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BBC Reviews Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
An anonymous reader writes "Now that the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has made its debut in London, reviews are now beginning to trickle in. The BBC's review can be summed up in one sentence: '... somewhere in the production process the crew has lost sight of the fundamental aspect of the books - they were immensely funny."
[Fill In Book Name Here] is not as bad as I had feared. Then again, it is not as good as I had hoped.
Choose from:
Note: Those marked with an '*' may actually, really and truly, suck.
Seriously, mixing american actors with british actors and trying to turn something that wasn't very bad as a BBC TV series into a movie would be difficult, especially with the Hollywood penchant for wanting it to end differently than the book so the audience would be surpried and trying to make britishisms translate into equally funny americanisms or vice-a-versa. Imagine the following scenario: (brace thyself) A Hollywood remake of Monty Python and the Holy Grail... que horror, eh? Imagine (told you to brace yourself, you sensitive clod!) hip-hop actors, dimbulb comedy actors from sitcoms and the utter flattening of comedic timing to accomodate dumbed down humor. Yeah. Somethings are better left alone. Better to just go see Spamalot.
I do expect Rickman's dead-pan voice to be perfect for Marvin, but that's about all.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Unless the cover says "Don't Panic."
Physics is nothing like religion. If it was, we'd have an easier time trying to raise money!
The "immensely funny" thing is curious. To be honest, completely honest... I didnt find douglas adams' work to be all that genuinely funny
Interesting to read, and written with an easy style that said "come back and read more!" sure, but not funny.
Not to me, personally, and not speaking for anyone else.
Where's the torrent? ;)
put the what in the where?
I misread it and thought the movies were immensely funny :S
Big surprise I got...
My UID is prime... is yours?
Panic.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
I could not believe how awful this film was. The story has almost nothing to do with previous versions of Hitchhiker's Guide and just rambles all over the place, but not in any humorous or interesting or entertaining or enjoyable way.
All the changes from the book and TV show and radio play seem to have been made for no reason and not only do they not add anything, they actually make it worse.
NONE of the books/radio shows agree with each other, so why should you expect the movie to?
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
I think you all ought to know that I'm very depressed.
I absolutely HATED "Napoleon Dynamite." I laughed ONCE during the entire movie. Yet, the reviews were raving about it. Then we had the recent article about the guy that's spent like 20 years studying Douglas Adams and his books/etc, and he hated the movie. Other reviews of this movie said it was clever & funny. Now the BBC says that there were just a few chuckles.
Generally, I think that humour is in the eye of the beholder. I never think that Penny Arcade comics are funny, but often still laugh at User Friendly.
Bottom line: The movie probably doesn't suck that bad at all, but the "The book was better" fanatics are going to jump all over it.
Did the script veer too far away from the source material or tie itself in knots trying to keep faith with it?
Bizarrely, I think the answer is both.
Funny, I was almost certain it was 42
-- johntracy.com, because everybody else is wrong.
"everything from handheld computing to existentialism to musings on cricket and maths."
nice to know someone is editing for the BBC.
Well, he also called it a "mess."
Personally, I plan on seeing it, but I also plan on going out of my way to read every last negative review and whiny Aint-It-Cool-News tirade which warns of how bad it is before seeing it.
The more I lower my expectations going in, the better the chances that I might extract a little pleasure out of watching what is bound to be a very flawed adaptation of my absolute favorite childhood novel.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
While I haven't seen it yet, I'm kind of disappointed they only made one movie, there's enough material for more. Imho they should have announced it to be a trilogy (and then actually release 5 movies, one for each book).
..."I think you ought to know I'm feeling very depressed...about this movie"
You know the thing that made the books so snappy ... it was that compared to Arthur, Ford was an absolute nut. Zaphod was bombastic. Marvin was quite possibly a sorrier character. All that contrast was fairly extreme and therefore, the wossname, chemistry worked, because each's point of view was quite extraordinary. And yet, all were sane within their idiom.
They could have just sat around in chairs on board the Heart of Gold for 90 minutes cracking jokes about earthman-monkey, diodes down the left side aching, vogon poetry, etc. and many book/play fans would gobble it up. This is trying to mass appeal, what already had mass appeal. See the problem?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Having read all 5 books in the triology, I would have hoped that there would be a decent film version of it (well, I guess I haven't seen it yet). I have to say, the film adverts at least showed some promise :)
The Sci-Fi Channel can remake it as a mini-series with a couple well known American actors and a bunch of unknown actors at a studio in Eastern Europe, with funny costumes, but a decent plot. :)
Fight Club was a phenomenal book that survived the transition to a movie, and then some.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
The previews of the movie don't look good for use Adams fans. They seem to emphasize special effects and the bustle of the books, but give no evidence of the deep humor and insane and yet insanely self-consistent universe that Adams created. Rather than create Adams' mind-boggling humor (which is harder), they seem to have created the usual array of eye-boggling visuals.
I hope the actual movie is better than the previews.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Quote from the BBC article:
Adams' deceptively complex novels are crammed full of witty erudition, great gags and lengthy digressions, so it was always going to be a struggle to turn it into a neatly packaged two-hour movie. Understandably perhaps, huge swathes of the novel have been cut in order to make a consistent, story-led film.
They should gone Peter Jackson and released it as a trilogy instead of trying to cram everything into a single movie.
I'm sick of all the FUD floating around... i'm officially not reading anymore /. articles i'm just going to go see the thing for myself... hope it doesn't suck
The Answer
come on man.. when that cracker guy gets all thugged up? that wasnt the funniest shiznit you ever did see?
also the dancing at the end was fucking hardcore
"i caught you a delicious bass"
the time machine part
hah
While Dent is a familiar cipher, audiences will be left clueless by Ford Prefect, bemused by Zaphod Beeblebrox and indifferent to Trillian.
Personally, in reading the books, I've always been left feeling quite indifferent to Trillian. Almost like she's a background character with little to no importance. So it sounds like they at least got that right.
Ender-
Nothing to see here
Screw that! Play Mansquito or Anonymous Rex again!!!
Thank you for another great negative review, thus assuring my expectations will be appropriatly low so I can enjoy the film.
Curse you for giving away the part about Malkovich, it would have been an entertaining surprise.
I'm in the minority that didn't think the Hitchhiker series was funny. Some bits were amusing but most of it was a series of bad jokes falling flat...or perhaps too British for me. Although I loved everything Monty Python so I'm not sure that's a factor.
Can't say I thought the movie would be any better, so I'm not terribly disappointed by the bad review. It isn't "The Holy Grail", after all.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
Never read Fight Club. Saw the movie and thought, 'damn, not another "crazy guy" film'. Didn't read Forrest Gump, but my sister's opinion was the film was considerably better. A rarity it seems.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I could not believe how awful this film was
Oh, come on, now. Deliberatly saying something's bad just so that the downloaders can claim they're sticking it to The Man for making bad movies... that's so, well, earlier this morning.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Several people I know who've read the book didn't think it funny at all. Just as many thought it was an amazing book and series (myself included). I'm want to take BBC's opinion on this as the right opinion, but anyone that expected the movie to truly represent the book is a fool. Unless it's on the scale of LOTR/Sin City. Anyone remember the crappy 'hollywood-ized' Batman movies?
