h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I've run out of ideas.
Anyway, peoploe should listen to you without the need for musical aids.

they really should...
I'm just thinking of gatecrashing the set when they start shooting PoA - got to be someone there whose ears I can hijack!
should be tolerably easy to find.

PoA! I want to see it!
It's not going to be out until ages after Return of the King (which I also want to see).


Got tickets on Thursday...

*puts fingers in ears*

I'm seeing it on Friday

*jumps up and down with excitment*

I'm seeing it first out of all the people I know who care whether I see it first.

*basks in glory of organisedness*

Saw some stupid thing on ITV about it, similar to those found on normal DVD of FotR, complete with man saying 'Elijah Wood, who plays Frodo...', if we didn't know that we wouldn't be watching the thing. Anyway, it didn't give away much, but you get to realise that Aragorn is better looking than Legolas, but Orlando is better looking than Viggo (depending slightly on the presence of dodgy hair).

(still playing catch-up)

Just in case anyone's still interested in this -

Most of my reviews get put on my notepad, from where Shazz and Greebs copy them and set them up on a page created by the Post team. This is the page I link to the Vault.

When I write a review which I'm not expecting the Post to use (which happens occasionally, for example when the Post takes a long break but a big noteworthy film like Two Towers comes out) I create my own page for it and link that to the Vault.

The Harry Potter review wasn't going to go into the Post as I thought it and Bond were both blockbusters and couldn't really be done as a double-header, and - contrary to how things may seem - I'm not so in love with the sound of my own typing as to want to see the entire Post filled with my own material - two major reviews in the same week seemed a bit excessive to me.

But Greebo persuaded me to let the HP review go out as a bonus thing that week, doing the usual Post-created page thing with it, so for a while there were two identical versions (the Post-created page and the one I created).

(Gosh, this is tedious isn't it. Sorry everyone.)

Well, anyway, it's fixed now as I've recycled the original HP review and the duplicate page ain't there any more per se (sorry girls, but I've let everyone know where the review now is).

LOL

and yes Catwoman - I'd have to agree with that assessment of those guys!

Well thank you for the confusion.

(mmm, me likes film with nice men, but why was Faramir so similar to his big bro?)

I didn't think he was too much - he wasn't tempted by the Ring for himself in the same way, he wanted to prove his worth to his father. In the books he had his suspicions of Frodo and Sam, he just took more time to interrogate them. By the end in the film he'd grown into the Faramir he has to be for ROTK.
I thought the change worked - it provided more tension for Frodo and Sam's journey since they weren't including Shelob, and meant they didn't get lost amongst the Helm's Deep battle.

I've also heard that the screenwriters wanted to give Faramir a bit of an emotional journey to go on. Not to mention the fact that they thought it would be a bit odd if he were the only Man immune to the temptation of the Ring.

True, that would be a bit suspicious. Although the short amount of time he was exposed to it could be the excuse.

Why oh why was Shelob not there? I suppose this is so that they can give those two more to do next film (due to removing a large chunk at the end).

And you can have too many giant spiders in one go.

LOL - I'm still kinda worried about how they'll fit it all in - I reckon it's going to have to be a good three and a half hours long to fit in Shelob, Pelennor Fields, Dennethor, the battle outside Mordor, the destruction of the Ring, the crowning of Aragorn, all the weddings and then the Havens!

I think they didn't want to overwhelm the ending by cramming Shelob and another big fight onto Helm's Deep and Isenguard - I'm pretty sure I read Peter Jackson as having said that somewhere.

Well, PJ's done okay so far, let's just have faith. I'm pretty sure the fiddling about with the story was because Aragorn and the gang have ten whole chapters of fun in ROTK before they meet up with Frodo and Sam, who've only had three to themselves by that point. Plus they spend most of their time crawling across ashfields, which I doubt will go across well for more than ten minutes.

I've heard also that if you do the sums the chronology of the two story strands isn't strictly parallel - ie events at the end of book 3 of T2T happen weeks before (or after, can't remember which) those at the end of book 4.

Well if you want to go trawling thorugh the appendices looking at dates...
Anyway, the I thought that was the point of not giving the stories in parallel, but doing all the Frodo/Sam stuff and then all the everyone else stuff.
I was wondering before where they would find material for Frodo/Sam in this one without Shelob. They walk a long way, get lost, walk some more, find Gollum, tie him up, let him go, walk a bit more, see what is presumably an elephant, meet Faramir for about five seconds...

Did I mention I really enjoyed Gollum?

He is sooo fantastic isn't he!
I love the Smeagol/Gollum flicks in the character.

I was so happy when Smeagol won! And then those nasty Men went and brought back Gollum. I guess they didn't mean to, they acted in the way most of us would if there was a creepy amphibian thing in our pool (trying to get it out)

yeah - the acting of Wood and Smeagol in that scene was great

I think you'll find that Gollum was Andy Serkis almost as much as Frodo was Elijah Wood. (except for the actual looks, because while Elijah has luminescent eyes, no-one really looks like Gollum)

If you say 'Wood' like that, my mind immediately jumps topic to a rather nice young man who was in another popular fantasy film and commented that Bludgers were 'nasty little buggers'.

Apparently a friend of a friend started crying because 'she didn't like Gollum being so nasty to himself'.

Which I suppose says a lot about the quality of the performance/CGI (not to mention this person's mental state).

LOL Catwoman!

yeah - Serkis is Smeagol that much, I just spend my life around enough people going "Andy who??? oh you mean the creepy cgi thing?"