betelgeuse...
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
I'd hate to have our inside geek joke be revealed to the world. It's always been sort of a secret code, if you knew what it meant, then you belonged to the tribe. Now every avid moviegoer in the world will know what it means.
There are 2 kinds of people in this world. Those that can keep their train of thought,
According to the IMDB entry for the movie, this character was added specifically for the movie by Adams, who has credits as the screenwriter. So, any changes to the story line are most likely of his own doing.
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
No, the book (or radio series, or tv, or any combination of the above) says they're distant cousins, and IIRC share several of the same mothers...
Phil
It's a little hard to believe, but the movie is actually one of Douglous Adam's last works.
One thing the movie wont be is an adaption of the books and radio play all over again, it's something fresh new and different in the Hitchhiker universe. I'm looking forward to it very much.
If you're curious about what the plans for the movie were, and the process heading up to it you might want to check out "A Salmon of Doubt" which compiles Adam's final works, along with several letters and coorespondencies leading up to this movie amoung other things
I'm going to be forever wondering what the story behind half a cat and the rhino will be though...
Mos Def is an extremely gifted musician and skilled actor. He was recently nominated for an Emmy as a lead actor in a mini-series for his work on Something the Lord Made on HBO. He has also been in numerous other films which you can look at here.
There's mischief and malarkies but no queers or yids or darkies within this bastard's carnival, this vicious cabaret.
Douglas Adams, on a number of occasions, said that he never intended the film to be a direct adaptation of the book. And, in the introduction of at least one of the books, he talked about how the books were different from the TV show which was different from the radio play. I wasn't all that impressed with the trailer. It looks like the story, which was always for me very cerebral, has been dumbed down into an action flick. I like action flicks as much as the next guy, but not every movie has to be one. The trailer does make it come across as very, MIBish. A fun movie, but nothing to write home about. Right now, I'm thinking that Sideways is going to turn out to be a lot funnier than Hitchhiker.
That's funny, I plan to punch in the face anybody I see carrying a towel. God help me if I see anybody with a gold fish stuck in their ear.
Treat me like a marketing stat, and I'll treat your movie like a series of ones and zeros
Also worth remembering that there are already different versions of the tale - the differences between the radio play scripts and the novel are fairly significant.
** The opinions expressed here are my own, and do not reflect those of my employers - past, present, or future**
Blah blah blah - it's different from the book. I don't care if Douglas Adams himself penned the screenplay and intended all versions to be different. I'm going to bitch and moan about a scene taken out of context from the trailer without knowing how it fits into the story!
This is a piece of entertainment from my childhood! I somehow believe that I have "rights" as a fan to influence creative decisions by the studio and that this version might erase all love I had for the original, because appearently I can't hold two things in my brain at once. Blah blah blah!
You know it's going to be ruined, it's the Hollywood way. All the previews I've seen are just special effects and catchphrases in the voice-over.
Fred
"A fool and his freedom are soon parted"
-RMS
The hardest part I had was convincing the computer that I really wanted something that was printed using chared bits of coal smeared on mashed up, dried out bits of tree, held together by cow skin.
Hopefully it will stop processing in time...
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
Adams himself wrote the screenplay. [..]
/. article about this movie has one of you out-of-the-loop guys repeating this and getting modded up.
Everything in the movie has Adams' sanction,
NO HE DIDN'T! NO IT DOESN'T!
Every fucking
He wrote A screenplay, not this screenplay. He wrote what HE considered the final draft. And then, he died.
He had been fighting the studio for years to have a screenplay that he liked, and he managed to finally write one that had compromises from both parties, then, he died. And THEN the studio had "changes" made. We can't know what those are, but wanna bet that their compromises suddenly went away?
I'm so fucking tired of seeing your delusion about this being his words modded up. I used to reply with links to the statements of the parties invilved detailing the chronology of the rewrites, but my rebuttals went unnoticed and your wishfull thinking stays modded up. Shit!
You can't take the sky from me...
Disney should know this by now.
You mean the Disney that closed down it's traditional animation studio? Disney has degenerated into a nightmare of suits and execs. I tell you: it's run by Vogons.
You can't take the sky from me...
I wonder how far down, theoretically, a post can be modded.
Go back and watch the trailer again. His second head appears briefly in like the last 10 seconds of the trailer, popping up from underneath his regular head.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
I'll bite, where in the book does it say what colour Ford Prefect is?
For the zillionth time, no:
You can't take the sky from me...
He wrote A screenplay, not this screenplay. He wrote what HE considered the final draft. And then, he died.
You should read the rather funny self-interview conducted by the guy who wrote the final screenplay. It's apparent from that interview--without being explicitly stated--that Adams's final draft was never going to be filmed without further modification. That's just the way the movie business works. Even the "final" approved script gets changed during filming because of (A) inspiration of the director to expand a scene, add a new scene, etc., or (B) the discovery that a scene that reads brilliantly on the page just doesn't work when filmed.
Douglas Adams wrote a lot of great stuff, but he couldn't figure out how to structure it to make it work as brilliantly in movie form as it had in book and radio play form. The eventual screenplay consisted largely of reorganizing Adams's own material into a shootable script. Where changes deviating from Adams's own writings had to be made, they deferred to his intentions as much as possible, by referring to his notes, unfinished musings, half-written scenes, etc.
Is there some stuff in the script that wasn't written by Douglas Adams himself? Definitely. Did they likely cut out stuff Adams would have kept? Probably. Did they put back in stuff that Adams had cut? Definitely.
Unfortunately, due to his untimely death, we'll never know what Douglas Adams himself would have thought of this movie. If you'd asked me five years ago if a movie of HHGG could ever be anything other than horrible, I'd have answered with an unequivocal NO. But Peter Jackson's version of The Lord of the Rings has made me change my mind. I think it can be good. Will it? I don't know, but I'll withhold my judgement until I actually see it.
same beard, same color of hair....2 heads, 3 arms, yep!...the same
I recently purchased the DVD version of the BBC's television production of HHGTTG. I would say to anyone who loved the books and intends to see this new film, be prepared for changes. Adams liked to tweak things, and according to what I saw on the DVD, the books have been revised and changed over time as Adams fiddled with bits here and there to refine them.
The background information about the making of the series, and about Douglas Adams is fascinating. It reveals some of Adams' manic-depressive personality. It talks about how Adams was not one to write a book and then want to translate that 100% to another format; he welcomed change and refinement with the TV series, and based on what I saw in the interviews, I think he enjoyed the opportunity to revise and rewrite HHGTTG yet again on the big screen.
Adams' only problem, according to the interviews and behind the scenes information, was an awful writer's block at the start of any project. The infamous line about loving deadlines, especially the sound they make as they go whooshing by, was very true for Adams personally.
Adams was a performer; he didn't really want to be a writer. He started out performing, acting, doing live comedy. At least with writing, his particular quirky sense of humor reached many thousands of people who revere him for what he accomplished, personal foibles aside.
If you saw the BBC series, Adams was featured in two different spots. One, he was in a suit counting money while walking out of the bank. The other, he was throwing his money away and walking into the water naked.
I always thought that although HHGTTG was a damned good series of books, the two Dirk Gently books were slightly more intelligent and more fun for grown-ups.
It seems to me that "Dirk Gently's holistic detective agency" and "The long dark tea time of the soul" would be more suitable for a movie. More dialogue, less need for a narrator, better developed characters. Not a MIB-type Hollywood action movie, but a nice film nonetheless.
Opinions stated are mine and do not reflect those of the Illuminati