h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

A handful of Danish communists and socialists were fairly popular behind The Iron Curtain. People like author Martin Andersen Nexø (Nexoe), who moved to Dresden, GDR, where he became an honorary citizen with a high school named after him. The first part of his novel "Pelle Erobreren" (Pelle The Conqueror) was made into a film by his fellow countryman Bille August, who won an Oscar for it in 1989 (best foreign film).

But while Nexø was "officially popular" because of his political views (he never gave up his support for Stalin's dictatorship) another series of films became extremely popular by the ordinary East German people: From 1968 to 1998 Nordisk Film produced 14 films about The Olsen Gang (Olsen-banden) - a trio of petty criminals (who happened to have the same last name) in perpetual search of the big coup.

What made them accepted by the East German censorship was, of course, that they were constantly trying to trick big business and its backers.

But what made them popular among the population (in both Denmark and the German Democratic Republic) was that they also regularly made fun of the police, the rest of the State and any other authority.

So it's really no big surprise that the Kunsthalle Rostock has great success with a large exhibition about the Olsen Gang. It was inaugurated with the participation of the last living member of the gang, Morten "Benny Olsen" Grunwald and "Keld Olsen's son" Jess "Borge" Holtsø, who today is a successful jazz and blues singer and musician.

Here's a clip (in German) about the exhibition and its inauguration:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0damYKaC-aM&feature=youtu.be

If you prefer a clip in Danish, be my guest:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJNZD2p-qQQ

~ . .. . .. ...

it's been a long time since 1987, when "Pelle the Conqueror" came out, but I think I liked the film. Max Von Sydow was a major talent.

He still is! Next you'll be able to see him in "Star Wars: The Force Awakens"

That's worth waiting for, though what I *really* want to see is Jar Jar Binks.*





*If he's still alive....

Maybe von Sydow stars in the role as the old Jar Jar Binks

I love Jar Jar Binks because tar Wars true believers tend to have such a hard time swallowing him

Hey guys, it's just a movie! Don't take it all so seriously.

Well, he did sort of spoil the illusion. Star Wars is about dead serious things - evil heartless bloodthirsty fascists trying to conquer and enslave a galactic democracy of peace loving collaborating solar systems. There should be no room for Mr. Binks' goofiness (or those little furry creatures on Endor either, now that I think about it).

Let's see how well Disney does with this year's sequel.

"Star Wars is about dead serious things" [Pierce]

And very, very, very big spaceships -- admirably satirized in "Spaceballs" .

Then initial film lured teens and older pre-teens into the theater with coming-of-age issues, then broadened out to make it more palatable to other demographics. The special effects were cutting-edge at the time. Since then, the bar for special effects has steadily gotten much higher. To be honest, I think over-reliance on special effects is bad, especially if it comes at the expense of plot and characters that you can relate to.

I like Yoda. I also like the social satire in which Jar Jar Binks hooks up with an evil man, and ends up in a powerful position for which he has no talent. Think immediately pre-Glasnost Russia. Peter Lynch, a legendary investor, said that you should look for companies so good that even an idiot can run them, because sooner or later an idiot *will* run them. A Senator from Nebraska, arguing for the Senate's ratification of Carswell as a Supreme Court Justice, said that mediocrity deserves to be represented on the Court.

I rest my case.

Cutting-edge indeed! It was like nothing we had ever seen before! So real! I loved it instantly! I was 24 years old when I saw the first film and felt like an 8 year old again

I see your case and raise you one ladder
You can now take it to a higher court

But if the first "Star Wars" movie had also been the last, I wouldn't have seen it as a big deal, though I guess it broke some box office records. When that sort thing happens, the public usually cries out for a sequel or twelve. And there actually *were* a lot of sequels waiting in the wings.

But I still think one can take the whole thing far too seriously.

"But I still think one can take the whole thing far too seriously." [paulh]

Of course. Look how serious people take Wagner's operas and the collected works of Shakespeare and Douglas Adams

I had a fan girl moment with Max von Sydow...
We made a student "spex" (Comic musical theater by students) for the 100 year anniversary of our student union. And he was present at the celebration dinner, so we had him say a few lines. And if you're in the spex, you get a medal, and I was in the costume department making those, so I got to pin it on him.
Let me tell you, he's a tall, tall man.

" Look how serious people take Wagner's operas and the collected works of Shakespeare and Douglas Adams" [Pierce]

Look, you're a really nice guy, Pierce, and I don't want to prick your bubble, but Shakespeare wrote some clunkers. That guy who was born in two parts, now what was *that* all about? And there are Shakespeare troops that mount productions of all his "tragedies" as if the bard intended them to be comedies.

Wagner? I can' stand "Tristan and Iseult." I also think that the man was a megalomaniac who didn't understand economy of means. A good editor might have trimmed the bloat and excess away from the Ring Cycle, leaving one cohesive opera. After all, as Anna Russell said,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m69aPAo1rXE

Where else but in Wagner's world can you spend 14 hours agonizing over a story that brings you right back to the beginning when you reach the end?

Again, sorry about this, but the fourth or fifth installment of Douglas Adams's Hitchhiker series was such a clunker that even Adams is said to have felt that he screwed up.

Now, I grant you that I wouldn't have been able to write the preceding paragraphs had I not taken these works pretty seriously. However, I am well aware of their weak points.

At the end of the day it's all just entertainment, init?

That's right. I'm glad we're on the same page.

hi ptp

in ref to the starswars film in england the church wanted to do a add before the film with the lords prayer they got a no way it would upset other religions and others would want the same. jim

re post 15:

I got very close to von Sydow in the mid-1980s, when he made his film "Ved Vejen" (By The Way) on a little disused railway station a few kilometers away. I wanted to meet him, but they sent one of my co-workers instead.