H2G2 Film Website

tplayford writes "On the third anniversary of Douglas Adams death, the makers of the 'Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy' film have released their website, with a photo of the whole crew and a blog. I'm trying not to panic, but I just can't wait for the film to come out."

Skip flash

[jfengel]

To skip the rather unnecessary Flash intro, go here [go.com]

Uhm?

[Xilo]

I watched the Guide several years ago, and was really kinda disappointed. It's cool that it's finally .. being remade? What exactly is going on?

Re:Not very good...

[DaHat]

Perhaps you should try pushing it again.

Re:Uhm?

[Throtex]

This is a movie. What you watched was a miniseries.

Presumably you know that it's based off of a book, otherwise you wouldn't be here. :)

Re:Connection to jodrell bank?

[kuiken]

They got a shot of it in the mini serries awsell.

Its a joke about the vogons turning up and nobody beeing aware off it even tho thats exactly the thing the jodrell bank is looking for

Reload the page

[Tribbles]

The opening page acts in different ways when you press the button - although I had to restart the browser for it to change (refresh didn't seem to cut it).

Re:Uhm?

[drdink]

Isn't the miniseries more based off the radio version? The radio was the original, then came the book.

Re:Uhm?

[Jace of Fuse!]

That lifelike prosthetic head and third arm Zaphod wore around certainly constituted all three of those dollars by themselves!

Though some satire was intended, that is mostly true, though the dollar value is a bit off.

Apparently a great deal of money DID go into the arm and head of Zaphod, and they were supposed to do a great number of things that they never really could quite get to work properly.

As for the Three Dollars, that was probably spent on the beers consumed in the pub scene. :)

Re: But it says...

[DaHat]

Nay, it is the fact that you seem to have never been exposed to American cartoons as a youth.

By law, according to the Uniform Cartoon Code (UCC), Chapter 4398274, section 12.432432 as publish by the ACME Corporation. "All persons, animals or other self aware beings (terrestrial or otherwise) who encounter a large red button are required to press it under penalty of anvil" it goes on to say "Should the before mentioned red button carry a notice asking all who see it not to press it, the required pusher of said button is here by required to press it as often and as many times as possible until it's final result is known."

Note: the actual notice of the button in this case is from the Hitchhikers Guide no less, something to the effect of:

Dent: "I wonder what would happen if I pressed this button."
Prefect: "I wouldn't..."
*beep*
Dent: "That's odd... a sign lit up telling me not to press this button again."

Humma Kavula

[vossman77]

At the IMDB site [imdb.com] it shows that John Malkovich is playing Humma Kavula. My labmate had no idea who this was so a quick google search gave us this site [lutherarkwright.com] and we learn:

Joining the cast set to start shooting the movie of The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy in London next month is the acclaimed actor John Malkovich. In a slight twist to the original concept, engineered by Douglas Adams in creating the initial draft script for the movie, Malkovich will play a crazed missionary, living amongst the Jatravartid people of Viltvodle Six, called Humma Kavula. The script for the film went through at least two other writers hands after Douglas's death in 2001, so only time will tell how much of his original concept will survive the trip to the silver screen.

This character doesn't appear in the books. I was wondering if anyone knows how Humma Kavula works into the story.

Re:Waldo?

[dasmegabyte]

Oh wait, there he is. In the blue suit. In the front row. I'm a fucking idiot.

Cast & Crew

[slackerboy]

Well, according to , it looks like they've chosen an interesting cast. I think Martin Freeman is an excellent choice for Arthur. I suspect Warwick Davis is being cast as Marvin simply because he seemed so pessimistic for most of Willow. [imdb.com]

One of the screenplay writers, Karey Kirkpatrick, also was credited with working on the screenplay for Chicken Run, which was pretty good and original. So I think we can all continue to hold out hope for a while longer.

Three destructions

[dinaui]

The flash intro apparently randomly chooses one of three ways to destroy the Earth:

1. A standard explosion, with chunks of planet flying by
2. A burst of light which vaporizes the planet
3. Getting hit by the cue-ball in a game of galactic billiards

Using IE 6, refreshing did work to see differing intros, but the randomizer does often go on runs of the same intro.

Re:Is it just me?

[angusr]

Original book? Have they published the scripts for the radio show?

Yes, at least twice - I have the original version somewhere at home, and it's pretty easy to find the current version [amazon.co.uk].

Re:Uhm?

[Mark Hood]

Apparently a great deal of money DID go into the arm and head of Zaphod, and they were supposed to do a great number of things that they never really could quite get to work properly.

