HHGTTG

I’ve just finished watching the film version of “The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” on Sky movies. Here’s my short, one word review…

Tragic

O.K., here’s my longer review…

This version is a Nutrimat machine rendition of the classic.. i.e. it’s almost but not quite entirely unlike the original. I’m not going to say much about the changes in the story (other than they are ill thought out and in a lot of ways just a vehicle to get John Malkovic in the film) but the whole thing was a mess.

The jokes, when left intect were spoken without comic timing. Where there should have been suspense there was deadpan. Jokes were either truncated so that they lost their punchline or were so cut that they didn’t make any seanse at all, and hence were unfunny. Oh, and they used an irony extraction tool.. except on the producers.

A case in point for all of the above can be seen during the end credits. There is shown the “guide” rendition of the Valhurg and Gurgugvant battle fleet joke. There were no time constraints here as the credits were rolling and would do so for another few minutes. Yet, the whole sequence was butchered, removing all the parts about the battle fleets destroying whole planets etc. which made it sound as if the fleets were mighty, fearsome and dangerous.. i.e. building the whole point of the gag, so that when they were eaten by the small dog you thought “so what?” The punchline of the dog eating the “dangerous, hellish fleet” was lost. This was a microcosom of the whole film.

Oh, and did anyone else think that the 1960s retro comic animations for the book just felt stupid? Give me the sophisticated complexity of the originals any day.

I think I’ll go and flush my brain out with soap and water now. It feels dirty.

Lens trouble.

Yesterday I had returned to me the two Sigma lenses I sent off for work to be done on them.

The 24-70mm F2.8 lens had its chip upgraded so that it would work properly with the Nikon D200 camera. The 28-300mm lens went in because, basically, it was out of focus.

Anyway, seeing as it was a nice day today I was able to test both the lenses out. The 24-70mm works perfectly. However, the 24-70mm is a bit of a lemon.

Sigma told me that they’ve replaced the complete optical package within the lens (and the reason for the delay in returning the lens was because they had to order this from Japan). Before it left, the lens, other than being slightly out of focus, worked properly. However, now it won’t focus beyond about 100ft. That’s right, the focusing system is broken! So, I’m going to have to go through the hassle of sending the thing back. What a pain.

You have to wonder if they actually test the lenses at all before shipping them!

Doctor Doom^H^H^H^HWho

Hmm.. I think the writer of the current Dr.Who story has been playing too much Doom… and using the sound effects in the episode too.

How will the Doctor save them all? Will he find a BFG9000 behind a rock? We shall see next week.