...to " Motion filed to open FBI whistleblower case". Truly an enlightening review.
Entry for new movie updated from: "Harmless" to: "Mostly harmless"
Do not disturb. Already disturbed. http://www.teaaddictedgeek.com
At least the Unix version of "Oracle 8.5" is true to the book.
I've moved onto the sequel, "Oracle 9i, The Wrath of Larry Ellison" myself.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
I, Robot didn't suck. It just had absolutly nothing to do with the book. I bet your opinion of it would be a lot higher if they had stuck with the original title, "Hardwired".
Technoli
From TFA
Did the script veer too far away from the source
material or tie itself in knots trying to keep
faith with it?
Bizarrely, I think the answer is both.
Wow, it's like Dune all over again. Gotta wonder
why sci-fi is so hard to get right. Maybe this
phenomena is not unique to the genre?
Davo -- Free speech, free software, AND free beer.
Are you by any chance George W. Bush hiding under an alias?
Kind of a negative reenforcement? Eh, doesn't matter to me. I couldn't care less what critics say. I enjoy a movie for what it is, or hate it for what it is. I don't need a critic for that. (Though I wish I had had one before watching Matrix Reloaded...oy!)
Mercy was given to me by Christ...I must give the same to others.
If you need to be surprised to ever enjoy a story then I guess you aren't a big fan of history books.
I read in the salmon of doubt that the movie was suppose to contain only the first book's plot, has anything changed? By the review it sounds like it did....
..unlike the books.
If you really dont like it, dont bring your towel to the cinema...
The radio show and books (so far as I've gone through them) agree with each other by and large all the way (I've heard a half-dozen eps of the original radio show, mind you, and they differed in about only one story arc to that point). All of the biggest notes are in there. From what I know the TV series wasn't THAT far off. This movie is VERY, VERY far off of ALL the other previous formats, to the point that it doesn't just change a story arc here and there... it reorganizes everything about the whole universe- including the way the characters percieve the Ultimate Question, which is something that's always been very near and dear to the series.
" think you all ought to know that I'm very depressed."
Now THAT is funny!
Call me crazy, but unless I'm mistaken, Douglas Adams had a rather sizeable role in creating the movie script for this movie before he died and even added a character or two of his own not found in the books... funny that he would be ticked off about his own work.
It gets an 8/10 on imdb...that's a pretty good rating.
OK, mod me troll but... how come the link:
My Verdict [google.com]
is actually a link, using Google as a redirect, to http://unspun.mithuro.com/content/view/60/, an article all about a "Motion filed to open FBI whistleblower case"?
compared to Arthur, Ford was an absolute nut.
Do you know what my favorite moment in the story is?
When Arther Dent, stuck on past Earth, announces that he has decided to go mad.
Ford suddenly appears and agrees that it's a good idea.
What I like about that moment is that I didn't really care for anything which came after it. Don't get me wrong, the prose was still very funny, but all this stuff of Aurther learning to fly, a planet-wise parody of what a boring sport cricket is, the truck-driving rain god, and the destruction of all possible alternate realities... It just wasn't up to snuff with the book material spawned from the original radio plays.
So, I have decided the following:
Arthur really did go mad at that moment. Ford never showed up. Arthur never learned to fly. Mattress creatures did not flollop. The reincarnated plant did not seek out revenge against Arthur. None of it happened. It was all just the delusions of Arthur's madness.
Looking at the final three and a half books of the trilogy in this light makes them much more enjoyable for me, especially since it discards the "Goddammit! I'm not writing a sixth book ever! Fuck all you drooling fanboys who will demand that my publisher lean on me to write more!" fatalistic ending. YMMV.
For that matter, one could take this premise and craft a fairly amusing fan-fic which picks up just as Arthur recovers his sanity, still stuck among the cave men.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
"Odds that Mr. Darren Waters' review of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is merely the standard ploy of all reviewers (namely spouting vague subjective judgements regarding highly complicated works of art and getting paid per eyeball cast upon the rubbish *rubbish being the review not necessarily the subject of the review) and that the movie will actually be hilarious, 1 to 1 and holding steady. Please resume your normal activities and don't worry about it. No really, forget about the review and see the movie. Thank you."
I'm one of those few moviegoers who would take snappy dialog over pretty pictures any day. Hollywood knows how to do the epic special effects. They don't really respect writing. And it shows movie after movie, but as long as the lemmings show up for the blockbusters, writing will take second place.
Adams' deceptively complex novels are crammed full of witty erudition, great gags and lengthy digressions, so it was always going to be a struggle to turn it into a neatly packaged two-hour movie.
Understandably perhaps, huge swathes of the novel have been cut in order to make a consistent, story-led film.
you'd think the BBC of all places would know this. They're *supposed* to be different. If the radio show, books, game, and all the hitchhiker stuff were all incredibly different, how could the movie be the same as all of them? How would that be possible? Oranges, apples, and bananas are all different - how could I give someone a fruit that was the same as all of them?
If it's bad, it likely just means DA wasn't good at writing movies. When will people stop saying it's not the same as the books?!? The books aren't the same as the radio show, either...
An example from the famous babelfish passage:
Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mindboggingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as the final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God.
The argument goes something like this: `I refuse to prove that I exist,' says God, `for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.'
`But,' says Man, `The Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED.'
`Oh dear,' says God, `I hadn't thought of that,' and promptly vanished in a puff of logic.
`Oh, that was easy,' says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.
How the heck are you supposed to film that and keep some semblance of flow to the story? You could do it as a voiceover I suppose, but it has absolutely nothing to do with the plot yet passages like this are a defining feature of an Adams book. I'll be interested to see if they attempted to put passages like this in the movie and if they can pull it off.
Compare with LOTR, or Harry Potter, or any Michael Crichton novel, which are more plot driven works and thus can translate to a visual medium like movies and still capture the spirit of the original text much better. At least IMHO
Still, I'm intent on seeing the movie and hope it retains some of the classic Adams humour...
I tried to read the article but both my sunglasses turned completely black!!
And Fight Club ends completely different in the book, not a Hollywood ending at all. Simply for the ending I'd recommend it.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
And the good old Hollywood corporations aren't about to fucking give into their demands. And they've got this legal war going against half the world. AND the Governator is fucking up the entire establishment of Kalifornia.
I can't remember the last "new" movie I watched. Everything has been complete shit for awhile. I saw the other day (I was in the room when the TV was on) and I guess there's some kind of fucking Crusader movie coming out with Legolas in it.
MGM, Columbia, Universal. They're all doing it to themselves, and I don't really give a shit if they go under. Sooner the better.
Funny? FUNNY? I thought they were a documentary!
The movie wasn't a retelling of the book, but you'd be nuts to try it. The book is a string of disjoint short stories. The same characters keep poping up, but they are complete stories unto themselves. You could perhaps make a mini-series out of them, but I don't think the majority of the American public would GET IT.