Actually, they did work, very well.

Unfortunately owing to the budget constraints, there wasn't time to recharge the batteries between rehearsal and takes, so Zaphod's second head spent a lot of time asleep :)

I heartily recommend the DVD of the mini-series, whcih includes a short clip of the head on 'Tomorrow's World' explaining how clever it is...

Mark

Quoted for your pleasure

[Rallion]

"The planet beneath them was almost perfectly oblivious of their presence, which was just how they wanted it for the moment. The huge yellow somethings went unnoticed at Goonhilly, they passed over Cape Canaveral without a blip, Woomera and Jodrell Bank looked straight through them - which was a pity because it was exactly the sort of thing they'd been looking for all these years."

Re:what a joke.

[Tune]

Yes it's a crappy website, which is a bad start for what could be the biggest movie in the coming years. Nevertheless, click here [go.com] to skip the Flash intro and read the blog.

Re:Skip flash

[linicks]

You might be interested in checking out the FlashBlock extension for Mozilla's Firefox browser. Instead of playing the Flash file, it puts a flash logo there. If you want to view the Flash file, click on the logo. Now you've got the best of both worlds, and it looks much nicer than "Missing plugin..." :-)

http://texturizer.net/firefox/extensions/#flashblo ck [texturizer.net]

Just a Reminder!

[thefritob]

Towel Day is coming! May 25th!

towelday.com [towelday.com]

Re:Complete Audio CD

[dunsurfin]

You are better off getting the CD's of the radio series (since this is how it all started out) - Audio book of the book of the radio series seems far to circular for me. Though I guess DNA would get a kick out of it. The problem here is finding it....... I picked up a copy from a bargain bin a while back. I have a feeling BitTorrent or eBay might be a contender. The box CD of the radio series comes with a nice "Don't Panic" logo and very cheesy 1980s style dayglo covers to each disk.

Re:Call me Marvin, but...

[blamanj]

There's an interview with the director [ntlworld.com] (Garth Jennings) and producer (Nick Goldsmith) that makes it sound like they have their hearts in the right place, but we'll have to see the flick to know for sure.

One bad sign, this is the design for Marvin [ntlworld.com]. Ick.

Re:Humma Kavula

[Cally]

It should be interesting....

Many races believe [the universe] was created by some sort of god, though the Jatravartid people of Viltvodle VI firmly believed that the entire universe was infact sneezed out of the nose of a being called teh "great Green Arkleseizure". The Jatravartids, small blue creatures with more than fifty arms each who were therefore unique in having invented the aerosol deoderant before the wheel, lived in perpetual fear of a time called "the coming of the Great White Hankerchief". However, the Great Green Arkleseizure theory is not widely accepted

outside Viltvodle VI...

From the intro to the first book IIRC, and from memory so probably wrong in places.

Shit, how sad is it that I can recite this stuff verbatim? ah well that's what comes of falling asleep listening to the radio shows every night for 20 years. OK I exaggerate a little for comic effect but one grilf did give me plenty of grief over it. (The others just left...;)

Re:I know i've said this before

[jpetts]

Mos Def as Arthur Dent? where did that come from?

From your own head, apparently: according to IMDB [imdb.com] Tim Freeman is playing Arthur Dent. Mos Def is Ford Prefect...

Wasted

[ackthpt]

The new movie starts with "Click here to download the Flash Plug-In". I've seen that a lot, is that a new film studio?

Yet another wasted effort on a website. Flash is so aggrevating I simply do without and don't visit sites which require it. Poor choice not to offer a non-Flash website.

INTERVIEW

[nigel_thomas]

Here's a very insightful interview with the script writers. http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/brunel/A2257599

Re:Wouldn't it be...

[DLWormwood]

HG2G instead of H2G2

The acronym is emphasized as...

the HitchHiker's Guide to the Galaxy

...not...

the Hitchhiker's Guide 2 the Galaxy

There is already a BBC website called H2G2 [bbc.co.uk] that competes with Wikipedia and Everything2 as an online, community-edited reference work.

Re:Call me Marvin, but...

[beebware]

I agree - Marvin IS meant to be tall. IIRC, in one of the many "about:H2G2" books I have at one point Douglas wanted, for the TV series, a 6ft+ man in a gold leotard(!). But Marvin being less then 5ft? Nah - the whole point of Marvin was that he was, in every way, "bigger and better" than everyone else but that he had to live his live in resentment and as a slave to the crew of the HoG.