A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

Nos·tal·gia: Pronunciation: nä-'stal-j&, n&- also no -, nO-; n&-'stäl- Function: noun Etymology: New Latin, from Greek nostos return home New Latin -algia; akin to Greek neisthai to return, Old English genesan to survive, Sanskrit nasate he approaches  1 : the state of being homesick : HOMESICKNESS  2 : a wistful or excessively sentimental yearning for return to or of some past period or irrecoverable condition; also : something that evokes nostalgia  - nos·tal·gic /-jik/ adjective or noun  - nos·tal·gi·cal·ly /-ji-k(&-)le/ adverb  Nostalgia.  For most of us, the past sometimes seems more attractive than our present or somehow less frightening than the undiscovered country of the future. It's an illusion, really, but memory has a way of dulling all but the sharpest pains, the saddest memories, and the rest of all our yesterdays become a series of sepia-colored memories in which we take refuge from our 21st Century red state-blue state, conse...

Depression, it’s been claimed, sometimes triggers spurts of creativity, particularly in writers and musical artists. Either that or it inspires creative people later on to give the world memorable songs or poems – such as Jerome Kerns’ “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” or Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s “In Memoriam.”  Unfortunately for fans of the late Douglas Adams’  Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy  five-volume “trilogy,” the author’s bout with the blues didn’t help much in the writing of  Mostly Harmless,  the bleak, somewhat underwhelming final book in the series.  As in the previous four novels, Adams pokes fun at various science fiction themes, mainly the concept of parallel universes and the notion that aliens have been monitoring the Earth’s various television and radio broadcasts since the mid-20th Century. And of course, as in the other volumes, Adams also makes various brilliantly funny observations about life in the Universe…or in New York City:  On...

In the late 1970s, prompted by the success of Douglas Adams' original sci-fi/comedy radio series  The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy,  the British Broadcasting Corporation's television department commissioned him and John Lloyd to adapt it into a six-episode miniseries. Adams, who had also worked for a while on the venerable  Dr. Who  TV series, had already adapted part of the radio series into a couple of novels ( The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy  and  The Restaurant at the End of the Universe ) was notorious for being a procrastinator, so the project took a while in getting started. At first, the TV version of  Hitchiker's Guide  was going to be an animated series, but this idea was nixed in favor of giving viewers a live-action version featuring some of the original radio series' actors, particularly Simon Jones (Arthur Dent), Mark Wing-Davey (Zaphod Beeblebrox), Stephen Moore (Marvin the Paranoid Android) and Peter...