Day: April 10, 2005

First Ride

elvis13 Comments

Ruby, my six-year-old, reminded me of something today.Daddy, she said, You promised we could see if my legs are long enough.And of course I had. The rule has always been, when you can get both your feet securely on the rear pegs, you can ride on the back of my motorcycle.

Ruby, my six-year-old, reminded me of something today.

“Daddy”, she said, “You promised we could see if my legs are long enough.”

And of course I had. The rule has always been, when you can get both your feet securely on the rear pegs, you can ride on the back of my motorcycle.

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Who planned this?

elvis3 Comments

How many people at thirty, fourty, fifty, can say to themselves, this is the life I planned on having?

How many people at thirty, fourty, fifty, can say to themselves, this is the life I planned on having?

I bet I could find a few. People who knew. I’m going to be a scientist. I want to play violin in an orchestra. Some people feel a calling in life, and answer it, and have the luck, and the gift.

Most of us just sort of wind up where we are, washed onto some beach like semi-sentient flotsom. We know we made some choices there at some point, we chose that fork, not the other. Yet so much is random eddies, currents we can’t control or choose not to control.

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Hitchhiker’s Guide: Amazingly, mindbogglingly awful.

elvis7 Comments

I mean, you might think that The Phantom Menace was a hopelessly misguided attempt to reinvent a much-loved franchise by people who, though well-intentioned, completely failed to understand what made the original popular – but that’s just peanuts to the Hitchhiker’s movie…. It’s not even a good film if viewed as an original work: the characters are unsympathetic, the cast exhibit no chemistry, the direction is pedestrian, the pace plodding, the special effects overpowering (lots and lots of special effects, none of them funny mind you) and above all the script is amazingly, mindbogglingly awful.

MJ Simpson, Douglas Adams biographer, has posted a review of the new Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy movie.

A few key quotes:

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy movie is bad. Really bad. You just won’t believe how vastly, staggeringly, jaw-droppingly bad it is. I mean, you might think that The Phantom Menace was a hopelessly misguided attempt to reinvent a much-loved franchise by people who, though well-intentioned, completely failed to understand what made the original popular – but that’s just peanuts to the Hitchhiker’s movie. Listen.

. . . . .

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy movie is an abomination. Whereas the radio show, TV show, books and computer game are all recognisably variations on a theme, this is something new and almost entirely unrelated. It’s not even a good film if viewed as an original work: the characters are unsympathetic, the cast exhibit no chemistry, the direction is pedestrian, the pace plodding, the special effects overpowering (lots and lots of special effects, none of them funny mind you) and above all the script is amazingly, mindbogglingly awful. Oh, and they have taken most of the jokes out.

This is a terrible, terrible film and it makes me want to weep.

Wow. That’s some kinda bad. Watching the previews I cannot say I’m surprised. I can’t imagine making a decent hollywood movie out of a book where the best parts are the narrative digressions. But you’d think they could make one that would not utterly suck.

Fingers crossed that MJ’s wrong, but not holding my breath, I tell you.