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Telegraph Reviews Hitchhiker Movie, Approves
LPetrazickis writes "The Telegraph has reviewed the movie adaptation of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The review notes that the film is every bit as much a loving tribute to Douglas Adams as it is a joyous comedy. American actors acquit themselves well, and the sense of intelligent wonder transfers well to the technicolour screen. The many incarnations of The Guide are summarized at the end."
I forecast 42 million dollars in the first day. :P
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I don't have a choice, I must see it to either enjoy it or to hack it to pieces in person with my friends. Not watching it is not an option, no matter how bad it is.
Frylock: "We should have cloned twenties, Jackson wouldn't have given a fuck."
If a book trilogy can consistent of 5 books, why can't a movie trilogy consist of 1 movie?
--- Attorneys Assisting Citizen-Soldiers & Families -
Who cares, I know I'll be seeing it. Opening night. Vogon poetry couldn't keep me away from the theater for this one.
Real_men_don't_need_spacebars.
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Unfortunately, I will not be.
:-)
I've seen the BBC series and it simply rocks.
I've had every other favorite book of mine trashed - Lord of the Rings, Dune, I, Robot and a quintillion others.
I'm not ready to watch the movie and destroy what I've treasured all this while. And most importantly, when I re-read the book, the images from the movie will stick in my mind - something I really do not want to happen.
I'll go with the earlier review -- I'm a purist of sorts in this regard, and I'm fairly certain I'll hate the movie.
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I, for one, look forward to the movie. I have confidence that it will incredibly funny, while still staying true to the spirit of the books. I ask all those who demand a carbon copy to please bellyache out of my earshot.
Sounds rather bought-and-paid-for to me. Puff piece. Astroturf, even.
And what's with nonsense like:
Zooey Deschanel as Trillian, a minor character in Adams's book
or
and a towel, a manic-depressive android and a whale falling from the sky all make important appearances.
I'm sorry, Trillian is a "minor character"? Marvin is lumped in with the whale as a character who makes "important appearances"? Important appearances? The reviewer doesn't even give his name? If the movie slashes his role that much, there is serious trouble.
My Joo Janta peril-sensitive sunglasses are strangely opaque. I suspect this movie will suck, and will only do slightly better than if every theater showing it was blanketed in an SEP field.
Has it gotten to the point where we don't even watch a movie to figure out if we like it? How often are critics wrong? Watch the movie for yourself and make up your own mind.
So put that in your pipe and grep it
I've had every other favorite book of mine trashed - Lord of the Rings...
If you think the LOTR movies "trashed" the books, then you would probably not like *any adaptation* of a book. As you said, if you don't want "images from the movie to stick" in your mind, the best bet is to not watch it. So, you don't really need to go with any review -- you seem to have an issue with the visual medium itself.
S
Marshall McLuhan's message: ""The Medium is the Message" is now about 4 decades old. McLuhan is thought by many to be one of the fathers of the age of technology yet posters on /. seem unable to distinguish between two mediums/metaphors as visibly distinguishable as film and book. The experiences are distinctly different enjoy each according to its merits. If you can't distinguish between two diverse experinces perhaps you're too egocentic and tribal, read primitive.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
REUTERS:
In financial news today expert industry anylists report that the once popular, geeky, tech news site slashdot.com's ad revenue is in sharp decline.
Economists assert that Slashdots's new diet of endless lame news items about Google, municipal WIFI and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy are putting off hungry consumers who are going elsewhere.
"I just can't take it anymore" said one long time Slashdot afficionado. "It's just Google, HitchHiker's, and WIFI"
Experts predict that of the remaining 12.5 visitors slashdot gets daily, 98.3% use the adblock feature of the controversial "Firefox" browser.
"It's a bleak situation"
A positive review, now we can all go see the movie...
Please, as if we weren't going to see it anyway.
I've yet to find a movie critic with whom I agree with often enough to actually avoid a movie based on their review.
