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barrykas
Reviews
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005)
It's *a* Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, but not *the* Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
What can I say? I was prepared to give this version of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy the benefit of the doubt, given it's a mainly British production, but I was wrong.
Sure, it's an okay film, but it bears very little relation to the original material apart from the title and names of the characters.
First up, we have the opening musical number to accompany the opening credits. Instead of going for the classic "Journey of the Sorcerer" by The Eagles, we have a song, supposedly performed by dolphins, entitled "So Long and Thanks for all the Fish".
Then there's the excessive amount of product placement for Nokia and Vodafone, which concludes with Arthur's Nokia phone floating in the void of space and filling the whole screen.
The Guide entries on itself, Earth and most of the entry on the Infinite Improbability Drive are missing.
As for having Mos Def playing Ford, the choice of casting couldn't be any more wrong unless you cast, say, Oprah Winfrey...Ford is described as an alien disguised as a "typical Englishman", which Mos Def clearly isn't.
Then we have the whole Zaphod "second head" thing. Which gets removed by John Malkovich's character and left on a random planet whilst Arthur and co head off to Magrathea, which now has Deep Thought built on it(!) to find some special gun. Once they get said gun, do they return to reclaim Zaphod's head? Nope...It's never mentioned again.
Oh...And then at the end, we have Arthur and Trillian getting together, and Zaphod and Questular Rontok getting together...Again, what's with that?
In short...As a standalone movie, it's okay, but as a version of Hitchhiker's Guide...it sucks.
There are, however, two saving graces...The casting of Bill Nighy as Slartibartfast and Stephen Fry as the voice of the Guide works perfectly. Alan Rickman as the voice of Marvin could have worked, but he delivers the lines too quickly.
Mark Williams on the Rails (2004)
Another excellent series from Mark Williams!
Whilst Mark Williams is primarily known for his acting and comedy talents (having appeared in The Fast Show, the live action version of 101 Dalmatians, Shakespeare in Love and, more recently, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban), he's also passionate about Industrial Heritage, as shown in his 2002 series "Industrial Revelations".
The series is pure "Edutainment" from start to finish, charting the history of the world's railways right from the very beginnings, some 200 years ago, up to the present day, with Mark striking the perfect balance between education and entertainment.
What more can I say? If you get a chance to see this excellent programme (which, at the time of writing, is being regularly broadcast on the Discovery Channel UK) then do so...You won't regret it!