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May. 7th, 2005 11:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chelseagirlDue to someone getting ill, M.'s meeting and our free dinner at Eatery (still looking for clever nickname) got postponed 'til last night, which was probably as well because we had an actual dinner-and-a-movie night of it. Like normal couples, where nobody works in the restaurant business. Wow. Mine was this amazing Moroccan-spiced tuna, seared and bedded on a broccoli rabe salad; his was . . . well, I can't actually remember since I only had a taste, but it was excellent. A good red wine, and warm chocolate cake for dessert -- life couldn't get much better. Met many of his coworkers, all of whom seemed like good people and some of them quite fun.
Then Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, finally. I'm familiar with most of its incarnations (it was![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
teenygozer who first spread the word waybackwhen before it was a big bestseller that everyone knew about, at least not in the US). But I wouldn't exactly describe myself as a fan: I got bored with the books by number three, when Adams went on for three pages about the wonders of Mark Knopfler's guitar playing and I ceased caring in any way shape or form. M. is more fanboyish about it, having turned up with the original radio play on CD and a DVD of the tv series. (He used to borrow the books from his mum periodically, so they're in England.)
And the verdict is: we both really enjoyed it. Not ohthemostamazingthingI'veeverseen enjoyed it, but we had a lot of fun; there was enough straight out of the originals that I felt like it was an old friend I was encountering again after a very long absence, and M. did not find his fanboyish sensibilities offended. More behind the cut:
Arthur: as a fan of The Office, I was thrilled when I heard they cast Martin Freeman, and he did not disappoint. He's the one person who's not Simon Jones (for whom the role of Arthur Dent was specifically written, way back in the first radio play incarnation) who could really embody this character.
Marvin: Alan Rickman's voice makes me very happy. Apparently it doesn't even need to be attached to the rest of Alan Rickman, as long as he's got the right lines. And who better to play this part? Snippets of the small rounded headed Marvin robot made me nervous, but actually he quite worked. (And Warwick Davis inside the suit -- an actual non CGI robot, hurrah.) Spoke to my mum-in-law in the afternoon before we went; they'd just gotten back from seeing it and she told me she wants a Marvin. I want the knit Marvin from when the Infinite Improbability Drive turns them into yarn for a bit. (For someone who hadn't thought about this stuff in over a decade, it's amazing how much I'd retained.)
Ford Prefect: Liked Mos Def in the role, but he got a bit lost as things went on. The character didn't end up having so much of an impact as he should have. I was puzzled when they kept the Guildford bit; loved the added line about "well that would explain the accent."
Trillian: Zooey Deschanel was so much more to my taste as Trillian than bimbo-y Sandra Dickinson, who absolutely set my teeth on edge in the TV version. And I was pleased she and Arthur got together -- that was something I'd always wanted to see in the other versions. Gotta love a woman who would dress up as Darwin for a fancy dress party.
Zaphod: I did like Sam Rockwell's performance, but somehow Zaphod wasn't as charismatic as I expected him to be. The dim-bulbness was overemphasized, I think, at the expense of other aspects of his weirdness. And maybe Zaphod needs to be played by an Englishman as an American so that the character can convey a certain off-ness? Liked how they handled the second head, as the mostly immobile one balanced on Mark Wing-Davey's shoulder in the TV version just kinda looked like he was wearing a mannequin head, and made the poor guy seem really unmaneuverable.
John Malkovich is so weird anyway that he was perfectly cast as an alien; liked Anna Chancellor as the Veep with the huge crush on Zaphod, maybe because I associate her with odd bits and pieces of roles in Pride & Prejudice, Four Weddings & A Funeral, etc.; Bill Nighy was wonderful as Slartibartfast.
Overall verdict: liked the cast, not sure it really cohered, was amused enough I didn't much care. Suspect I'm fannish enough to have enjoyed the bits I remembered but not fannish enough to have had expectations. But fanboy sitting to my left was quite pleased, with a few reservations, so there you go.
