I made it to see The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy this morning, accompanied by my two sisters. I hadn’t read the books in at least a year (though I did read the first 20 or so pages of the first book last week, I loaned the book to someone at work before I got any farther), my youngest sister had read all five multiple times in the last month or two, and my other sister had never read any of the books. Between us, we had a pretty good spectrum of potential viewers.

There were, no doubt, a few jokes that the sister who hadn’t read the books didn’t get. As far as I saw, the exact reasoning for the towel (for example), wasn’t ever really spelled out. On the other hand, not having read the books, she didn’t have the same issues that my other sister and I had when parts of the book that we particularly enjoyed were cut or changed.

The general consensus, when we left the theater, was that we all liked it fairly well (though I was immensely disappointed not to see the Serenity trailer on the big screen). I never expected it to be a perfect adaptation. Heck, the forward to my copy of the book is pretty upfront about the fact that the Hitchhiker’s Guide has never been faithfully transferred from one media to the next. The books, the radio show, the television miniseries, and now, the movie, are all different… and that’s okay. The tone of the movie was pretty much perfect, and given that most modern “comedies” are humorous only in the loosest, most sophomoric sense of the word, I was very happy with this one.

Don’t expect a perfect adaptation, keep your mind open, and sit back and enjoy. The movie’s definitely worth the price of the ticket.

Consider the following headline: “Police Handcuff 5-Year-Old After Tantrum“. On my first reading of the headline (and the story), I thought it was outrageous. I mean, they handcuffed a five-year-old!

April 22, 2005 — The videotaped altercation with a 5-year-old girl who was hauled off in handcuffs following an extended tantrum at her St. Petersburg, Fla., school has led to questions about whether the police overreacted.

The incident occurred March 14, and was captured on videotape because Fairmount Park Elementary School teacher Christina Ottersbach had set up a camcorder in her classroom. She wanted to record herself teaching so she could study her methods and learn how to improve, district officials told the St. Petersburg Times.

You know, it seems very convenient that the girl happened to throw her tantrum when the teacher happened to be filming herself to review her methods. I can’t help but wonder if the teacher didn’t actually intend it to give her a way to protect herself if an incident occurred. Our society has an aversion to recording devices that I don’t completely comprehend.

I suspect that the recorder was actually intended to catch this girl’s actions on tape because she’s apparently had these super-tantrums before (from page two of that same story):

“Do you remember me?” one of [the police officers] asks the girl. “I’m the one who told your mom I’d put handcuffs on you.”

Allow me to be the first to admit that I don’t know all the facts in this case, but that statement, by itself, seems to indicate that this story is considerably more than just a kid throwing a tantrum and getting handcuffed.

Obviously, the girl has a history of these tantrums that are so bad that the police are called. Her mother was informed that, if these incidents continued, they’d have to handcuff her daughter.

But, why? Why would you handcuff a little girl? My guess is that they’d had to restrain her in the past (contrary to the lawyer’s statements, simply standing back and watching this girl destroy the room she was in isn’t really an option), and that there was a fear of hurting her. When you physically restrain someone and they struggle, I’d imagine that it’s frightfully easy to accidentally hurt them. The school and the police force may very well have been attempting to protect themselves from lawsuits if they’d hurt the girl.

If the girl’s mother was warned, why hasn’t she done something to change her daughter’s behavior? Has she tried, but failed? Or is this one of those cases where the mother simply refuses to believe that her special girl couldn’t have acted up as badly as they said?

The fact that this little girl was handcuffed is a problem, but is the problem that she was handcuffed, or that her actions got so bad that she needed the handcuffs? From the outside looking in, especially at this distance, it may be impossible for the laypeople (and the pundits) to tell. Was it just a case of overzealousness on the part of the police? Or was the girl’s behavior that out of hand? Should the school administrators have handled the situation better and defused it from the beginning? Or did her parents fail to give her any discipline at home?

Expect that subject line to be used a lot in posts from me for the next few months… For all the things that Star Wars fans like to complain about re: George Lucas, the worst should be that his latest (and last?) Star Wars movie caused Serenity to be pushed back several months. I want my Serenity, dang it!

I hate Quicktime (which, as I understand it, has been integrated into iTunes). I hate Quicktime so much, in fact, that I decided to get a non-iPod MP3 player. I’d never been a big fan of the software, but the more recent releases seem to want to take over everything on my computer, and most of the time, if something looks interesting, but is presented in Quicktime, I’ll pass over it.

For this, though, I’m definitely re-installing Quicktime/iTunes.

Serenity Trailer

Firefly, despite getting the shaft by Fox execs, was easily the best television show that ever aired on that network, and very possibly on television as a whole. I’m looking forward to this movie more than I looked forward to either Spider-Man movie, and anyone who knows me can tell you that I was bouncing off the walls waiting for those.

If you know anyone who’s in a bad mood this week, remind them of the following things, which should cheer up any sane person:

1. Peter David will be writing not only the Hulk, but Spider-Man very soon
2. There’s a trailer available for Serenity.

It’s hard to imagine a bad mood continuing in the face of that, don’t you think?

( þ Photo Matt)

[Unrelated Update: This week's comics reviews are up.]

Even if this story is true, I have a hard time being that upset about it. I kind of understand why it seems important to keep the original instead of a copy, but the fact that there are SO MANY copies available, in both physical and electronic formats, I don’t see where it’s a huge deal if the originals really have been destroyed.

I guess I’m just a philistine.

Some wonderful news in the world of comics: Peter David will be writing Spider-Man! Short of a revival of the Spider-Man 2099 book with Peter at the helm (or an ongoing solo Scarlet Spider title with PAD), this is the best comics-related news I could have read today! Woo-hoo!

Anyway, here’s this week’s list of comics:

• The New Avengers #5 (8/10)
• Batgirl #63 (6/10)
• Batman #639 (7/10)
• Catwoman #42 (6/10)
• Daredevil #72 (7/10)
• The Flash #221 (8/10)
• Legion of Super-Heroes #5 (8/10)
• Supreme Power #16 (9/10)
• Ultimate Secret #2 (10/10)
• Wonder Woman #215(8/10)

More …