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

Scott Evil?

Okay, so some of him (or else I might have to cancel my plans to see it in protest) but he's great. And Basil Exposition (is that his name?)

Scott gets some screen time and some good lines but for most of the film he isn't exactly high profile. Basil is in it too but if you haven't seen 1 & 2 you wouldn't notice the character (and you'd wonder why Michael York gets third billing in the credits).

Basil's stepson produced Attack of the Clones - not a lot of people know that (well, probably lots of people know that, but they don't go around trotting the fact out like it means something).

Did he really? Wow, didn't know that, and do you know why? Because people shouldn't go around saying they had anything to do with the new set of starwars films. (if they didn't say Star Wars on them I wouldn't go see)

Has he (Basil) been in anything else good? Stuff a long time ago, I saw about half of Logan's Run befoee the fact that he was in it stopped amusing me and I found something more interesting to do.

Isn't Michael York in Cabaret? or is that just my immagination. It always seemed incongruous to me.

I believe he is. He and his cheekbones also appear in Logan's Run, and he's in one of the 'wandering looney' episodes of Babylon 5. But his best movies are the Three Musketeer films he made in the early 70s which also star Charlton Heston, Oliver Reed and Christopher Lee (and Rachel Welch, and Spike Miligan, and Faye Dunaway, and Richard Chamberlain, etc, etc...).

Which of the three Musketeers was evil?

(refusing to believe Christpher Lee could be non-evil)

I like your comment about me on your page btw, I keep meaning to do one of those myself... remind me to write something equally nice about you.

Resisting the temptation to reel off a list of films in which Christopher Lee is lovely and fluffy...

...he wasn't a musketeer. He was the arch-villain's chief assassin (a role which made good use of Mr Lee's superlative fencing skills).

Is he good at being nice and fluffy?
somehow I just can't see it...

Well, nice and fluffy sort of overstates it. He basically just does his villain act as usual but the script lets him win.

Oh, so bad guys can't win then?
If you win, you're automatically nice and fluffy?

sometimes seems like it - very depressing really

*goes back to watch Ealing comedies where they get away with being rascally*

Good guys have the option of being nice and fluffy. The closest option villains tend to get is being creepy and unsettling. And would you really want to watch a film where the bad guys win?

(Hmm, maybe I'm being naive, cos I can think of one or two popular films where that happened.)

Which Ealing comedies were you thinking of, Swiv? Back in the 50s you weren't allowed to show rascals getting away with it. In The Lavender Hill Mob Alec Guinness gets flown home in handcuffs and in The Ladykillers he and his entire gang get murdered and dumped in railway freight cars. The closest Ealing got to rascally success is in Kind Hearts and Coronets where the rascal (if that's not too charitable a word for a psychopathic serial killer) appears to come out on top before realising he's spent the previous 90 minutes writing the world's funniest confession...

I was thinking of Kind Hearts and Coronets actually
He does get away with it, but you just know that he's dropped himself in it.

I like it when bad guys are creepy and unsettling!
That's my favourite type of bad guy!

(thinks)

This could be my lucky night!!!

Are you an evil genius? I think not.
Do you have magical powers? No.

I think those are the basic criteria.



(, no more austin powers - much as I would like you-know-who to be the bad guy and have all of the others working against him)

magic not a necessity
only criminal masterminds need apply

Okay, either criminal mastermind evil genius OR evil person with powers of some sort.

But no James Bond style badguys, we want really evil...

I have the evil power of draining all life and energy out of any conversation I join and causing embarrassed, awkward silences between everyone else in the room. Plus I am fat with a slight speech impediment, like many a Bond villain. Do I qualify?

sure

actually - I just saw this new Austin Powers (took time out from watching the FOTR DVD!) - and I think I liked it better than the others - less Fat B*****d than the others, Michael Caine is always good value, and the more Mini-Me the better (he and Dr Evil are sooo cute... yes well) and I found Beyonce Knowles far less grating than Liz Hurley or Heather Graham.