Then Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, finally. I'm familiar with most of its incarnations (it was
teenygozer who first spread the word waybackwhen before it was a big bestseller that everyone knew about, at least not in the US). But I wouldn't exactly describe myself as a fan: I got bored with the books by number three, when Adams went on for three pages about the wonders of Mark Knopfler's guitar playing and I ceased caring in any way shape or form. M. is more fanboyish about it, having turned up with the original radio play on CD and a DVD of the tv series. (He used to borrow the books from his mum periodically, so they're in England.) And the verdict is: we both really enjoyed it. Not ohthemostamazingthingI'veeverseen enjoyed it, but we had a lot of fun; there was enough straight out of the originals that I felt like it was an old friend I was encountering again after a very long absence, and M. did not find his fanboyish sensibilities offended. More behind the cut:
Arthur: as a fan of The Office, I was thrilled when I heard they cast Martin Freeman, and he did not disappoint. He's the one person who's not Simon Jones (for whom the role of Arthur Dent was specifically written, way back in the first radio play incarnation) who could really embody this character.
Marvin: Alan Rickman's voice makes me very happy. Apparently it doesn't even need to be attached to the rest of Alan Rickman, as long as he's got the right lines. And who better to play this part? Snippets of the small rounded headed Marvin robot made me nervous, but actually he quite worked. (And Warwick Davis inside the suit -- an actual non CGI robot, hurrah.) Spoke to my mum-in-law in the afternoon before we went; they'd just gotten back from seeing it and she told me she wants a Marvin. I want the knit Marvin from when the Infinite Improbability Drive turns them into yarn for a bit. (For someone who hadn't thought about this stuff in over a decade, it's amazing how much I'd retained.)
Ford Prefect: Liked Mos Def in the role, but he got a bit lost as things went on. The character didn't end up having so much of an impact as he should have. I was puzzled when they kept the Guildford bit; loved the added line about "well that would explain the accent."
Trillian: Zooey Deschanel was so much more to my taste as Trillian than bimbo-y Sandra Dickinson, who absolutely set my teeth on edge in the TV version. And I was pleased she and Arthur got together -- that was something I'd always wanted to see in the other versions. Gotta love a woman who would dress up as Darwin for a fancy dress party.
Zaphod: I did like Sam Rockwell's performance, but somehow Zaphod wasn't as charismatic as I expected him to be. The dim-bulbness was overemphasized, I think, at the expense of other aspects of his weirdness. And maybe Zaphod needs to be played by an Englishman as an American so that the character can convey a certain off-ness? Liked how they handled the second head, as the mostly immobile one balanced on Mark Wing-Davey's shoulder in the TV version just kinda looked like he was wearing a mannequin head, and made the poor guy seem really unmaneuverable.
John Malkovich is so weird anyway that he was perfectly cast as an alien; liked Anna Chancellor as the Veep with the huge crush on Zaphod, maybe because I associate her with odd bits and pieces of roles in Pride & Prejudice, Four Weddings & A Funeral, etc.; Bill Nighy was wonderful as Slartibartfast.
Overall verdict: liked the cast, not sure it really cohered, was amused enough I didn't much care. Suspect I'm fannish enough to have enjoyed the bits I remembered but not fannish enough to have had expectations. But fanboy sitting to my left was quite pleased, with a few reservations, so there you go.
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Date: 2005-05-07 04:41 pm (UTC)I love the books--thanks to them and Monty Python, I learned at a young age that the English are much funnier than Americans--and I was not disappointed by the movie.
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Date: 2005-05-07 05:00 pm (UTC)Rereading my post I certainly *sound* like a fangirl, no matter what *I* may think on the subject. ;-)
I think I married M., in large part, for his English sense of humor. He has other sterling qualities as well, but during our long phone courtship (after an accidental meeting over here and then a semi-fortuitous one over there) it was the fact that he could make me laugh that kept me going.
Ah, hell, I married him 'cause he talks like a rock star. ;-)
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Date: 2005-05-07 05:18 pm (UTC)He's a major fan. He once adapted the radio series for the stage (community/semi-professional theatre).
He just summarised the passage for me. And the song is Dire Straits' "Tunnel of Love".
As he just said, "Geek alert!"
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Date: 2005-05-07 05:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-07 05:23 pm (UTC)He was thrilled to see a cameo appearance in the film by the original Marvin from the TV show.
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Date: 2005-05-07 06:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-07 07:03 pm (UTC)A knitting pattern for Marvin, and a shot of the final product.
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Date: 2005-05-07 08:28 pm (UTC)