f13.net

Went to see National Treasure last night (meh) and got to see a preview of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (http://hitchhikers.movies.go.com/). The preview didn't give away much (as a matter of fact, you can see the same one on the movie site), but I did notice that the production company is Buena Vista Pictures (a.k.a. Disney). *shudder* I sincerely hope they don't fuck it up. They've got Spyglass Pictures working on it and Adams' family is on set as extras and hopefully for some collaboration. Still, I'm a bit concerned that Disney will destroy a good story. I know, I know. Don't Panic.

[edit]Fixed link[/edit]

They will have towel boys on set, won't they?

If Mos Def wants a towel, he gets a towel, right?

OHPLEASE LET THIS GO RIGHT

Your Link's well fucked.  Try taking out some letters.

I think I'll be catching that flick.    It's a pity Douglas Adams isn't going to be around to see the work he's known for finally manifest as a movie.   I had seen the earlier BBC attempts to bring the book to multimedia, and while it was faithful to the books, it was so disjointed as to be not all that great.   (But then, the books themselves are very disjointed.)

I imagine that a movie with that big of production values will probably take an iron to the plot and straighten it out quite a bit.   This will, of course, create a totally different story given the extremely rambling nature of the original.   They'll probably make Ford Prefect and Zaphod Beeblebrox as some cute CGI animated monstrocities that the kids will love.

I am cautiously optimistic about the movie.  But Marvin being a short, cute-looking, roundish robot is just wrong.

Bruce

fyi, the desktop download shows Marvin being much less fat than he does in the suit test video.

The spaceship with the improbability drive looks just silly.

Nor is it accurate.  I believe the novels described the Heart of Gold as looking like a "sleek tennis shoe" or something similar.

Bruce

It's, um, well, it's, er...

Look, don't shoot the messenger here, ok ?

It's going to suck.

Sorry.

Nope. Just looked at the cast on imdb
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0371724/

Martin Freeman as Arthur. Guy from "the office". Seems like a great choice.

Mos Def (good) and Sam Rockwell (who?) are Ford and Zaphod.

Thank god, when I first heard this was a disney flick I was thinking it would be Will Smith as Arthur acting all sassy and playing THE SAME GUY HE DOES IN EVERY MOVIE

Have you been living in a hole? Mr. Rockwell was recently in Confessions of a Dangerous Mind and Matchstick Men. He's one of the 'it' people right now.

He's in a lot of Mamet's movies. Actually a pretty good actor. You'd likely recognize him if you saw him.

His most high profile recent role was as Chuck Barris in Confesions of a Dangerous Mind which I thought was great, but I was really drunk at the time so who knows.

Oh, he was also in Galaxy Quest (the nameless "security guy" chatacter).

EDIT: Schild types faster.

His name in Galaxy Quest was "Guy" with no last name.

"Stop! Don't open that! We can't go out there! You don't know if there's air!"

Ah, but in the "Next Generation" series he was:

Security Chief 'Roc' Ingersol!

That's a shame.  You'd hope that they'd have treated a serious, heavy series like Hitchhiker's with the solemn dignity it deserves.  Having silly-looking things in the movie will really detract from the overall tone of the story.

Ouch.

Zing ! - He's here all week folks !

Ah. now I know who he is. Strange he isnt better known or maybe its just the hole I'm living in.

For some reason I see rockwell doing a good job as Zaphod.

I am also curious on how they are going to integrate all the narrator hilarity into the movie.

Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/subst/home/home.html/103-8333491-3477440) now has a trailer for the movie that actually shows some of the scenes. It looks pretty good, most of my fears have been put to rest.  It also answered my question of how they were going to stick an extra head onto Zaphod (they don't really... most of the time).

Um...  Wow.  That's pretty awesome looking.

Alkiera

It looks like a great action comedy. For you naysayers, I, Robot was good as well.

Stop being more of an art fag than me. I've got that market cornered.

It's a slick looking trailer. I reserve further comment until I see the movie... on DVD most likely.

My children conspire against me.

Trailer looks good. I am starting to like Mos Def in anything he does.