The movie it self though was very true to Asimov's theme, which was basically "Given these three laws, how can things go wrong while the three laws are still being obeyed... and then how can I get these characters out of this mess?" additionally, they brought in the concept of the 0th law that we saw at the end of the Robot novels (although in this story line with tragic consequences).
Perhaps the name was a bad choice, but it got the fan's attention. However, equally well it could have been called "The Three Laws", or something simmilar.
The Hollywood Spectaculomatic will automatically analyze any for for content, theme, humor, plot, sub-plot, charactizations, social commentary, cultural reference, and political ramifications; cross analyze the results against a target demographics intellectual, visceral, and spiritual entertainment needs and produce a movie that is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike the original book. Buy yours today!
The US version sucks...I tried watching on 2 different occasions. I felt like I was watching someone get their teeth pulled with a rusty pliers, very painful to watch.
ugh. Maybe I'll get the Brit version from NetFlix, it has to be better.
Sean D.
"Hmm. I am to metaphor cheese as metaphor cheese is to transitive verb crackers!"
The film is sort of similar. The book and the film are both true to the concept, but how they're actually, uh, played out is very different. It's like if you had a pair of twins, one wrote a book about 9/11, the other did a film documentary, and they both used the same eye witnesses, news reports, etc. Hard to explain. The film does an excellent job of portraying the events that occured in the book, but it's a lot more light hearted than the book, and takes some artistic liberty to better flesh out some scenes, while leaving out some of the "fluff" from the book. Hopefully that'll make some sense. I read the book after seeing the movie 9 or 10 times, and wasn't dissapointed one bit. I highly suggest it if you have the chance.
moox. for a new generation.
Nope, you're not the only one.
Well, truth be told, I haven't managed to see Napoleon Dynamite yet. It's on my Netflix queue. But somehow, I just _know_ I'm going to hate it, which is going to make it all the much harder for me to be "objectively" subjective and try to like it for what it is. I'll try, I really will, but 99% of the time when my friends love a cult classic, I hate it. Napoleon Dynamite has all the earmarks: quirky characters that you'd hate if you met them in real life, quotes people insist on ad infinitum, t-shirts in Hot Topic.
But then, I managed to find the humor in Rocky Horror, and I love Monty Python, so maybe there's hope for me. Or it.
The list of things that I could point out that I hated that everybody else loved... would make for a very long and boring post.
The film is sort of similar. The book and the film are both true to the concept, but how they're actually, uh, played out is very different. It's like if you had a pair of twins, one wrote a book about 9/11, the other did a film documentary, and they both used the same eye witnesses, news reports, etc. Hard to explain. The film does an excellent job of portraying the events that occured in the book, but it's a lot more light hearted than the book, and takes some artistic liberty to better flesh out some scenes, while leaving out some of the "fluff" from the book. Hopefully that'll make some sense. I read the book after seeing the movie 9 or 10 times, and wasn't dissapointed one bit. I highly suggest it if you have the
It's like what Peter Jackson accomplished with his LoTR addaptions.
he's a link troll, probably amigoro in a new user name, or some other pathetic twat with nothig better to do than try to get ad views with fake articles.
stay away from mithuro.com
I really want to talk to someone who read the book first, to see if the "revelation" from the movie is as profound in the book if you're reading it with untarnished with knowledge.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
If you think that "It hung in the air in exactly the way that bricks don't" is funny because of the silly image and novel phrasing, you'll probably like the book. If you think it's just stupid, then by all means pick up something else. The world is too full of books to read ones you hate.
I just rented ND last night and it is pretty good. I did get a kick out of ND's half asleep, vaguely anti-social mannerisms. The time-machine was a hoot (I've seen enough schizo-science websites to appreciate it). The whole jock vs. dork thing is getting a bit tired though, they've been doing it since Revenge of the Nerds. And yes, I went to High School in the 80's and I was forced to eat tater-tots.
As far as reviews go I've learned to go with the rules of statistics, the more reviews that point in one direction then the likelier that they are right. If the reviews are muddled and go both ways then it ends up being a matter of personal taste. I once took a date, who was into arty foreign films, to a movie called "Burnt By the Sun" that got a single strong review in a local arts & entertainment paper. The reviewer must've seen a different movie because by the end of the movie I was apologizing profusely for taking her to such an awful movie. We both got a good laugh out of it at least.
I agree with you on Penny Arcade. I think I can count the number of funny strips on one hand. The guy's audience must be 13 yr olds who live in front of their x-boxes or employees of video game companies. PVPOnline is MUCH better.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Sounds like it captured the books very well then, which were at best mildly amusing.
Lets look on the bright side. At least we can point and laugh at Zaphod for looking like such a twat in his hat.
Plus pop corn tastes nice... God I'm going to hate Thursday.. Ironic the movie comes out here on a Thursday...
I like muppets.
I see your point. The first couple times I thought the H2G2 books (the first 3 anyway) were quite funny. The 4th was thought provoking and the 5th quite a bummer.
I did find, 10 years after reading the first three that I found them to be more cynical than I recalled, with some fairly biting sarcasm embodied by certain characters and actions I didn't really see before. Eventually I believed it was funny while taking aim at a lot of things Douglas Adams probably found frustration with, like satire. There certainly are some very visible satirical references, but it seemed to me that like much humor there is often a target which is true, though by not being familiar with it we don't get all of the joke.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I found it bizarre to watch the first time. But now for some odd reason I remember parts of it, and it seems funnier now.
Lines like:
"Pedro offers his protection", or "You gonna eat those tots?", while on there own don't sound funny, it the right context with people who know the reference can be fairly entertaining.
I'd say Napoleon is funnier after you've see it, not while you're actually watching it.
I still liked it better than "Friends", ugh, I'm glad that's over.
Sean D.
"Hmm. I am to metaphor cheese as metaphor cheese is to transitive verb crackers!"
Fight Club was a phenomenal book that survived the transition to a movie, and then some.
Screw the movie and the book. What I'd really like to see is a Fight Club made up of members of Slashdot.
It would be no surprise to me to see guys bring Light Sabres and those Klingon BetleHs.
To sum up. "Pure Awesomeness!"
Live forever, or die trying.
Where is the SPOILER ALERT?
You must have been an awfully precocious 7-year-old if you understood just about anything about H2G2.
You continually post links trying to get your google page rank up (note how the link doesn't go directly to your website).
Look at his post history. Judge for yourself. Mod into oblivion.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
...Cause everybody knows it is best read in the original klingon.
...for everytime negative reviews came out for a movie I ended up loving....I won't be sitting here at work surfing the internet right now....
"The saddest words of mice and men, are not those which were, but should have been."
Haven't read the LoTR series yet, but probably.
moox. for a new generation.
Wrong. The relationship between Helena Bonham Carter's and Edward Norton's characters had more substance than just fucking and running away from the space monkeys. There are many different changes that both diluted and twisted Chuck Palahniuk's message.
Spoilers of both the movie and novel below. If you don't want to know, don't look.
