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

I absolutely hated this movie. For one thing it is FAR too long, they kill off the only good character, it deals with creepy incest, there are about 20 different plots going on at once, it's supposed to be a "horror" flick when it isn't even scary, the guy is supposed to be "in love" with this girl and then he goes to a brothel to sleep with a prostitute. The movie feels about 5 hours long.

If there is ONE redeeming quality about this movie, that would be the Native American sidekick of the lead character. He's quiet and therefore can't screw up his character with stupid lines, plus he's got some passable fighting scenes since he's a martial artist. AND THEN THEY KILL HIM OFF!!!!! The writers could not recognize the terribleness of their movie, could not recognize that the martial artist was the only thing they had going for them, and therefore they KILLED HIM OFF!!!! There was a good hour or two left to the movie, too. GRRRRR I hate that movie.

I actually kinda liked it.

Although, I will admit that there's a lot in there that could have easily been removed (I didn't like the NA guy getting killed, but sometimes non-good things happen). French movies tend to be a bit strange and in that respect, this one was quite normal (a NA guy who knows martial arts? Um, how random is that?). But it had an interesting story idea, or so I thought.

i liked it alot
it was different from american cinima but waset trying to be wered. the french know how to make movies simple as that. but what really did it was the japanies fight coriographer (wow! my spelling sucks.)

What ?! I loved it. I thought was very OTT and you have to remember it is a French film and therefore quite normal for the lead guy to be in love and sleep with prostitutes !!!

Further, for that time period, it wasn't all that unsual for men to sleep with prostitutes even if they were devoted in another place.

I loved this film and thought that it was a breath of fresh air in the martial arts genre. An Native American martial artists and a former French officer and scientist travel to the remote regions of the kingdom to investigate the so-called attacks of a werewolf. Over the top it may well be, but the ride is exhilerating all the same. The film is well shot, the action sequences are superb and the characters are well acted. While the half-naked Marc Dascascos might have done it for the ladies, I thought that the villain was very well cast and carried off as well.

I think that the researcher commenting on Fonsac's sleeping with a prostitute might want to do a bit of reading around that period of history. Like it or not, as others have pointed out here, it was quite common for a man to pay for the services of a prostitute and still profess to love just the one woman. Relativly speaking we live in a quite liberated period as far as sexual freedom is concerned and are free to pick and choose our partners as we see fit. But in times such as these it would have been scandelous for a woman of standing to sleep with any man out of wedlock. Fonsac would probably have put a pistol in his mouth without the services that Monica Belluci's character provided.

I think that generally it was just a fun movie... despite the weird bits. Ironically, I saw this one back to back with Amelie - two very different entertaining modern French films.

Hi there everyone -

I saw this movie and thought that it was going to be well entertaining. But it didn't really work. The Native American bloke was good, but the lead fancied himself as a Hasselhoff for the noughties. A bit like that blonde lad in The Fast and the Furious (1 and 2). Not a dreadful film, just a disappointing one.

I didn't think the fighting was very good. Maybe if you think the fighting in Buffy is good you'd like this. I go to a mad kickboxing gym and Friday night is fight night. You turn up and do a round of sparring with everyone in the place. Afterwards everyone (all the British and world champions, and lads like me with the bruises) sits around and discusses the fighting in the movies that came out last week. We didn't like the fighting in Brotherhood of the Wolf, but we did enjoy the bit where the Hulk bites the top off the missile and spits the helicopter out of the sky with it...

The Hulk, now there's a bad movie.

BB

I wonder how few martial arts sequences would actually hold up under the scrutiny of people who fight under real disciplines. The Hollywood martial arts style borrows heavily from that of the Hong Kong movies that have filtered through. The US loves the flashy stuff makes it look really satisfying to "kick ass." In reality martial arts are mainly about discipline and self-defence and take more dedication than most people can imagine.

The fact that you say you didn't like the fighting in the film is most probably because you know what it's like to have to take physical punishment for real, and most people don't. They just want to see a fight sequence that wows them.

