ENTERTAINTMENT

Hitchin' a Ride through the Galaxy
Jason Kimbro |  Staff Reporter

Probably the most astute line to ever come from the bowels of the hit show “South Park” is:  “Don’t forget to bring a towel.” That is, if you were a dutiful fan of Douglas Adams’ “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.”
"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" has just been released into our theaters with much promise for an early start to the summer movie season.
If this is indeed an early start, it is a great one. Adams himself helped write the screenplay for this adaptation before his death in 2001, and the result is a wonderful film that anyone, including those who have not read the book, could enjoy immensely.
Full of that dry British humor we have all come to enjoy, well some of us anyway, here’s the gist:
Poor Arthur Dent (Martin Freeman of the NBC sitcom “The Office”) is your basic downtrodden Brit in search of love and a normal “Wallace and Gromit” kind of life.  On one ill-fated morning, our hero awakens to find a horde of bulldozers outside of his quaint home, ready to tear down his abode to make way for a new highway bypass.
To make matters worse, he is then let in on the fact that his best friend, Ford Perfect (Mos Def) is an alien, and that his adored planet Earth is about to be demolished by a bureaucratic race of beings known as the Vogons in order to make way for a new hyperspace expressway.
Just nanoseconds before the planet’s demise, Arthur and Ford hitch a ride onto one of the Vogon’s ships. This in itself is a problem, for Vogons hate hitchhikers, and if Arthur and Ford were to be found, they would have to suffer the dealings of Vogon poetry. Sure enough, they are found.
Well, after a narrow escape, the two buds find themselves upon the Heart of Gold, a ship captained by Zaphod Beeblebrox (Sam Rockwell), the recently-voted president of the galaxy. Zaphod is your typical chauvinistic pig of galactic proportions, with two heads and extra appendages. He also happens to be the semi-half-something-or-other brother to Ford.
Zaphod has found a coordinating device of sorts that has revealed that there is a huge computer named Deep Thought (Voiced by Helen Mirren) that has found out that the answer to the ultimate question is 42. Unfortunately, it was unable to figure out what the ultimate question is, and it therefore built its own computer to figure that out.
Zaphod now wants to go to Deep Thought in hopes that it has finally discovered what the ultimate question is.
Along the way, there are several more dealings with the nasty Vogons and a skirmish or two with the Zaphods’ arch-nemesis, Humma Kavula (John Malkovich). All this is done with the aid of Dent’s earthling obsession, Tricia (Zooey Deschanel), and a manic-depressive robot by the name of Marvin (Voiced by Alan Rickman and operated by “Willow” himself, Warwick Davis).
This flick had me rolling throughout, though Rockwell’s scenes as Beeblebrox were a bit annoying. Otherwise, this was top-notch entertainment full of British-style absurdity, wit and great visuals that help compliment the film instead of suffocating it.
Performances were pretty good. Don’t know about the Oscars, but there should be a few Golden Globe nods for performance in a comedy. Even the narration by Stephen Fry was wonderfully refreshing.
There is a lot of philosophical mumbo jumbo involved in this film, but it does not drown the audience within its potential pools of melodramatic existentialism and ponders pertaining to the existence of God. Very well done, indeed, concerning the artistic level of the film.
As for the story and plot, well, this was taken from a famous novel, and most of the screenplay was written by the author himself in what I can only suspect as being the best possible variation of his vision.
Even if it wasn’t, this was a great story full of heart and hope, and it made the audience truly feel that just because the world is over, it doesn’t mean it’s the end of the world.
I highly suggest this film to everyone. If you do not see this film, you will most certainly die a horrible death. Perhaps you will be plowed down by a truck carrying copies of “The Amityville Horror” on their way to the dollar cinemas.
This is my last review of the semester, and I am glad I chose this film. That way, I could end it on a positive note for once. To all of my faithful readers, I have this to say:
See you next fall!  So long, and thanks for all the fish!



Beautiful Features  to Heat Up your Summertime Fun
Richard Carter | Dance Critic

Not a lot of movies fly when they’re filled with ugly actors and actresses. Okay, maybe “Reservoir Dogs” and a few others. But ugly people, for the most part, make movies with really slim film pickings.
Most movies are actually about fairly attractive characters who feel they look ordinary going after someone they think is more beautiful.
In “Mr. Jones,” the band Counting Crows summed it up beautifully: “We all want something beautiful. I wish I was beautiful.”
Anywho, the search for beauty is starting well this summer with a Japanese DVD you can rent locally, and two French movies (one new and the other a re-release) opening at the Angelika Theatre in Dallas in the next week or two.
All three films are about the ever-elusive and ever-damning search for beauty.
The Japanese DVD, “All About Lily Chou-Chou,” focuses on the trials and tribulations of an all-too-meek seventh grader, Hayato Ichihara, surviving a brutal junior high filled with bullies, prostitutes and ultra-violence.
Ichihara escapes his awful surroundings and bland home life by listening to the beautiful music of a singer named Lily Chou-Chou, a sort of less cool Japanese Bjork. He also spends time on the net chatting with people who adore her.
As school violence escalates to theft, rape and suicide, Ichihara is slowly drawn into the fray by peer pressure, and looks forward to a “Lily” concert to escape the badness. Things don’t work as planned, and escapism and survival are tangled messily.
An exceedingly dark film, “All About Lily Chou-Chou” is a visually gorgeous and emotionally powerful look into teen angst. Not for the meek at heart.
The re-release of Swiss director Jean-Luc Godard’s dark “Masculin, feminin” (1966) is long overdue. Based on the relationship of an idealistic former student and his pop star girlfriend, the film—set in 15 chapters—is ideological, stylish, funny and depressing.
Freshly released from the army, Paul meets Madeleine, who helps him get a job with a magazine. She’s more interested in becoming a pop star than in him. Ironically, the actress who plays Madeleine, Chantal Goya, had hits on the real radio during the ‘60s.
Paul and Madeleine’s relationship slowly untangles; he wants commitment, she wants stardom and they can’t seem to reconcile their goals. The shots of gray Paris during the pop-ish ‘60s, the cafes and the busy streets are very cool.
As dark as “Lily Chou-Chou,” “Masculin, feminin” exudes the New Wave energy, ideology and stylishness of Godard at his very peak. Cool film.
The new French/Japanese film “Fear and Trembling” is based on Belgian novelist Amelie Nothomb’s autobiographical about a 22-year-old, in love with Japan, who secures a position in a huge Tokyo corporation.
It’s the worst possible goal the inquisitive and intelligent Amelie could have. She goes from working alongside her dream boss, Fabuki, to changing towels in the men’s room full-time. Her sense of humor, grace and aspiring humility is what saves her.
“Fear and Trembling” is a hilarious and somewhat frightening view into the rigidity of Japanese society and business. Watching Amelie’s simple attraction to her boss diversify into a more problematic perspective of the shrewish woman is heartbreakingly funny.
Nothomb remains one of my favorite writers because of her wit and her characters’ unusual stories. Her novels work, as does this film, because she gorgeously strides the line between her fantastic real life story and her imaginative invention.