The boys are back : H&T are shooting their next movie

Hamer and Tongs (Garth Jennings and Nick Goldsmith) are begining the shooting of their next movie on monday 31st July. Of course it won't be the sequel of "The hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy" but a brand new and original project "Son of Rambow" they wrote before making the H2G2 movie.

"The stunts have been tested, the actors rehearsed, the locations discovered, the hair, make-up and wardrobe teams have loaded their trucks and after 3 months of pre-production at Elstree Studios Hammer & Tongs are all set to start shooting "Son of Rambow" on Monday 31st July. All we can do now is pray this glorious sunshine continues. Good luck everyone!"
Son of Rambow is "the name of a home movie made by two little boys with a big camera and even bigger ambitions. Set on a long summer in the early 80s, Son of Rambow is a comedy about friendship, faith and the weird business of growing up".
You can get more news on the movie website here

Babel fish is now on yahoo!

If Altavista was the first to put online a Babel fish to help internauts to translate web pages, they are no more the only ones. The all new Yahoo introduces now a translation tool, called... Babel fish. Well most of the Yahoos do anyway. The american, english or australian yahoos don't seem to have one. Well, they all speak english, so they don't need anything else ! At least the canadian yahoo have a babel fish tool, but a part of the canadians speak french.

On all the Yahoo Babel fish help pages, you can read : "The Babel Fish is a creature in the book The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. When placed in a person's ear, it allows him or her to understand any and all languages spoken"

Anyway here is : - the french Babel fish - the brazilian Babel fish - the italian Babel fish - the spanish Babel fish - the german Babel fish

Is Disney going to sharply reduce the release of live-action films?

Disney could reduce the release of live-action films. Of course they will still make movies like "Narnia" and "pirates of the caraibes", but according two seperate recent news accounts, they could stop or reduce the release of adult-oriented films. This is of course bad news for the H2G2 fans who still wait for the movie adaptation of The Restaurant at the end of the universe! The H2G2 movie came under Touchstone banner and was not the expected huge success even if it didn't lost any money.

Here are extracts from a good report on MarketWatch :

"This week, two separate news accounts reported Disney will announce plans for reductions at its Buena Vista studio operations. The trade publication Variety was first on Wednesday, saying the studio would reduce its annual film output to eight from 18. Then on Thursday, the Los Angeles Times followed up by saying hundreds of jobs would be lost in a mass layoff throughout Buena Vista, and its film output would be cut to 10 from a range of 14 to 21. Most films would come under the Walt Disney Pictures banner, which produced the company's latest hit, "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest," as well as the June animated release, "Cars," the Times said. Disney's animation operations and the newly acquired Pixar film group are likely to remain untouched. But Disney is looking at sharply reducing the live-action films released by its Touchstone division, in years past the company's primary source of such material and the group that catapulted Disney into adult-oriented films during the tenure of previous CEO Michael Eisner. Touchstone has had a hand in virtually all of Disney's major live-action hits of the past, including "Pearl Harbor," "Armageddon" and "Pretty Woman," but the list of breakout Touchstone hits is relatively short. That list has gotten shorter in recent years. Such films as "Annapolis," "Casanova" and "The Alamo" did not catch on with audiences as the production firm had only modest success with "Flightplan," "Ladder 49" and "The Ladykillers." Touchstone puts out about 10 films a year, roughly the amount that would be cut if news accounts prove accurate. If Disney cuts its film output by more than half, the studio will be the first (and could be the only) one to make such a drastic move in light of rapidly rising costs. "