more H2G2 thoughts

saw it for the first time last night, not bad at all but not great.

Martin Freeman did a great job playing Arthur. Interesting take on the
character, instead of the passive, naive idiot that Simon Jones played,
this Arthur was more of a complete coward but with less of a neurotic
edge. Interesting way to play him.

Mark Wing-Davey is unsurpassable as Zaphod. I couldn't decide whether
he-whose-name-I-forget was imitating Dubya or Billy Bob Thornton. He
wasn't weird and alien, just moronic and unfunny.

Zoey Deschanel is a straight brunette version of Ellen DeGeneres.
Interesting, very pretty, huge glowing eyes, nice goofball sense of
humor...but not exactly all there. Whatever happened to Trillian being
an astrophysics major?

Mos Def is a fairly good actor, I'm just still wondering what the hell
he was doing playing Ford. Didn't do much with him. In fact, his lines
were the most jarring part of the movie for fans of the radio and TV
series. The weird-party-animal thing was totally absent in this Ford,
and what we had instead was...someone who didn't seem to have that much
to do in teh movie once he explains everything to Arthur.

Slartibartfast: eh. Again, Richard Vernon can't be beat. Not sure what
this version of him was supposed to be about. None of the futzy
conflicted absentminded professor that amde the original so special.

The Book: eerily like a younger Peter Jones, very well done. But the
Guide entries (didn't stay for the one after the credits) were pretty
blah, like they were just trying to zip through the TV stuff, which
ironically enough had far better graphics and were a lot more fun.

Did this movie actually have an ending, or did it just stop? At least
Trillian and Arthur hooked up.

Deep Thought: again, they really rushed through this and it seemed
totally pointless, even if you know the story down cold. A big talking
computer that watches TV, so ****ing what?

Vogons: *now* we're talking. Infinitely better than the TV version.
Funny, dead-on accurate job capturing the brain-dead bureaucracy and
pettiness, priceless facial expressions. A blue-eyed rhinoceros? Love it

But again, the Vogon Poetry thing was rushed and half-assed. It's almost
like they were trying like hell to avoid anything that was emphasized in
the previous versions but had to cover it to be able to stick to the
original plot. Nice idea in theory (give us more stuff that we haven't
seen instead), but...the new stuff was rushed too, so it didn't work.

Malkovich: did that guy channel the 1975 Elton John or what? He was
onscreen far too little.

Overall: some great special effects, some very ordinary special effects,
some uninspired acting and characterization, even less of a plot than
the other H2G2 versions, and no real sense of the joie de vivre that
Douglas put into everything he did.


--
Terrell Miller


"Suddenly, after nearly 30 years of scorn, Prog is cool again".
-Entertainment Weekly

On Wed, 18 May 2005 22:28:11 -0400, Terrell Miller
wrote:

Zoey Deschanel is a straight brunette version of Ellen DeGeneres.

....You mean Ted Danson?

OM

--

"No ******* ever won a war by dying for | http://www.io.com/~o_m
his country. He won it by making the other | Sergeant-At-Arms
poor dumb ******* die for his country." | Human O-Ring Society

- General George S. Patton, Jr

On 2005-05-19, Terrell Miller wrote:

Zoey Deschanel is a straight brunette version of Ellen DeGeneres.
Interesting, very pretty, huge glowing eyes, nice goofball sense of
humor...but not exactly all there. Whatever happened to Trillian being
an astrophysics major?

Strangely, I can remember one or two astrophysics majors (as they would
have been) who could be described as that... g

(although most only checked "not exactly all there", I guess)

--
-Andrew Gray

Andrew Gray wrote:



Strangely, I can remember one or two astrophysics majors (as they would
have been) who could be described as that... g



Three words: Doctor Fiorella Terenzi.

Pat

"Pat Flannery" wrote in message
...

Three words: Doctor Fiorella Terenzi.

Whatever launches your rocket