Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy

I was back in the UK for last week for a wedding. Got the opportunity to see the film version of the Douglas Adams book that has just come out there. It was a pleasant change to not have mobile phones going off all the time, loud conversations in Arabic and small children who cannot understand the film mewling all the time – not to mention the Arabic sub-titles. Not so pleasant to have no air conditioning and very expensive ticket prices.

The film has large elements of the book, radio series, record, TV show etc. but has too many Americans (more than 1) and an obligatory happy ending.

Still, I think that Douglas would have approved.

When it reaches the UAE, who knows. Films tend to be here for only one or two weeks, partially because there are fewer viewers here and partially because we get Indian, Philippine and some Sri Lankan movies together with the Arabic ones. Why don’t we get English sub-titles for Arabic films? They can’t all be that bad.

Censorship is in the news today. I wonder if any of it will be censored. It seems to be quite random. Got Meet the Parents on video a while back. There was one scene that was missing (pool scene) and made a total mess of the next 15 minutes. However when it appeared on local TV the missing part was there.

I do, however, miss the 9pm watershed for children’s programs from UK TV. Violence is OK at any time of day here. Crazy!