Marla had breast cancer. In the movie, she just finds a lump. Edward Norton's character in the book had cancer for 5 minutes. Gone. The fight scene where Edward Norton beats up himself happens at the office of some film manager, not at the auto manufacturer's office. Edward Norton's character also shoots a man at a Pressman Hotel Party. That's out too. The ending was completely different in the movie than the book. The one thing that bugged me about the movie, was that Edward Norton never had the hole in his cheek from fighting. His character talks about the hole in his cheek constantly in the novel, but the movie didn't have it. Furthermore, he bites off the tip of his tongue in a fight and doesn't have it reattached, and the movie left that out.
Considering all the changes, I would hardly call it a survival. He, both Tyler Durton and Edward Norton's character were a lot smarter than the movie makes them out to be
"No beer until you finish your tequila!" -Leela's Dad
Also American Psycho. Highly recommended. (The movie version is a lot less disgusting than the book, but the translation is very good.)
Comment of the year
Offtopic but I would love to see the gun Reason being fired film quality CG...
Onward to the Aether Sphere!
*shrugs*... I don't know anything about the original poster, but I read Lord of the Rings when I was seven and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy when I was nine. Then again, I was writing and directing plays when I was five and continued to read and write throughout my childhood, having penned two novels by the age of 17.
(Posting anonymously since this is redundant and I don't particularly feel like losing karma. I'm on here as vorpal^.)
Both tube and underground are acceptable for what Americans commonly refer to as the 'Subway' (but we invented both trains, and had the worlds first underground railway so we are sticking with 'the tube'). IME, tourists tend to call it the Underground but most Londoners refer to it as 'the tube' (there are underground railways in other cities in England and Scotland, no idea what they are referred to as locally, but I'd assume the same applies).
OT: In some parts of Scotland, calling someone a 'tube' is also a form of mild insult, though it's a been a few years since I last heard it used, it may have slipped out of common usage.
The term 'subway' in the UK incidentally, usually refers to a pedestrian underpass (most signs that refer to underpasses call them 'subways', which confuses tourists looking for the nearest underground station no end), though everyone would understand what someone speaking American English meant by Subway.
This also applies to other words like 'pants' (which over here means underpants aka knickers aka kecks, but not trousers unless being used by someone speaking American English) and 'fanny' (which in the UK has a very different meaning) - people seem to be able to put things in context, though it's a bit odd seing words like 'fanny' mentioned in Friends at ~9am on some morning re-run (_not_ a word that would be used by any UK program going out at that sort of time - any more than they'd use the word 'cunt' - but deemed acceptible because of it's dual meaning status).
I'd agree with the previous poster that I'd use telly (but never tube) to describe the TV, it's also often refered to simply as 'the box' (as in "Whats on the box tonight?").
I, Robot didn't suck. It just had absolutly nothing to do with the book. I bet your opinion of it would be a lot higher if they had stuck with the original title, "Hardwired".
...", that is.
Yes, our opinion would be different if they had refrained from RAPING ASIMOV'S CORPSE!
Then again, I haven't seen it, because of what Will Smith said on Leno: "It's very faithfull to the book [...] My character is the only man on earth who doesn't trust robots, everyone else does..."
Yeah, that is the exact opposite of the book, jackass.
Asimov's estate should sue them for diffamation... if they weren't busy swimming in their giant cash-filled swimming pools from all the horrible crap they've sold labelled as "Asimov's
You can't take the sky from me...
Maybe the moral is that just converting a great book to a movie isn't enough to have a great movie: you still have to have a good director, good casting, and a good screenwriter. (In the case of Princess Bride, Goldman was the screenwriter, and it was his idea to cast Andre the Giant). I also think the Princess Bride (which other than a few edits such as the Zoo of Death, is almost unchanged from the book) shows that it should have been possible to import entire scenes, unaltered, from the radio series and novels and get something which would be as funny- if not funnier- than the originals.
The radio series shows how goddamn funny the dialogue is when well acted. I thought "...all the diodes down my left side" was merely amusing on the page, but I was howling with laughter when I heard it read in that chronically depressed voice on the radio plays. Frankly you have to be one hack of a director to screw up the Hitchhiker's Guide: you've got a wealth of great material, both written and spoken. Your only problem is the painful decision of what not to put in.
Yep, I've been reading bad reviews and trying to lower my expectations, too.
My hopes were dashed first when Douglas died (a sad day indeed), then when I heard about the casting I was even more worried about how it would turn out. Then I saw Zaphod's "second head" and a picture of Marvin. Oh dear.
The effects look fantastic though.
I still don't know if I will go and see it. I am a big fan, so I HAVE to see it, but I also think it will be terrible and I don't want to encourage people to do this sort of thing (and pay them at the same time), so I SHOULDN'T see it. Being a fan is hard some days...
---
Help me out. Click here to give me a point. If I get 250, I get a free licence. 75 and counting...
User friendly:
Please help metamoderate.
The miniseries had most of the Guide bits done with animation, and they worked perfectly well.
Your definition of the word minority seems to be slanted.
I'd say the fan base for H2G2 is a minority in itself. Let alone, those who actually found it amusing. Perhaps you should change your scope of the world to include more than the Slashdot community.
That's a Bat'leth, not BetleH. Get it right for Worf's sake!!!
It's like "looking busy" at your employment - it's actually easier to do real work than to fake it. - bmo
Why reward a hack job? You're only giving Hollywood more reason to make such garbage.
You'll leave wishing that you had gone to see "MySQL Cookbook" or "Practical Postgresql", which were both showing at the same theater, and the tickets were free.
Naaah, MySQL Cookbook might be free, but they only recently decided to bother installing seats in the theater.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Well, OK, fine. There's many good bits in MH, but why end on such a downer? And even though the dark ending did sort of fit in with the general theme of "the big bad universe doesn't care" it seemed pointless. I got the sense Adams was in a bad mood while writing the thing.
HEHE, not really a fan no. But I don't have to be surprised, do enjoy the unexpected things in many indy movies. Though this may be far from that.
How the hell is saying "I just don't get his humor" insightful?
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
You sound exactly like a jerk I know, who is in fact sitting quite close to me in this very class room. You know, the type who have to constantly go out of their way to tell others how special they are.
IE (just an hour or so ago, in another class we share in common):
Student: Huh, that doesn't make much sense.
Teacher: Not to me either, I guess we're just a couple of average goes.
Student: Actually, no. I did an IQ test and I scored pretty high, . I'm really smarter than 5% of people.
Other Student (Out of hearing range): Of all the billions of sperm, why did he have to get through?
IE 2:
Student: And all aliens have to have ten fingers because equations don't work in anything other than base 10.
Me: Who told you this?
Student: Kevin. He's usually right, and I looked at this and it's correct.
Me: Eh, they'd probably work if the constants were in the other number system too...
Student: Well you don't see NASA making rockets in Base 13, do you?
Me: Why would they do that?
Student: If they could, they would, believe me. Nothing works in Base 13 or anything other than Base 10.
Me: Ehhhh...
Student: I'm right and I know it. If you make a rocket in Base 13 then call me, otherwise I'm right and I'm not even going to try to prove it.
Me: *Takes out calculator*. See, this is Hexidecimal mode, and this is E=MC^2. Note how it works?
