gregvw

The casting choices were fantastic. The four leads really captured the essence of the characters. In the case of Trillian, the character is actually better than in the book. I can not imagine a better source of urbane smarmy narration for the Guide than that provided by Stephen Fry. If you are unfamiliar with the books, I recommend reading at least the first book before seeing the movie as the film is simply too short to develop the characters in any depth, so you're more likely to enjoy the it if you already know them well.

One of the highlights is the segments where the Guide entries are shown in stylized color silhouette animations. In particular, the segments which describe the bureaucracy of Vogons and the invention of the infinite improbability drive were highly amusing. Much funnier than expected. Hopefully, the next book will be adapted as well.

While D&D proved to be uniformly awful in regards to acting, cinematography, direction, plot, visual effects, writing, and obtrusive scoring, it truly was a cinematic delight for those who like to crack wise at the screen ala MST3K. Jeremy Irons played the most over-the-top performance I've ever seen... hammier than the Hormel factory. Some of the attempt at humor did make me laugh, but by in large it was the absurdity of the film that did it. Questions unanswered: What sucker financed something with freshman director, writers and producers? Also why wait so long to make this movie? Hasn't the games' popularity ebbed a tad in the last 15 years?

Herzog has really produced a gem with Fitzcarraldo. The story of a more-than-half-mad opera fanatic (played to perfection by Klaus Kinski) who's dream is to build an opera house in the Amazonian jungle. His plan is to exploit the only unclaimed region of rubber trees to get his venture capital. The only problem is the territory is unreachable by boat because of trecherous rapids. Fitzcarraldo has a blue-sky plan to get his ship to those trees, but when his crew deserts him, a stroke of native lore-based luck allows him to enlist a tribe of headhunters to haul his immense riverboat up and over a cliff between two rivers. Fitzcarraldo, his captain, engineer, and cook are particularly engaging characters of some idiosyncracy; actually all of the characters seem pretty idiosynchratic in this film. I found the incidental music to be well chosen and the cinematography to be first rate. My only complaint is that the film is 157 minutes in length and there were a number of opportunities to trim the running time without sacrificing content.