Hitchhiker's Guide Film Reports 518
wakaranai writes "The BBC reports that the new "The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy" movie will star Martin Freeman (Tim from The Office) as Arthur Dent. According to the Internet Movie Database filming starts early 2004, and Marvin's voice will be Stephen Moore, reviving his role from the classic 1981 BBC TV version." If you haven't seen The Office, it takes the subject matter Dilbert has bored us with, and makes it utterly hysterical. This is a good bit of casting. I'm still available to play Zaphod.
Word twisting (Score:5, Interesting)
Unless the director chooses to use lots of narration, which could ruin a film.
Sequel (Score:3, Interesting)
Stephen Moore (Score:5, Interesting)
He'll probably be quite pleased. Marvin, on the all.
Cheers,
Ian
Re:Sequel (Score:2, Interesting)
Did you forget about "Young Zaphod Plays it Safe" [kulichki.com]?
The Office (Score:3, Interesting)
Picture (Score:5, Interesting)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/media/images/38281000/jpg/_
looks like he could pull it off. never seen that movie though.
Re:Hopes for Zaphod (Score:5, Interesting)
The key part is how to get a decent neck on him so that the two heads work. You could get twins or a pair of similar looking actors to play each part separately, then CGI them into one. Kinda like by tying them together before shooting and stuff. Way too many cool ways to do it, but don't make him 100% CGI!
It would be interesting... (Score:5, Interesting)
It might gain a crossover audience for special effects (they do go to many weird places, after all), but I don't think it'll get good critical reviews. The Hitchiker's Guide doesn't have a three-act movie structure, it bounces around from episode to episode. It's really more suited to be a TV series.
It's also peculiarly British. Think about it: Arthur Dent's home is destroyed (twice) by bureaucrats. (Here it would have to be corporations.) They spend time looking for a cup of tea. The end of the universe comes, *and it's no big deal*: people go to a restaurant to watch it happen. (As they say, in England, death is imminent, in Canada, death is inevitable, and in California, death is optional.) The frat-boy Zaphod is a figure of fun and the hero is the mild-mannered Arthur Dent.
I'm also disappointed that they're probably going to make Trillian into a bimbo again; she was supposed to be an astrophysicist. Nobody seems to like nerd women, except for Slashdot, Harvey Pekar, and Howard Dean
And I wonder how well the nerd community is going to rally around it: THHGTTG has been out for a while, and some younger nerds have never heard of it. Hey, I never knew about the Goon Show until I read they were part of the inspiration for Python (I'm 24).
Oh well, I hope it's good...
Re:the office stinks (Score:2, Interesting)
In defense of Dilbert. (Score:1, Interesting)
You keep using that word, us. I do not think it means what you think it means. I've never seen The Office, but I think Dilbert is one of the most consistently funny cartoons out there.
Re:Word twisting (Score:2, Interesting)
You may achieve excellent results using narration in a movie, one of my favourite situations is the one where Don Lockwood explains is idea of "Dignity" [imdb.com].
Re:I'd pick...Monty Python (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:It would be interesting... (Score:4, Interesting)
Right, but all these lovely stereotypes are why we Americans love to poke fun at the British. Also, remember that the Hitchhiker series as as beloved by geeks on the left side of the pond as the right.
I'm also disappointed that they're probably going to make Trillian into a bimbo again; she was supposed to be an astrophysicist. Nobody seems to like nerd women, except for Slashdot, Harvey Pekar, and Howard Dean ;)
It would be a disappointment if she were *just* a bimbo...but she *is* a bimbo.
And I wonder how well the nerd community is going to rally around it: THHGTTG has been out for a while, and some younger nerds have never heard of it.
Who? Let me go kick their asses. I think the standards will be high, meaning it will either be reviled or loved by the geek community.
Noir it up, beeyatch. (Score:5, Interesting)
Instead of a narrator, you just have the Guide chip in with an internal monologue every once and awhile. That's what Fight Club did to keep all their clever wordplay in. Admittedly, they had it easier since FC's first-person to start with, but most of the good stuff in H2G2 is cleverly-worded exposition, so it's no problem to just have the Guide say most of it.
Re:The Office (Score:5, Interesting)
It's always amusing to compare the people in American soap operas to the people in English ones like, say, EastEnders...
That's because American soaps are aspirational, while English ones are cautionary. Dallas: you, too, can be a millionaire with hot chicks if you work hard. East Enders: if you don't work hard, you'll end up as one of these drunk, ugly, poor peasants.
Australian soaps sit in the middle: the people are poor but beuatiful. Not sure what the message is, but it sure looks nice...
Zaphod played by... (Score:3, Interesting)
All the film's creators should keep Oscar Wilde's words in mind: In an absurd play, no character can acknowledge the absurdity, or it all breaks down. Thus, the new screenplay should omit lines like the "these guys are ridiculous!" parts in the Shooty and Bang-Bang scene (where the heroes are trapped behind a computer bank on Magrathea).
As for the bit parts, there are dozens of chances for cameos. For example, Bill Murray and Steve Martin should play Magikthies and Vroomfondel.
Sounds Interesting (Score:2, Interesting)
(I have it all on hissing cassette tape recorded off air, complete with fake links at the end of the show announcing availability of the guide from the Megadodo Corporation of Sirius Minor... )
As a story with the premise that nothing is what it seems and that the unexpected should be expected the sound was correspondingly imaginative for the time.