But then it's possible to criticise all styles and schools. Not just to court controversy, but I've heard kick-boxing put down by martial artists of other schools as well. Each to his own, I suppose.

Hi there Nyarlathotep -
I don't normally dispute with Elder Gods much (bad for the sanity), but it's not so much the punishment angle that gets me, (I enjoy watching Jackass as much as the next sicko) as the realism problem. I mean, these people are hitting people with techniques that would never work. I am a pretty rubbish martial artist when it comes down to it, but even I would never get caught by about 95% of the techniques in the movies. Come to think of it, I bet my fat mates could get out of the way of fully half of those moves; they would just see them coming. You'll typically see someone who's not even in range, landing huge power shots on the other feller. There's no countering, no disguise, and no deception. Unless someone gives it to you, this is the only way you can hit someone good, in a real fight. Fights I do like are the dust-ups in Fight Club, Gross Point Blank (John Cussack is a kick-boxer, and the bloke he fights by the lockers is his teacher, apparently) and Snatch. There's a bloke down our gym called Wayne Quamina, and he fights like Yoda. And I think that Bruce Lee lad would have be able to land on me quite regular too.

Friends of mine who have been in the army say the same thing about war films, though.

BTW, there's a book by Bruce Lee where he analyses various schools of martial arts, and kickboxing's one of them. He marks it down because it's a sport, and therefore doesn't allow foul moves. That's a fair criticism, and it's also true that Thai boxing is harder than kickboxing. But, if kickboxing were any tougher, I wouldn't do it! Like you say, as in most things, it's just a matter of finding your own level. If you were to climb Everest, someone would always be able to chief you out because they'd climbed it without oxygen!
Cheers

BB

Personally, I'm a lover, not a fighter!

I think that it boils down to the fact that you have to accept that Hollywood will always distort things in order to make a good film that impresses the audience.

The one thing that always amuses me in Hollywood fight scenes is the way that the bad guys queue up and wait their turn to be pummeled by the lead male. The number of times I've sat there and urged the scores of evil henchmen just to pile on top of the hero! Or even better, just shoot them in the back!

I think the fact that Bruce Lee grew up fighting in the backstreets where there were no rules kind of destroyed any respect he might have had for the idea of a structured art of fighting. Hence Jeet Kun Do aspires to have no form and adapt constantly. I find the "outside the box" approach the Lee had to martial arts fascinating from a philisophical standpoint, but then I know folks who slag the guy off to high heaven (but no surprise that they come from a rigid traditional martial arts background).

Despite what a lot of people say, I think that whatever kind of knowledge you have in that area you'd still have to be very lucky to be able to use it in a dark alleyway at the best of times.

"I think that it boils down to the fact that you have to accept that Hollywood will always distort things in order to make a good film that impresses the audience."

Ah, and thereby hangs a tale. I'd say that Hollywood normally distorts things in order to make the kind of film that they think their target audiences want to see. I'm sure that this *isn't* usually a good thing, and that if you want to see a film that's 'true' to your experience, you normally have to look outside of Hollywood. I think if you watch most films you get a good idea of what the average 15-year old boy in Kansas thinks about. Most films coming out of the American studio system are fantasies that are more or less enjoyable.

Where did all that bile come from? Ah yes, watching The Hulk, that's where.

When you say about the bad guys queueing up, that's so true. But there's quite a good fight scene in Kiss of the Dragon, where 30 or so black belts with sticks try and duff up Jet Li, bundle-style. Unfortunately the rest of the film is quite disappointing. Bridget Fonda is very underused.

And finally, I think one of the best things about doing martial arts is that through your studies, fighting and violence aren't things that are alien and scary; They're things that you can use, understand and control. Not necessarily in a bad way, but so that you can defuse fights before they happen, for instance. So I think that's the main benefit, and knowing not to go down any dark alleys....

Cheers

BB

Here's to not venturing down dark alleys.