April 22, 2005
Start Pouring The Pan-Galactic Gargle Blasters
Because at least according to the Beeb, that's the only way the new Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie is going to seem as funny as it ought to be.
What a shame. I still remember the first time I read the books - it was in high school during free reading periods. I laughed so hard that I cried. The other kids thought I was insane. I leave it to you to decide whether they were correct.
Oh, well.
Yips! to Tainted Bill.
UPDATE: Speaking of the Beeb and sci-fi, Chan the Bookish Gardener has a great post up about the history of the Dr. Who theme music, complete with wav. files. Lots of information there that I didn't know - I only started watching in the middle of the Tom Baker years and dropped out after Peter Davidson stepped down. Good stuff.
UPDATE DEUX: Following on Emily's comment, I tracked down the spoiler-filled review by MJ Simpson. Here's one of the nicer quotes:
I feared that I might find a funny sci-fi movie which bore a passing resemblance to Hitchhiker's Guide, but what I found instead was a desperately unfunny sci-fi movie which bore a passing resemblance to Hitchhiker's Guide. All that time, all that effort, all that attention to detail - wasted. In fact, I believe that is where the key fault lies. The film-makers put so much effort into the details that they lost sight of the bigger picture. They were so obsessed with filling the screen with things like jewelled scuttling crabs, replicas of Douglas Adams’ nose and other things that, really, no-one gives a damn about, that important things like a coherent plot or well-rounded characters went out of the window, along with any line of the original that might be considered funny.
Simpson's subjective crankiness aside, the mangling of things he describes sounds horrible. Simply horrible. I've got a baaaaaad feeling about this.
Posted by Robert at April 22, 2005 09:03 AMMessing up the Hitchhiker's Guide should be a capital offence.
Think about how thoroughly it is engraved in our culture. Every blogger has at some point used a Guide reference. Only a perversion of cat anatomy could be more sacrilegious.
Posted by: Tom at April 22, 2005 09:18 AMMy husband and I are huge fans of H2G2. We both anxiously await the movie because we fear it will suck... We have both read the books several times, have the radio show on tape and even recorded the hokey tee vee production (which we love because it is so hokey!)
Tell me it's not true that the movie stinks :(
I have now read "The Hitchhiker's Guide", "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe", and "Life, the Universe and Everything." The other two remain to be read.
They are definitely funny; the books do have some minor annoyances that bother me but just when I think he's going to lose me, he introduces a clever new wrinkle to keep things going. Really a good genre he invented here, so I am definitely impressed with the concept of it.
Glad you recommended it; wouldn't have read it otherwise.
The movie is, unfortunately, by all accounts, wretched. A shame.
If you haven't bought them already, don't waste your time on the other two. They're terrible - forced and lifeless.
Posted by: Robert the LB at April 22, 2005 10:00 AMBought a single edition with all 5 books in it; I can definitely sense him losing steam as he goes.
The thing that annoys me about him (and it is minor) -- he has this distinctly British 1970s middle class point of view that permeates his writing. I'm not sure what it is that annoys me about it; there is a kind of "we all have to live in little flats with crappy heat and we're all on trhe dole and I've a hole in my shoe and the tea's gone cold and the vicar's at the door" worldview that grates after a while.
I mean Paul McCartney looks at the world in something of the same way, but he at least manages to be upbeat about it. Consider Penny Lane. You want to visit it just to see it once. I never want to see Arthur Dent's world.
Again, this is just an annoyance. The books are pretty funny.
Posted by: The Colossus at April 22, 2005 11:56 AMDon't panic. Almost all of the reviews have been positive. This one and the one by that...nerd person MJ Simpson are the only less-than-stellar ones I've seen.
Posted by: Emily at April 22, 2005 02:37 PMIf this is true, then the whole complaints department of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation which, as we know, covers all the major land masses of the first three planets in the Sirius Tau Star system will not be able to process the outrage.
In other words creators of this film might be judged as equals to the marketing division of the very same Sirius Cybernetics Corporation as "a bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes."
Posted by: Lemuel Kolkava at April 22, 2005 05:28 PMThese are the first reviews that I have seen that have been negative. Then again, I have worried ever since they first announced the making of this movie that it wouldn't live up to the book at all - which is likely, but doesn't seem to be what they are going for anyways. They have a first time director because no one would touch it for fear of being the one who ruined such a good story.
I am still hopeful, though. The trailers look promising. For most movies they don't, so this is a good start.
Posted by: TheRoyalFamily at April 22, 2005 05:31 PMI'm afraid I'm as full nerdy as MJ. If half of what he writes pans out, I'm going to title my own review "Go Stick Your Head In A Pig".
Posted by: Robet the LB at April 22, 2005 05:56 PMMy issue with MJ is not his nerdiness. It's his bored, angry attitude. His temper tantrum was stupid. I think he just wanted a remake of the TV show with more money. I've seen the TV show a thousand times. I want something new.
Posted by: Emily at April 22, 2005 06:50 PMI have to disagree, Robert - the fifth is distinctly inferior but the fourth (So Long, And Thanks for All the Fish) has always been my favorite.
I am aware that this is very much a minority view (among the already small and sad minority of us geeks who've read them).
But none of them can hold a candle to "The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul." Best thing he ever wrote.
Posted by: Knemon at April 22, 2005 11:20 PMHeh. Actually, I prefer "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency". Unfortunately, one of Adams' weaknesses as a writer was that he had great ideas but couldn't maintain them - poor shelf life. I thought DGHDA was fresher and more energetic. Plus, I couldn't resist all the Coleridge and the back-handed complements to Bach and Mozart!
Posted by: Robert the LB at April 23, 2005 10:17 AM
