genius
Absolute genius. Every minute of it. The opening (and closing) credits song was quite possibly the funniest song ever. More later.
HHGTTG
We’re going to see Hitchhikers tonight, as I’m sure a few of you will be doing this weekend. I’m genuinely concerned about its quality. Most book-to-movie conversions are tremendously inaccurate and pathetic attempts to condense 400+ pages of ideas and words into a 50page, 2 hour screenplay. This excludes mediocre genres like romance and romantic comedy. Somehow those movies, being as melodramatic as their book bound counter parts, manage to escape the “it was nothing like the book” movie review over post-cinema coffee. Action movies, SciFi, Drama and historical pieces are shot to bits in order to either make things more exciting for the illiterate movie going audience or are simply “edited to run in the time allowed”. Has anyone read Jurrasic Park? Does anyone who has think the movie is anything like it? Anyone else incredibly disappointed that they completely ruined it?
So, my concern isn’t unfounded. There’s a very good chance that they’ve ruined Douglas Adams’ brilliance completely. Most of the reviews I’ve seen fall into two categories. A) People who have read the books, seen the movie and loved every single moment of it or B) People who just don’t get what all the fuss was about and would like to go watch Million Dollar Baby again. It hangs, at the moment, at about a 55% tomato meter rating. The movie is either brilliant or confusing by most accounts. Everyone who didn’t like it talks about its jumpy story, dry dialog and jokes that no one seemed to get. They call it slap-stick and “zanny” and are generally unhappy people. Everyone who loved it went in wearing their “42” t-shirt, clutching copies of the Guide like it was the bible.
The only thing everyone seems to agree about is the changed ending. I haven’t seen it obviously, but my suspicion tells me that arthur gets the girl and they head off into the sunset for more wild and crazy adventures. That of course, is a complete guess. But I can see Hollywood doing that.
All I know is that the humor is damn funny, I’ve loved it for years. The casting for the movie is great (with the exception of Mos Def in the part of Ford), the trailer is the first trailer in years to actually make me laugh and best of all, Peter Jones, the voice from the BBC radio series, does the narrating. Thats money right there.
So, the 7:30 showing is my next stop. Fingers crossed.
7″
I’ve been on a Less Than Jake kick lately. I’ve gotten my hands on nearly half of the singles, 7″s and rare releases. I’ve still got quite a few to go according to the official discography list, but I think this is a good start:
* 50th Release Birthday Cake 7″
* Against All Authority/LTJ split 7″
* Automatic Promo CD
* B Is For B-Sides CD
* Birthday Cake 7″
* Birthday Cake 7″ (Moldy)
* Bootleg a Bootleg CD
* Cheese 7″
* Crash Course in Being an Asshole 7″
* Gainesville Rock City 7″
* G-Man Training Target 7″
* Greased CD
* Greased LP
* Live From Chicago 7″
* Live From Cincinnati (Live at Bogarts)
* Live From St Louis
* Live From Uranus 7″
* Losing Streak b/w Mixology of Tom Collins 5″
* Muppets 7″
* Pesto 7″
* Pez Kings 7″
* Rock-n-Roll Pizzeria 7″
* Slayer 7″
* Smoke Spot 7″
* Son of Pezcore CD
* Spoken Idiocy CD
* Unglued 7″
Also, has anyone heard about the Xbox 360 coming in different versions? I know it was a rumor, but I didn’t know it was stated as fact at this point. Xbox 360 (or Xbox 2 if you’re catching up) will come in a regular and a $100 extra special edition. The catch is that the special edition will come with a harddrive, be able to play original Xbox games and be backwards compatable. The other system will not. How pathetic is that. They know most people who are going to run out and get this thing the first day/week/month are probably hard core and have a lot of Xbox games already. How pethetic is it that they’re going to gouge their own loyal fan base for an extra $100. And before anyone says anything, I know that the official line from the company is that it’s to cover the cost of the materials from Nvidia to make backwards compatability possible. Thats a load of crap. The technology, just like the PS vs PS2, isn’t THAT advanced. My bet is the technology they’re using can render a Xbox game just fine. Now, I know they moved to a new architecture and chip maker, but that still doesn’t change the way games are made or the DVDs they’re using. So, I know it’s not a problem with the game itself or the DVD drive… so… it’s the graphics card in the console? The new graphics card can’t handle old games? Even if, worst case scenerio, they changed from a Nvidia chip to the complete opposite Ati chip, it’s still just a small issue of drivers to run the hardware. You can’t tell me that the games are THAT integrated that the software simply won’t work. They would have had to make the equivelant of a PC to Mac switch in order to make things that completely uncompatable. So, do I think it’s uncompatable? Probably. Do I think it would have been an easy thing to fix early on? Hell Yes. Should it be part of the new console at any price point? Most Definatly. Just like this Xbox I have now (thanks to Chris), I’m going to wait a considerable amount of time (and a few price drops) before getting a new one.
Pheasent Lane, laying the smack down
I heard about this on the radio this morning… all the way in Houston. They mentioned “a mall in Nashua NH” had a few new rules. Among them, requiring that anyone under 21 be accompanied by an adult. They’ve also got a dress code and a new conduct code. Basically, teenagers just got the boot. No offensive clothing, no skimpy clothing, no skateboarding, rollerblading or bikes and no one under 21 allowed without a parent. Bye bye goth mall rats.
Having worked at that mall, I think this is friggin awesome. It was out of control. 14 year olds wearing nothing and hanging out ALL DAY was just nuts. Now, I don’t mind malls, I don’t even mind teenagers in malls, but you would have to visit Nashua to know what I’m talking about. That mall was turning into the “dirt mall” really quickly.
Anyway, I was going to link the story, but it would cost you $2.95 to read it from the Telegraph… so, you’ll just have to trust me on this one.
Well… If that don’t take the cake
GameStop BOUGHT Electronics Boutique/EBGames. That’s crazy shit. According the their last stock report, EB stock was around $30 and GS was about $18. That means GS had to come up with a hell of a lot of cash to buy them out. Of course, the “official” word isn’t that its a buy out or a take over, no, they’re calling it a merger. Yeah, like Cingular and AT&T “merged” but every AT&T store is now a Cingular store. Great merger boys. Anyway, all EB’s will now become GameStops. The line from GS corporate is that they want to compete “globally” with other game outlets…. like…. umm…. for example…. nope, couldn’t think of one. Awesome job guys, merge so you can crush your non-existant competition.
AND, as if that isn’t weird enough news for you, Adobe just bought Macromedia. Yikes!
Soon, all the flash, shockwave, dreamweaver, cold fusion stuff will be rolled into Adobes CS suite. Photoshop and Dreamweaver in one box. Go figure. Now, if only they could get a little fucking price control going on, cause damn, the new version of Photoshop (CS2) will be $300 FOR THE UPGRADE. Umm, guys, that’s a wee bit high. Especially since your competition is ALSO non-existant. And don’t feed me some BS line about production costs OR about piracy, cause thats horse shit. Hell, the operating system it runs on is a quarter of the price and even that is too much.
So, there you go, Adobe adds Flash to it’s monopoly on everything graphics related and GameStop ruins a perfectly good video game stop. Alright!
Recent Comments