For example the noises used to show that the Hitch Hikers Guide book was being accessed have become part of our world - predating windows startup sound by a decade. Marvin the Paranoid Androids voice is a classic along with the squeaky mouse voices and the mournfull bleeps in the background when all seems lost.
I expect a good sound track for the movie. In fact I now expect that pressing the lift buttons makes a windows startup sound before the talking Sirius Cybernetics corporation lift suggests the basement of the Hitch Hikers office as a good destination before the Frogstar fighter blasts them all into oblivion.
Re:Word twisting (Score:5, Interesting)
As would most Americans, when we call them "crosswalks". "Zebra" is an essential part of the humor there. Also, the "I'm in the car park" joke just doesn't have the same punch with "parking lot".
But then we got the bit about the word Belgium inserted in our edition of the books to offset the sanitizing of the Rory for The Most Gratuitous Use of the Word "Fuck" in a Serious Screenplay. (Also "arsehole" was replaced with "kneebiter".)
Still, everyone got revisions about probability of rescues and the name of the writer of the worst poetry in the Universe due to problems of people calling phone numbers and the writer actually being a former classmate of Adams who wasn't amused (though in exchange for changing the name, we did get the actual poetry about dead swans).
Re:Zaphod played by... (Score:2, Interesting)
As for the bit parts, there are dozens of chances for cameos. For example, Bill Murray and Steve Martin should play Magikthies and Vroomfondel.
Brilliant! These would be perfectly appropriate 'big names' to play tiny (literally) bit parts; in general, I hope they avoid big names for the main characters - way too distracting, and all too often chosen in order to bring in the viewers, and emphatically not because they're just right for the part. Will Farrell (sp?) as Ignatius J Reilly in the upcoming A Confederacy of Dunces? Puh-LEEZE!
Ah, Douglas Adams, you left us too soon. I had the pleasure of seeing Douglas speak (along with Ray Bradbury) a couple/three years ago at Butler University in Indianapolis, IN. He talked about writing and various things, and read bits of H2G2, and was generally hilarious. Ray Bradbury - who has had at least one stroke, and whose voice was slightly shaky - just talked about writing and answered questions - and was inspiring, if a bit maudlin; it was wonderful to hear stories of his early days as a writer.
Who ever would have thought that Bradbury would outlive Douglas Adams, some 30-ish years younger?
(Douglas did a meet-and-autograph session afterwards, but Ray sent only his apologies for not having the energy to join in. Ever the geek, I had Douglas sign my (pretty rare, apparently) first American edition of The Meaning of Liff (not the more common The Deeper Meaning of Liff) - look this up if you appreciate peculiarly British humor and a long tolerance for pursuing a simple comic premise through a whole book's worth of punchlines.)
"bad graphics"??? (Score:4, Interesting)
Of course it turned out that the computer graphics weren't computer generated at all 'cos the kit to do them didn't exist then (or if it did was way out of the Beeb's pricerange).
Ah, those were the days.
Trillian??? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Word twisting (Score:3, Interesting)
What I really don't want to see in this movie is an identical re-hash, opening in exactly the same way as the book, the TV series and the radio series, with exactly the same dialogue and jokes. There'd just be no point. The film should open on Ford Prefect waking up in the middle of the night and decoding the signal from the incoming Vogons, or Zaphod speeding across the oceans of Damogran towards Easter Island.
Re:Word twisting (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Adams was a jack-of-all-trades in life and writ (Score:2, Interesting)
And there's no trouble incorporating the expositions, after all, it was always announced as "The Hitch Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy, By Douglas Adams, starring Peter Jones as The Book" (cue 'Journey Of The Sorcerer' by The Eagles).
Never 'starring Simon Jones as Arthur Dent' or 'starring Geoffrey McGivern as Ford Prefect' or 'starring Mark Wing-Davey as Zaphod Beeblebrox'.
Or, to quote Adams: "This is the story of the Hitch Hiker's Guide to The Galaxy, perhaps the most remarkable, certainly the most successful book ever to come out of the great publishing corporations of Ursa Minor".
Exposition's not an issue.
Re:Hopes for Zaphod (Score:4, Interesting)
One actor was behind the other - the clothes went round both actors so 'zaphod' had two double thickness legs, one double thickness arm and two normal arms (and two heads of course). The shoes were two paris of normal shoes on plates fixed heel to toe. Obviously the actors need to be of the same height and twins would be ideal.
The two actors on stage split the lines and did some nice business with both arms on the same side doing a task together,like feeding the 'opposite' head while the near head spoke. It was very effective.
Re:6 * 9 = "42" (base 13) (Score:3, Interesting)
Consider: Arthur and Ford are trapped on prehistoric Earth. Zaphod finds himself at the Hitchhiker's offices, which proceed to get bombed by Frogstar Fighters, and Zaphod gets hauled off to the Frogstar to be plugged into the Total Perspective Vortex, supposedly lethal to all sentient life. He survives, but it is later revealed that he only did so by being inside the artificial universe at the Hitchhiker's offices, which isn't dismantled until much later in the series.
Before the artificial universe is deactivated, Zaphod picks up Ford and Arthur from prehistoric Earth. They are quite definitely inside the artificial universe when it is deactivated, too. So, either Zaphod jumped out of the fake universe to get Ford and Arthur, and then back in to find Zarniwoop, or the whole business with the Gulgafrinchams happened in the artificial universe, in which case it could have been one of the minor differences between the fake and real universes.
Now that's offtopic!