Student: Damn you.
I'm sorry if your self-esteem is low, but trying to hurt other's isn't a morally adequete way of propping your own up.
If it can survive the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Trall, it can survive a bad movie.
...
You could use it to hold popcorn, to wrap yourself in if the theatre is too cold, and if you carry a tube of cyanide stitched into the lining, you could kill yourself if it is too much to bear.
Most importantly, you could cry into it if the reviews are right
That's just the way it is . . . fans of the books tend to be superfans and take it very seriously.
So the movie's going to piss off a lot of them. Not too big a deal, as there are tons of people who haven't read the books or aren't massive fans. . . but wait!
They're not going to be able to follow the plot of the movie very well without any knowledge of the book!
Seems like a lose/lose situation to me. Frankly, I don't know how they could have pulled this book off as there are two distinct voices in the book (without including dialogue) - the narrator and the Guide entries. That's a helluva lot of exposition for a flick, and (as has been mentioned in other posts on this article) some of the juiciest bits and jokes come from the exposition.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
"Don't panic!" .immensely funny!"
"Crammed full of witty erudition!"
"A . . . comedic romp!"
"Sam Rockwell does a great turn as Zaphod Beeblebrox!"
". .
"Outstanding production design and some fantastic visual effects!"
"Charming!"
I was walking out of work yesterday (I work in London's Leicester Square) and the celebs were arriving for the premier in the cinema next door. I caught a glimpse of Bill Nighy and the actor that plays Arthur (whose name escapes me). Hopefully this thing won't be too bad...
On a related note the guy who lives in the flat above me plays a bit part in the bulldozer scene...
And curse you for giving away the spoiler of the part about Malkovich!
Whenever a comment like the grandparent is that long (multiple paragra- um, lines), I just skim down, figuring there'll be spoilers. But then you go ahead and ruin that plan. Now I know that somewhere there'll be something related to an actor or character named Malkovich.
Sam Rockwell does a great turn as Zaphod Beeblebrox, the two-headed president of the galaxy; Mos Def is passable as Ford Prefect; while Zooey Deschanel is beguiling as Trillian
Then a few paragraphs down we get this:
Did I say characters? Hmmm. While Dent is a familiar cipher, audiences will be left clueless by Ford Prefect, bemused by Zaphod Beeblebrox and indifferent to Trillian.
Indifferent to Trillian? I thought the actress playing her was "beguiling"!?! How can an actress potray a character in a beguiling way that leaves the audience indifferent? That's almost as funny as some of Adams' turns of speech. :)
In brief, the reviewer liked the movie, but didn't like all of it. In fact, he called it a "charming mess". Having been a fan of Adams' work for over twenty years I had always been under the impression the same could be said of the books. And even Adams' own later sequels lacked the punchy humor and wit of the originals. It is hard to make lightening strike twice.
I recently downloaded the BBC's HG2G TV adaptation. Although some parts are brilliant, many parts drag and are truly awful. Translating Adams' writing style into a visual medium is bound to be difficult. Even the British couldn't get it all right.
The Splintered Mind - Overcoming
It's interesting to note that under most religious beliefs with a heaven, atheists aren't allowed in.
He's then committed to an asylum where every once in a while an orderly whispers to him "it's all going according to plan Mr Durden."
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
and also Shawshank Redeption, which is better than the SKing novella imo.
The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was originally an underground comic book. They weren't nice surfer dude turtles either. Bloody decapitations were common. The cartoon was only the START of that going downhill.....
...instead of just something difficult to translate to a movie. Did the creators of this movie read the books, listen to the radioshows, or even watch the BBC TV versions? In all 3 the book was a character, it had it's own voice, it's own dialogue and was some of the funniest shit I have ever read, heard and seen. Much like in LOTR, Peter Jackson nearly made the ring a character and the ring did not have much to say. The Book in HHGTTG has tons to say.
Or at least paying to see it...vote with your currency, don't pay to see this crap.
Go and buy the dvd of the BBC version.
fsck hollywood
If you like Opera enough to go through the trouble of putting a fake sig on your posts, why not just give them the forty dollars? That's only, like, twenty in limey bucks.
Yes, yes. I've already seen your "but it's too expensive for something I love and have used every day for years" whine. Stop feigning moral superiority and grab a keygen, because clickthrough whoring doesn't help the company either.
this would have been brilliant if Terry Gilliam directed. I'm sure Garth Jennings must have sucked some good hollywood cock to get to the top!
Why do I get the feeling that we are about to be flooded with a bunch of Hitchhiker's Guide movie reviews that are written in a style that seeks to emulate Douglas Adams?
Chiz! Shirly it's 'mafs', short for 'mafimatiks', as any fule kno!
I was reading at quite an adult level between 7 and 10 years old. It was actually a problem for me in school, since my school at that time was geared for people that were semi-literate by comparison, and they didn't know what to do with me. I understood quite a lot of what I read, but I didn't really realize the significance of this until much later, when we were *expected* to have a high level of reading comprehension and critical analysis, I had already been there (and been repressed for it) for years.
I would read about Kissinger and Nixon and the politics of the war that was going on and understand it just fine. The only reason I understand it better today, is that I have access to more information. But I could read and understand the stuff already, at an age when most people are just beginning to learn to read well.
I believe the most important factors in the phenomenon were the focus on reading and writing I received from my mother, the fact that I had an unabridged dictionary and a well-indexed dictionary of quotations, piles of magazines and newspapers going back to the 1940s, plus shelves of books, mostly classics.
The only problem was, I had to discover Tolkien and Adams on my own, but that was no problem. They weren't exactly shoved in my face, but they somehow found their way to me, as did a fair amount of sci-fi and fantasy that was plain garbage.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
You must have been an awfully precocious 7-year-old if you understood just about anything about H2G2.
;-)
I wonder what that would do to a growing lad, expecting triple-breasted whores from Eroticon Six, and only ever managing to find the double-breasted kind... I hope he wasn't too scarred
You can't take the sky from me...
I think it's telling, though, that the movie preview isn't funny at all. Absolutely not at all. There isn't even a "chuckle" in it. Out of the 2 hours or whatever of the film they could have chosen from, the best they could find for the preview was people falling down and getting smacked in the face? This is not a good sign, especially since very little (any at all?) of Adams' humor in the books and TV shows (I'm ashamed to admit that I've never heard the radio shows) was slapstick.
--- What?
This just in... Noted scientist and author Isaac Asimov is STILL dead and spinning in his grave following the release of the film "I, Robot". This movie surpassed bad. Not in acting, cinematography, music, etc., but they DIDN'T USE THE SOURCE MATERIAL for the most part. Harlan Ellison wrote a killer screenplay that Asimov was apparently very happy with. I believe it was published in the Isaac Asimov magazine along with the reaction of Hollywood at the time. Since Susan Calvin didn't get naked and have lesbian sex with a female robot (which then exploded), they gave it a pass....until Asimov died and the stellar acting talents of ex-rapper were needed. Film at 11.........
I am my own gestalt.
If that was a BBC review, what is THIS?
