DON'T PANIC

[progressoid]

Just in case you forgot (or are stuck on an utterly insignificant blue-green planet in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy)...

it opens on Friday at a theater near you.




http://hitchhikers.movies.go.com/

[Az]

1. Already have a pack of atheists prepping for a party

I have a pack of about 5 atheists we are taking to see it this saturday (breaking a couple of sabbaths to do so). Completely geeked to see it.

[progressoid]

2. Oh, I'm jealous.

I'm going too, but with a couple theists. Oh well, maybe they will loosen up a little.

[Kolesar]

3. I made it about 10 pages into his second book

...after having finished the first one and decided I had had enough. That was back in the days when I read Sci-fi and fantasy books weekly. Let's hope the movie is a winner, though

[Az]

4. Careful

Adams is pretty close to sainthood in the atheist community. :evilgrin:

[Kolesar]

5. I was trying to be hopeful

My tastes must have changed. I don't read sci-fi, I think the Sci-fi Channel is dreadful (no old movies and I hate Stargate), the new series of George Lucas' Star Wars is like stepping in Banta scat. Enterprise was a nice recovery from the dullness of Voyager and Deep Sleep Nine, but they serialized it and ruined it. The last productions I can recall liking was Star Ship Troopers and Galaxy Quest.

Next installment: I hate Hollywood.

[Az]

6. Oh I agree with everything you just said

Although StarShip Troopers left me feeling like signing up at the nearest National Socialist party HQ and getting myself a brown shirt.

Don't worry about it too much. Thats the cool thing about being a human. We each come equipped with our own personalized and individual sense of taste. No two alike.

[onager]

8. Starship Troopers! LOL!

"Mobile Infantry made me the man I am today."

You knew it was in DEEP trouble when Denise Richards played a pilot. The only worse bit of casting for her was in that Bond movie, where she played a nuclear physicist.

:wtf:

But the sequel to Starship Troopers, now that was a real stinker. It made the original look like Alexander Nevsky.

[muriel_volestrangler]

7. And for the hard-core fans

BBC radio is about to broadcast its adaptation of the 4th and 5th books, starting May 3rd. They have managed to get both the TV and radio actresses to play Trillian, in alternate realities - in fact just about anyone who's been in one of them will return in one part or another. The broadcast will be streamed, and available for a week in RealPlayer format from the BBC site.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/hitchhikers/

[Kolesar]

20. I thought the radio version was the greatest!

I recall listening to it on Sunday evenings on public radio about 20 years ago. I would be driving back from kayaking trips and looked forward to it.

[zippy890]

9. looking forward to it-- we need this movie now

wish I had a bunch of atheist friends around here to go with.

[Synnical]

10. I had no idea what you were writing about

OH! It's the latest in the Star Wars trilogy times two.

Whatever. <yawn>

Too much CGI for my taste.

[muriel_volestrangler]

12. You have entirely misunderstood this thread

It's about the Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie. If you have any sense of humour at all, you ought to take a look at Douglas Adams' work - in the books, if you dislike CGI. You may know references to it already (eg the Alta Vista Babel Fish translator was named after the plot device in the book that oh-so-conveniently allows all the aliens in science fiction to be understood).

The Babel fish, is small, yellow, and leechlike, and probably the oddest thing in the universe. It feeds on brainwave energy received not from its own carrier but from those around it.It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of its carrier a telepathic matrix formed by combining the conscious thought frequencies with nerve signals picked up from the speech centers of the brain which has supplied them.

The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language. The speech patterns you actually hear decode the brainwave matrix which has been fed into your mind by your Babel fish. Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything that mindbogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a final and clinching proof of the nonexistence of God. The argument goes something like this:
"I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."
"But," says man, "the Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn´t it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don´t. QED."
"Oh dear," says God, "I hadn´t thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
"Oh, that was easy," says man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.

Most leading theologians claim that this argument is a load of dingo´s kidneys, but that didn´t stop Oolon Colluphid making a small fortune when he used it as the central theme of his best-selling book, Well That about Wraps It Up for God. Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation.

[Synnical]

18. My Bad

I stand corrected. :toast:

[progressoid]

13. Hopefully, they didn't make it too 'hollywoody'

The original books did a fair amount of poking fun at religion, etc. Hope they stick to his absurd humor and avoid the obvious sci-fi angle.

Its because of one of Douglas Adams' non-Hitchhiker books, that I began to read Richard Dawkins.

[Az]

14. That was Adams' intent

Though he died during early production I am hoping that the estate and producers had enough direction from him to stay true to his image. He wanted it to remain a British story.

[LisaLynne]

11. I'm stupidly excited about it.

I used to have SUCH a crush on Zaphod when I was younger. Sigh ... good times. I feel like I'm 12 I'm so excited!

I saw previews for it several months back with a theist friend. I was all giddy and poking her in the arm, saying, "Hitchhikers!! Hitchhikers!!" When the Earth blew up, she turned to me, shocked and stunned, and said, "That's what it's about?" I just smiled and said, "That's how it starts!"

That was when I realized what a good thing this movie was going to be. :)

[kliljedahl]

15. I bought the BBC version in DVD

I'm not really sure if I want to see this or not. May wait until it comes out on DVD. Can anyone convince me this new movie is going to be at least as good?


Keith’s Barbeque Central

[Taxloss]

16. The BBC TV version is the best so far.

This movie is not as good.

On edit: I should say, best attempt to bring H2G2 to the screen. The radio programmes and the books remain the true classics.

[Book Lover]

17. Well, because I have to be contrary...

Here is a detailed and spoiler-filled link to a not-so-positive review:
http://planetmagrathea.com/longreview1.html

and here is the non-spoiler version:
http://planetmagrathea.com/shortreview.html

[SheepyMcSheepster]

19. i'm ready!

i was utterly suprised when i first found out this movie was in production. i hope it delivers.

[Beetwasher]

21. I Thoroughly Enjoyed It!

I thought it was well done, indeed! :thumbsup:

[YankeyMCC]

22. Finally saw it!

I enjoyed it very much.

Obviously not exactly true to the book but I don't think that was important. It was mostly true to the spirit and style and I laughed many times so it was well worth the $7.

"What's that rushing at me?...I wonder if it'll be friendly?" WHOOMP!