See the damn movie, make up your own mind 'eh.
You know you're a geek if you've ever replied to a tagline.
> it wasn't in any way related to Tolkien's world.
What? I thought it was an extremely faithful adaption, given the limitations imposed by trying to compress three fat books into a mere 9 hours (or whatever) of movie. And before you ask, I've read LoTR so many times since my mum bought it for my birthday in 1962 that my original copy has just about fallen apart. Btw, I've never felt that Tolkien's characterisation was all that strong - most of the characters are little better than cardboard cutouts.
What a long, strange trip it's been.
The point is to not pay for bad movies. If you go to a movie such as this, and it turns out to be bad, well now you know it stinks but they have your $9 now so what do they care?
This is why so many bad movies get churned out over and over again. If you continue to front the cash for them then it's basically the same as saying "shove anything in my face hollywood, because I never learn and I'll continue to pay for whatever trash you deem worthy entertainment" (in my opinion).
So most people rely on movie reviews to make sure their dollars go to supporting entertainment they want to support.
42.
Let's face it - whoever made this movie, whoever produced it, whoever starred in it - it was always, *always* going to be either loved or hated. Such is the sentiment and legacy towards DNA.
As is made clear in just about every item one reads about Douglas (including TFA), he saw each incarnation of H2G2 as a different entity in its own right and felt no compunction to translate perfectly between mediums.
The sad fact is that Douglas is dead. So we can either have no movie ever, or hand it over to someone else. The latter was always the best idea, IMO. Let's stop whining and celebrate the fact that the geek's favourite book has finally made it to film. Films are practically never as good as the books they follow (one or two exceptions like 2001 and, for me, Fear & Loathing (thanks to Johnny Depp, but I digress) spring to mind). H2G2 is the best example of this as it fires the imagination like nothing else.
I, for one, am all too happy to see both negative and positive reviews.
It's indifference I don't like.
Just reading about how this movie was made would make me think that a "making of..." documentary about this movie would be almost as entertaining as the movie itself.
In short, DNA could very likely be a character in his own book. Or conversely, his own life was so bizzare that in many ways the books (not just the Hitchhiker trilogy) mirror his own life. The more I read about DNA's life experiences, the more facinating I find him to be.
I found this bit to be almost priceless from the Telegraph story: (to pharaphrase) The producers of this movie are "two men working from a barge named Polly, moored on the Regent's Canal in an unfashionable part of Islington, north London."
I don't think DNA could have done better for a new book opening scene.
[blockquote]the film is every bit as much a loving tribute to Douglas Adams as it is a joyous comedy.[/blockquote]
so, it's as funny as a funeral and bears no resemblance to the book then?
Glad someone said it. I really liked the books and movies, but depth of characterization wasn't a priority for Tolkein. Given that his interests were with mythology, that wasn't surprising, but let's not pretend his work was something it wasn't intended to be. Most of the characters were either "white hats" or "black hats." Exceptions were mainly limited to Gondor, where Denethor was plain nuts, Boromir was a good flawed hero, and Faramir was very well rounded.
The treatment of Faramir, actually, was my greatest disappointment with the movie (theater version especially).
Well, I guess it's just a matter of opinion. Peter Jackson's movie was well made as a fantasy movie, just not LoTR.
It's not the compressed part that got to me, but the fact that he changed a lot of things that need not have been changed - making Gimli into a comical character, portraying Faramir as someone who gives into temptation, horrible portrayal of Lady Galadriel, Aragorn and a lot of others. Not to mention tonnes of inconsistencies (Glorifendel's role, for instance) and such.
PJ did not have to make these changes, yet he did - that is what irritated me.
I'm not going to see the movie. They replaced Tom Bombadil with some stupid robot, and I hear Trillian is going to be fighting at Helm's Deep. Isn't anything sacred anymore?