In the film we barely see the physical book itself, though the short asides we do get are beautifully animated.
All that Irvine Welsh I've been reading pays off as I can seamlessly translate your last sentence. You wouldn't know of any dictionaries between that dialect and American English, would you? There are still a few words I wasn't able to understand from the context.
Yes, our opinion would be different if they had refrained from RAPING ASIMOV'S CORPSE!
That's going a little too far. While I'd agree the movie is a travesty demonstrating that Hollywood is hard pressed to produce even one new idea in almost a hundred years, some of the dangers the movie obsessed over were at least hinted at in Asimov's works. That there is some gold dust sprinkled on, however, does not change that what you have stepped in is primarily a turd. If they had left the original "Hardwired" title in, and yanked the attempts to exploit Asimov's name, it would merely be bad; if such had been offered on DVD free with a box of cereal, I'd have bought the box provided I wasn't allergic to the cereal. (Five brand name candidates, last I counted.)
As is... I took different measures.
Then again, I haven't seen it
Given my respect for film, I didn't want to trash the movie without seeing it. On the other hand, if it was as bad as reported, I didn't want any of my money going anywhere near the people responsible. So when the DVD came out, for my first and only time for a Hollywood release, I downloaded BitTorrent, found a pirate torrent, and tied up my DSL for two days. If it was any good, I would have bought it. After watching it, I deleted it. I have better uses for the 5GB of storage.
Having seen it, the only reason I feel that the time spent watching it was not completely wasted is that I can say with a clear concience: It is a Piece of Crap; Someone Please Buy Harlan Ellison The Movie Rights.
The HHGTTG movie sounds bad, but not that bad. I might catch a matinee... but I'll bring a towel to wrap around my head, just in case it's worse than I expect.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
The trouble with Pratchett is that he writes like a baked ham. He has fine jokes and good stories, but his dialogue leaves a great deal to be desired. It could never really come out of anyone's mouth... it's like Monty Python in that.
The magic of Hitchhiker's Guide is the verbal smoothness of it. "You sass that hoopy Ford Prefect? There's a frood who really knows where his towel is." There's no artificial restraint there, lips held back in that voice Brits use when they know they're delivering comedy.
That is to say, I can't imagine American geeks reading Ford's lines aloud, but I can imagine them reading out Pratchett-written dialogue with glee. The result is that I can't get through more than a few chapters of Pratchett without putting the book down in favor of a bottle of aspirin. The tone doesn't vary.
The Guide is fairly light, though, as you say. Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective agency better showcases the range of Adams' talent.
>>while leaving out some of the "fluff" from the book.
Hopefully they'll leave out the pocket fluff. Otherwise, we'll never figure out how to finish watchine the damn movie.
To sum up. "Pure Awesomeness!"
I hate to tell you this, but to sum up: "Pure Idiocy"
You've seen the Triumph clip where he is at the release of Episode 2, correct?
I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.
For those who hadn't read the book, the tedium seemed strange and out of place.. but it was one of the better book adaptions I've seen
I don't read or respond to AC posts
Yes. I thought it was hilarious. Which is why I would video tape the entire Slashdot Fight Club and sell the resulting clips to the Comedy Network and make $$$.
That my friend is where the "Pure Awesomeness" comes in.
Live forever, or die trying.
All the issues I've heard indicate that while difference isn't bad... It's only good if it adds something. For example, I don't remember the band disaster area in the radio version. It was in the book and the BBC TV version. It was funny. Adding it was good. The fact that I don't remember the apontaneously evolving creatures from the TV version or the book means that something good was lost, but the viewer/reader came out a bit ahead for the trade.
Now, in the movie, I am told that the bulk of the additions consist of pointless explanation of things that don't need it, and scenes that involve finding the right sort of form to fill out, etc.
Another change is during the construction of Earth II. In the original, Slartibartfast wakes up after a multimillion year sleep. The subject of mice comes up, and Arthur makes a reference to 60's sitcoms. "I know nothing of these 60's sitcoms of which you speak... I'm a bit out of touch." It's funny in context.
In the movie, Earth II is being rebuilt from the moment it was destroyed, rather than from the beginning, and Slartibartfast says, "I know not of this cheese of which you speak." Now, this is a weak change. The original line was a call-back to the fact that Slarti had been asleep for five million years, and missed out on current cultural things. But, in the movie, because they are rebuilding the earth from the point where it was destroyed, Slarti must know about cheese because it is being used in the reconstruction.
So, they eliminated a humerous call back, and character explanation, while adding a thing which actually makes absolutely no sense in the context they created for it. It would have been better for them just to eliminate the line if they didn't know why it was there. The other thing they could have done was go into something humerous about what cheese is, and how they had been rebuilding the earth with earwax from antarean megaoxen on everybodys crackers.
But, they didn't decide to have confusion about the nature of cheese, they just butchered the line so that it no longer had any point being in the movie. Earwax on crackers is the sort of thing I could have gotten behind. Even though it isn't Adams' work, it would be an amusing addition to the story. Just changing crap because you don't get it, and ruining it, however, impresses me much less.
I'll put it short and sweet. To expect the HHGG we know and love. Actually. Just fuhgit about it...at least on the big screen. Why? Two reasons.
#1. Most of the best humor just wouldn't work in a movie format. Why? To do it well you'd need an absurd amount of time, and as well, the story would start to drag on. Really.
Now, from what I'm hearing, they're filming a TON of material for the DVD version. Meaning that all the stuff that didn't make it into the theatrical cut, may very well make it into an actual "Guide" cut, with all those little asides that make the book.
A DVD package with "Don't Panic" on the cover and given the LotR extended edition treatment? Oh yes.
#2. Like it or not, he's just not the same guy he was when he wrote the book. Hell, he wasn't the same guy when he wrote the sequals. And one thing that DNA wanted, was to update HHGG..the philosophy and feeling behind it, to get it out of his past and move it into the present. And because of that, after he died, when the production team had a doubt about the tone of any of the material, they looked up his latter stuff. To see how it would go, and work.
Maybe that's the ultimate problem. The true fans wanted the classic, but that's just not going to happen.
No No No,
The slashdot movie would be shown on a beowolf cluster of cinemas running linux in soviet Russia, and be full of old Koreans.
As soon as it would open 10 million people would appear out of nowhere all holding tickets and crowd into the theater until their collective body heat melted the structure. Then the film would appear on several mirrors but nobody will actually watch it, but they will somehow be able to pick nits and overanalyze the story. the collective group of commentators will then declare that it sucked and was all Bill Gates' fault, but then George Lucas will remake it and it will worse....
wtf?
Blade Runner was only very, very loosely based on "do androids dream of electric sheep".
Wow, you got out of the wrong side of the bed this morning!
Do you normally pick on someone, then go looking for their other posts and reply the same to each one?
I would buy Opera in a second, if it was £5. Other browsers are free, but I like Opera. There is almost nothing worse about the free version (I lose 9mm of screen across the top where the ad strip is). I can't justify spending $40 on it just for that. They provide a free version. There is nothing wrong with using that and I don't think I need to defend using it.