Too "American", didn't like Marvin, Guide interface too Star Trek: TNG-inspired.

Will I see it? Yes.

No it wasn't.

Yes, it did seem a bit too "American" -- no British accents either?  Ahh well.

I still hate Marvin, but the rest of the preview seemed pretty cool.  Definitely good production values.  I hope they haven't changed the story too much!

Bruce

Arthur had a british accent. You can hear it near the end of the trailer.

And when does this come out? May 6th or April 29th?

Arthur's accent was British as hell the whole way through the trailer.  Even when he hit his head and said "ow" it was with a British accent.  Are you deaf?

I am pleased by this trailer.  The visuals were awesome.  And the Star-Trekky Guide interface was actually more or less how I'd pictured it while reading the books, so there.

Will it be Robot Jesus?  Will it somehow magically distill every single line that made the book brilliant?  I doubt it.  But it looks like it'll be a good time regardless.

At the risk of being branded a heretic, I wouldn't mind something in the way of a more satisfying ending.  The last book always seemed really depressing, to me.

Movie looks really good to me, though.

If they changed the story enough for it to be called an action comedy, then they changed too much.

Changed it too much from what?  The books?  The radio show?  The television show?

They're all quite different, after all.

Heh. The first books were adaptations of the radio scripts. The recent radio shows based on the later books were good. The movie is going to be awful. The first ten minutes will be the worst. The second ten minutes will be the worst too. The third ten minutes you won't enjoy at all. After that it will go into a bit of a decline.

Bill Nighy will completely own the part of Slartibartfast, and Stephen Fry will be an exceptional voice of the book.

Jesus, let's not go all Tolkien fanboi on this movie. It is very hard to convert literary schtick to cinema schtick. At least Doulgas Adams is listed in the screenplay credit.

You call that fanboi?  Trolling are we?

When I see "action comedy" what comes to mind is some Blue Streakesque piece of shit, with shootouts every five minutes and explosions every ten.  I hope that's not what they've done.

When I think of action comedy I tend to go towards Bad Boys and Rush Hour (or Shanghai Noon), maybe your glass needs a little more water.

The trailer looked good, only nits worth picking at were thatArthur's house, appeared to be a rural cottage, wheras an anonymous suburban semi is a much better character set up, and Ford Prefect doesn't seem like he should have an American accent, at least not if Zaphod is going to (and Zaphod having one does make sense).


I suspect the best version of HHGttG will remain the radio play (http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0563477024/qid=1108816223/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl/202-5257195-8981419).

But I'll almost certainly venture out to the cinema for this nonetheless.

I thought in the books Ford passed himself off as American?

Sorta complicated- we know that he tried to choose a name that was nicely inconspicuous, but didn't do quite enough research, and ended up calling himself Ford Prefect.

Since Ford is an American company you could conclude that this was his intended nationality, but the extent of his knowledge on Earthmen nations aren't certain.  Since Ford has successfully toured New York and England, we do know that his accent could not have been exceedingly wacky or out of place in either of those countries.  However, we do not know if Ford stayed in New York for long, or if he merely vacationed there; Ford seems to live in England, and his accent might be reflected in that choice.  One could make a conclusion either way- British, American, or somewhere inbetween.

Overall, it's a stupid thing to think about.

I'm not claiming that giving him that accent breaks continuity, I just think it runs better and makes the 'trying to pretend he's a bigger shot than he is' thing work better if he has a accent closer to Arthur than Zaphod. It's not critical if it's played well, but in the trailer Ford spent far too much time looking far too much in control and far too smart. I do appreciate that this was only a 60 second trailer.

Was the Ford E93A Prefect ever an American model? I think they were all built in Britain although they were sold in other RHD countries such as Australia and New Zealand. Your suggested conclusion seems without merit.

The Prefect was never sold in America.  From the preface by the author in my copy of the Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide...

Alkiera

Oh dear, that's embarrassing.  There goes my ignorance getting me into trouble again.

Well, I wanted him to be British anyways.

I agree here, I always pictured Marvin to look something like HK47 - rusted and cynical.