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Thank you! I was beginning to think everyone else (or maybe possibly I) was crazy! It was very painful. Personally, I got through half of the first episode, stopped it and deleted the entire series from my harddrive and did a DoD compliant wipe out of empty space just to be extra safe.
Uh, I dunno ... is that one of those glottal stop words? Here in this country we use vowels.
"Lo-tor!"
"Lot-rrr"
"Lort!"
I think I hurt my glottis *and* my epiglottis. It's definitely bed time.
When I came out of the first Lord Of The Rings screening, I actually heard a pack of hardcore nerdlingers arguing over the way some of the characters sat down to eat and how it wasn't portrayed in the film.
If you're that tied up that you cannot live with a story being adapted as best possible to suit the film media, please don't ever leave your house again. The rest of us cinema-goers don't want you there.
The story may not follow the book to the letter, but can't you see a little beyond that and maybe judge it on its own merits? For fucks sake...
And let's not forget the gratuitous dwarf-tossing jokes in the first two films. Then again, the director of "Dead Alive" and "Meet The Feebles" not adding a little sophomoric humor to LOTR? Did you expect him to hold back? I didn't and wasn't offended.
The beauty of the LOTR movies was that even though they were not faithful to the letter of the book, they were faithful to the spirit of the book. I was not disappointed.
Of course, I would have rather seen Bjork as Arwen. She *looks* like an elf. She wouldn't have even had to play with a different accent...her Icelandic/British accent is pretty damn close to the way they did Elvish anyway.
Also I would have rather heard what Jimmy Page would have done on the soundtrack instead of Howard Shore. I'm a child of the '70s. Reading LOTR with Led Zeppelin on the stereo has inescapably twisted my mind. He's done orchestral scores before...anyone remember the "Death Wish" movies? Yeah, I know, bad example.
Of course, H2G2 has similar synaptic connections in my twisted mind. I still have an animated movie starring the voices of Eric Idle (Ford), Michael Palin (Arthur) and Bill Murray (Zaphod) in my mind, probably never to be erased by the actual movie. The deconstruction of the movie by DNA's biographer kinda had me worried, but I think I might just give this a chance.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
I met a fella at a party in England once in the seventies. We peed in a field and argued over whether "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Milky Way" was a better title. He thought not... Said I was a telepathic bastard in fact, but that's water out back of the comet now. Point: All I want is a PDA with all the video and movies and radio cross-ref'd with the Texts, with the words "Don't Panic" on its cover. Counterpoint: After all this time, is that too much to ask of Western Civilization? Tesserapoint: Or, at least, of an anonymous yet literate electronics factory in Taiwan?
One of the things that made LoTR powerful was the strength of the characters
From the typical viewpoint of "characters are people", then the LOTR books had hardly any characterization. The members of the fellowship were hardly more than stereotypes.
Only if you look at it in context and understand that those stereotypes were new inventions (at that time) can you grasp why the series had such acclaim. In a way, the entire races and cultures of elves, dwarves, orcs and hobbits were characters of themselves.
Readers born after the 1970s will barely recognize that fact, because the ideas have been copied so broadly through D&D, World of Warcraft, etc.
When the hell people would understand that book is what characters THINK, and movie is what your characters SPEAK!!
Writer writes a book, not script/screenplay of a movie. So, a movie based on the book can not be SAME AS THE BOOK EVER!!! It is a completely different medium - to tell the same story.
A book leaves it to the reader to imagine how characters, places look. Hence it is a very personalized product for the reader. Movie leaves little left to imagination (in this context). It can not be as personal as the book might have been.
That is the reason why most of the movies based on very popular/cult books have been largely disappointing to the fanboys - just because it is not what THEY imagined/visualized it. And they are never going to be satisfied with the movie based on their favorite book. If one can not figure how great (and also faithful) LOTR movies have been to the book, well, H2G2 is a far cry.
So the Earth will be destroyed five minutes before the box-office figures come in, then?