As for the sig. I have seen other people put things like that in a sig, and I have clicked on them. I don't know these people, but I thought I would help them. You say it doesn't help the company. Of course it does. It gets 250 people to click on a link that shows them the Opera website. It spreads the word. Some people might actually download it while they are there. What does it matter if people from a website visit click on it, or people from a forum? 250 people are still looking at the site. That's doing more good to Opera than if I got Firefox and didn't get 250 people to look at anything.
Thank you to the people who have clicked on the link. I'll do the same for you if I see something similar. I might even be interested in the product and download/buy it.
I didn't want to put a post about Opera as that has nothing to do with my original post (apart from a one line sig), but I thought I should reply to your flamebait. I know you were waiting for a reply, Mr. Anonymous Coward.
Appeals to my sense of humour :-)
Rei,
I'm generally not a fan of yours. Not a foe either, but for some reason, as I read posts, I can recognize your argumentative style, leading me to either check your sig, or your nick. Sure enough, it's you again.
That said, this was a very funny post, and I commend you for it. A+
the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
the correct acronym would be HG2G... obviously you still can't read, so the idea of you being able to comprehend a 7 yo w/ more comprehension skills than you now, is rather fitting. =p
the only permanence in existence, is the impermanence of existence.
Hitchhiker's Guide had one important distinction from other books that have been made into movies. That difference is that the book was not the original version of the story. The original version was the radio series, THEN came the book, which was fairly different from the radio version, THEN came the the TV version, which was different from both the book and radio series. H2G2 already has a history of being changed by the author. The changes made by Hollywood are not going to be too much of a problem, especially considering the fact that many of those changes were made by Adams as well.
Technoli
Better hope you read lots of stories about how watching it gives people testicular cancer, then mate. That should lower your expectations enough.
~~~~~ BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?
To have Sci-Fi buy the rights to remake the old BBC Miniseries, keep as much as the script as possible, but with better graphics (Remember Zaphods second head from the original...)
Then, If that proves to go well, hire a team of writers to convert the second radio series, coupled with the book, into a new series. Hell, It doesn't even have to be a miniseries. If all goes well they have more than enough material for four-five seasons. With a single episode for "Young Zaphod Plays it Safe"
Sci-Fi proved they can do this with Battlestar Galatica, Dune, etc.
I know I'd watch it. Would you?
3 degrees of separation from Vladimir Putin
I have to say, the opening paragraph of the actual article DOES nicely break the fairly dismal tone set by the article here. To wit, "Don't panic - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is not as bad as I had feared. Then again, it is not as good as I had hoped."
Obviously, not having seen the movie, the only point in the article I can wholeheartedly agree with is that I have no clue how exactly they planned on cramming Adams's writing style, much of whose humor comes from narratives typically lost in movie form, into a two-hour show while still remaining coherent. Of course, the reviewer seems to think coherency wasn't quite achieved.
Demanding constant attention will only lead to attention.
It appeared from the advertisements that they removed the towel for hitchiking, to using a thumb? Is this true. If so, I cannot see HOW this movie could be any good. The books could be summed up with hitchiking with a dirty towel. Sigh...
I so love the towel.
Party at O'zorgnax's Pub! Buy me a Slurmtini aye?
Admittedly I'm no marketting genius, but how do you illustrate the deep humour and insane yet insanely self-consistent universe that Adams created with a barrage of 1-second clips played with rock-music?
Tricky! IANAMG (I Am Not A Marketing Genius) either, but I can see something like this..
Voiceover (progressing from friendly to serious); "Arthur Dent is living a peaceful life until he learns that his house is to be demolished for a new highway. Then he learns that the Earth is to be demolished for a new interstellar highway. Then he discovers that his friend is an interstellar hitchhiker. Then life turns even stranger" all accompanied by visuals that transition from Arthur's peaceful home, the local demolition crew, the Vogon destructor fleet, Ford Perfect's electronic thumb, and then the total madness of 1-second scenes cut to rock music, then a near-ending pause with the words "Don't Panic" in big friendly letters on the electronic thumb/galactic encyclopedia before returning manic scenes of Arthur's travels.
Again, IANAMG.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
... somewhere in the review process the writer has lost sight of the fundamental aspect of humor - the review was immensely shortsighted."
blade runner the movie was much better than the book imho. the movie was coherent, the book was a rambling mess.
"2010" is also often criticized, but I thought it was a very well done movie and about as good a conversion from the book as one could expect from hollywood.
On the night that the final episode of the 2nd series was first broadcast on the BBC my wife went into labour and we rushed off to the maternity ward, taking a radio with us. We were able to listen to the episode just before my son was born.
... what I didn't expect was that the new Doctor Who would copy my son's Manchester dress sense !
So it was inevitable that my son would grow up to be an active contributer to the H2G2 website
Paul
www.opencouncil.org
Open
I have to agree with parent. Fight club is the ONLY movie i have ever liked more then the book. Clockwork orange is close, but the book and movie are so different that its hard to compare.
Search me
Douglas Adams actually said that he may, in fact, write a sixth book. He collected them all together and killed them so that they were all in the same place if and when he'd do another book.
:(
He was oft' frustrated that he'd spend the first half of each book collecting the characters together.
Plus he always loved to put himself in an impossible situation to force him to find an impossible rescue (improbability drive anyone?)
Sadly, no such book is coming.
eagerly anticipate a dirk gently movie
the Dirk Gently novels strike me as being far more easily translatable to the screen than the H2G2 series
For some reason hollywood has stopped making chandler-esque movies, maybe a Dirk movie could revive the genre
shooting is not too good for my enemies
Good point. It's not like the books were close to the radio versions and the TV series was like neither of those. Part of story's charm is how it completely contradicts itself with each telling of each episode. I'm looking forward to the new version.
Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
The Princess Bride is an interesting case because the movie, smartly, leaves out a lot of the substance of the book (the interstitiary postmodern interjections by Goldman), and just takes the swashbuckling and smart humor and runs with it. Goldman knows what works for films and what works for books, and (importantly) where they happily coincide. Hopefully the HHGG turns out to be a similar serendipity.
> Slashdot Fight Club
Probably would sell well, too, given the fights would be identical to "Bumfights girlslapping at each other".
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Well, Clockwork was from Stanley Kubrick, and the man knew his shit in filmmaking. I'll put up with the occasional Eyes Wide Shut in exchange for the occasional Clockwork, 2001, Strangelove, or the first half of Full Metal Jacket. I wonder which class AI would have been in? We'll never know.
Hell, I still think his Shining is way better than King's version, even if it didn't match King's vision.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
I'm taking a towel to the theatre, how about you?
The "Americanization" of BBC shows is WRONG.
The same goes for things like the Iron Chef. For me, it was at its best when they still showed the original version undubbed. Subtitles might have been nice, but dubbing began the slippery slope. The first US attempt, in a Superbowl theme, was bad in exactly the way that the parent complains about; a total lack of understanding of the concept. They're much closer on the second attempt, but still missing quite a bit. (Not that I'd want to see a stream of ads while Kaga II makes us wait for the verdict.)
I like 2010 (the movie and the book) too. I think a lot of the negative reactions is because the film just isn't Kubrickesque in any way, not so much because it's not a good adaptation of the book (which it actually is).
The real Captain Avatar is a fictional character, so I suppose he doesn't mind if I impersonate him.
That would certainly explain why the BBC uses it on their site http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
There's a kodak moment, a bunch of over-fed computer geeks shoe-horned into speedos acting like Sumo wrestlers and drunken ninja.
Thought it was tough to get a date before this...
OK, let's take this real simple now so you can understand.
Hitch-hiker's = HH = H2
Guide to the Galaxy = GG = G2
I don't question that a 7-year-old could read the books and know what all the words were. I question whether a 7-year-old would understand it to any reasonable extent.
It is even possible to make faithful movie adaptations of books that at first glance seem impossible to translate to film. Example: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Yes the movie was a box office bomb, but it was a very faithful translation of Hunter S. Thompson's ideas.
What did this movie have in common with Fight Club, American Psycho and Trainspotting (which are all great adaptations in my opinion)? A voice over by a narrator.
This is something that can really make or break a movie version of a book - especially if the book was written in the first person
siener's youtube channel
When I was two I singlehandedly defeated two street gangs and emerged untouched. Try that on for size, you punk bitch.
I disagree, and to prove the point, its "adequate".
See. My self esteem is propped up and while you may be hurt you've learnt something too.
You can't win Darth. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
Perhaps Michael Palin should play logwriter?
In addition to the HHGTTG books, the only other books which had me laughing so much that I had to put them down was the Red Dwarf books (coincidentally also Space Comedies).
InfoSec that matters, when it counts.
Calling all network admins,
when someone is this explicit of a troll, it calls for desperate measures. All admins, immediately name serve unspun.mithuro.com or mithuro.com and point it to 127.0.0.1 or 216.239.57.99 (Google) or maybe 66.35.250.150 (Slashdot). Instead of boosting himself, we can flat out knock trolls off the internet.
You mean H2GT2G.
Well I've wrestled with reality for thirty five years doctor, and I'm happy to say I finally won out over it.
LOL, jeez, who cares, it's still lame imo. =p
*although I'm sure I'll watch it anyhow, since there ain't anything else out that's better!
*doh*
the only permanence in existence, is the impermanence of existence.
Okay, I know I should have posted this sooner, but I was recovering from the after film party.
;-)] from Buena Vista International (BVI), those behind this premiere.
First of all, the full review of the film and party, is http://www.apj.co.uk/reviews/review-hitchhikers-gu ide-to-the-galaxy.asphere and the scans of the film Premiere Booklet are http://www.apj.co.uk/reviews/hitchhikers-guide-to- the-galaxy-premiere-program.asphere. I have included my own photographs, one of which is a Vogon dancing!
I liked this film; I'm a big fan, a bit of a dork you might say. I can quote lines from the books which I read nearly 20 years ago. This isn't quite the funniest movie of the year, but it is worthwhile and enjoyable. It is, perhaps a bit too much, of a rollicking romp through the galaxy. It also has some catchy music and will put a smile on your face. I give this film a positive 8/10.
Let's get some context here...
There are three types of people who will be seeing this movie.
First, there are the Uninitiated, those who know not what the mind of Douglas Adams is capable of.
Second, there are the Fans and thirdly, there are the Fans.
Yes, I know that the Fans are in two groups, but this is for a reason. The first group, lets call them Fans (a) are really not going to like this movie. The second group, lets call them Fans (b) are going to have a ball and like the Uninitiated, will want to see the film at least once more to pick up on all the stuff they missed the first time.
Fans (a) are going to say that the story line has been changed too much, it has been "Hollywoodified", that Arthur Dent never gets it on with Trillian, that there is no such thing as a Point of View Gun. These are the fans that think they are the biggest fans of all. They are the fans that know absolutely nothing.
Fans (b) know absolutely all they need to know about "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" (from now on H2G2). Each incarnation of the story is different. Douglas was always tinkering with his creation. When George Lucas was filming The Empire Strikes Back, Douglas was already showing George how this tinkering should be done. Like George, Douglas doesn't always get it right, but in the main, the updated story is usually better than the last.
This movie is no different. There are new plot threads, there are new gags, there are some old threads untied, retired and turned into knots. Some work, some leave you a little bemused. On the whole, I think that a damn good job has been done to reduce an enormous amount of dialogue into something that allows me as a fan to quote lines before they are said and the Uninitiated to get some idea of what the plot is all about.
So, if you hear somebody say the film isn't as good as the [ ________ ] version (fill in the blank), then tell them they don't know a fetid dingoes kidneys what they are talking about and that they should grow up and enjoy the film for what it is.
So, let me tell you about the premiere
Sitting in Empire 4 (otherwise known as The Imperial, a pub right next door to the side exit of the Empire Cinema in Leicester Square, London), I realised it was too late to change back into normal attire and that I would have to walk into the World Premiere of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" wearing nothing more than a dressing gown, pajamas, a towel and of course, a rubber duck.
It turned out that I was the only "normal" person wearing the obvious outfit for the premiere. The only other exhibitionist was S[____] [I had better not name him
After being introduced to the producers and members of the cast, the audience was reminded that we might need the provided towels at a certain point in the movie....
It was astonishing that the
Also, speaking of prisoners, Patrick McGoohan's "The Prisoner" also appeared on commercial TV in the US back in the 1960s, as did "The Avengers" and "The Saint".
(I remember watching them as a kid, back before we got a PBS station (or UHF), so I know that they were broadcast over commercial TV.)
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
I'm sorry, but I must disagree wholeheartedly.
I have read all of the books several times over and I own the TV series on DVD. Sadly, I have been unable to obtain the radio series (by legal means, anyway), and thus haven't heard them in all of their original glory. But still, I'm entitled to my opinion, aren't I?
I think that you are confusing the word "book" with the word "script". You see, a book contains dialogue, colorful descriptions, and a story to keep the reader interested. A script will hopefully contain the same items, but not always (I mean, look at Napoleon Dynamite). The case here, as it is elsewhere, is that THE BOOK IS NOT A SCRIPT FOR A MOVIE. While it may shock you purists and force you into fits of rage, guess what? You're going to have to learn to deal with it.
I'm sorry, but the fact that you quoted a nearly insignificant line that was changed in a miniscule way from the original context in the books tarnishes your credibility a bit, or at least it does in my opinion. Of course some lines are going to be changed in the transition from book to movie. The sad truth of it all is that this movie is rated PG. It's obviously not going to be 100% accurate to the books, which contained a lot of sophisticated humor and subtleties. The line you quoted, while it may not make perfect sense, is going to be a heckuva lot funnier to all those little kids in the theater who weren't alive in the 60's, now, isn't it?
I don't want to start a flame war, or even disrespect you in the slightest way. It shows some intelligence to write a long, thoughtout post such as yours. Besides, what do I know, I don't even have an account here. I just wanted to point out that it's not a perfect medium nor is it a perfect world, and some changes are going to be made that people will just have to live with.