Sir David John White, known professionally by his stage name David Jason, is an English actor. He is best known for his roles as Derek "Del Boy" Trotter in the BBC sitcom Only Fools and Horses, Detective Inspector Jack Frost in A Touch of Frost, Granville in Open All Hours and Still Open All Hours, and Pop Larkin in The Darling Buds of May, as well as voicing Mr. Toad in The Wind in the Willows, the BFG in the 1989 film, and the title characters of Danger Mouse and Count Duckula.
Nigel George Planer is a British actor, writer and musician. He played Neil in the BBC comedy The Young Ones and Ralph Filthy in Filthy Rich & Catflap. He has appeared in many West End musicals, including original casts of Evita, Chicago, We Will Rock You, Wicked, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. He has also appeared in Hairspray. He won a BRIT award in 1984 and has been nominated for Olivier, TMA, WhatsOnStage and BAFTA awards.
The Big Read was a survey on books carried out by the BBC in the United Kingdom in 2003, where over three-quarters of a million votes were received from the British public to find the nation's best-loved novel. The year-long survey was the biggest single test of public reading taste to date, and culminated with several programmes hosted by celebrities, advocating their favourite books.
Simon Jones is an English actor. He portrayed Arthur Dent, protagonist of Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy on radio in 1978 and again on television in 1981. Jones also appeared in the film The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005) in a cameo role. He also played the role of Donald Shellhammer in Miracle on 34th Street (1994), appeared in Brideshead Revisited as Lord Brideshead, and as King George V in the film Downton Abbey.
Earth Spacedock is a fictional space station orbiting Earth in the Star Trek universe, designed originally by David Carson and Nilo Rodis of Industrial Light and Magic in the 1980s. It is large enough to contain several starships of that fictional universe, and in real life the Spacedock consisted of a series of sets, miniatures, and designs that were used for various films and television shows in the 1980s and 1990s. Written spacedock, it is first seen in the 1984 film Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, and subsequently in the fourth, fifth, and sixth Star Trek movies.
John Charles Dykstra, A.S.C. is an American special effects artist, pioneer in the development of the use of computers in filmmaking and recipient of three Academy Awards, among many other awards and prizes. He was one of the original employees of Industrial Light & Magic, the special effects and computer graphics division of Lucasfilm. He is well known as the special effects lead on the original Star Wars, helping bring the original visuals for lightsabers, space battles between X-wings and TIE fighters, and Force powers to the screen. He also led special effects on many other movies, including Batman Forever, Batman & Robin, Stuart Little, X-Men: First Class, Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2.
The Brothers Grimm is a 2005 fantasy adventure film directed by Terry Gilliam. The film stars Matt Damon, Heath Ledger and Lena Headey in an exaggerated and fictitious portrait of the Brothers Grimm as traveling con-artists in French-occupied Germany, during the early 19th century. The brothers eventually encounter a genuine fairy tale curse which requires courage instead of their usual bogus exorcisms. Supporting characters are played by Peter Stormare, Jonathan Pryce and Monica Bellucci.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a science fiction comedy radio series primarily written by Douglas Adams. It was originally broadcast in the United Kingdom by BBC Radio 4 in 1978, and afterwards the BBC World Service, National Public Radio in the US and CBC Radio in Canada. The series was the first radio comedy programme to be produced in stereo, and was innovative in its use of music and sound effects, winning a number of awards.
James Danforth is an American stop-motion animator, known for model-animation, matte painting, and for his work on When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth (1970), a theme-sequel to Ray Harryhausen's One Million Years B.C. (1967). He later went on to work with Ray Harryhausen on the film Clash of the Titans (1981) to mainly do the animation of the winged horse Pegasus.
Phil Tippett is an American movie director and Oscar and Emmy Award-winning visual effects supervisor and producer, who specializes in creature design, stop-motion and computerized character animation. Over his career, he has assisted ILM and DreamWorks, and in 1984 formed his own company, Tippett Studio.
Terry Pratchett's Hogfather is a 2006 two-part British Christmas-themed fantasy comedy television miniseries adaptation of Hogfather by Terry Pratchett, produced by The Mob, and first broadcast on Sky1, and in High Definition on Sky1 HD, over Christmas 2006. First aired in two 1.5-hour episodes on 17 and 18 December 2006 at 20:00 UTC, it was the first live-action film adaptation of a Discworld novel. In 2007, the two episodes were rerun on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day respectively on Sky One and Sky1 HD.
(Also known as Designer's Guild or B.F.D.G. and can be seen after a member's name as a professional certification abbreviation)
Terry Pratchett's The Colour of Magic is a fantasy-comedy two-part British television adaptation of the bestselling novels The Colour of Magic (1983) and The Light Fantastic (1986) by Terry Pratchett. The fantasy film was produced for Sky1 by The Mob, a small British studio, starring David Jason, Sean Astin, Tim Curry, and Christopher Lee as the voice of Death. Vadim Jean both adapted the screenplay from Pratchett's original novels, and served as director.
Unseen Academicals is the 37th novel in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series. The novel satirises football, and features Mustrum Ridcully setting up an Unseen University football team, with the Librarian in goal. It includes new details about "below stairs" life at the university. The book introduces several new characters, including Trevor Likely, a street urchin with a wonderful talent for kicking a tin can; Glenda Sugarbean, a maker of "jolly good" pies; Juliet Stollop, a dim but beautiful young woman who might just turn out to be the greatest fashion model there has ever been; and the mysterious Mr Nutt, a cultured, enigmatic, idealistic savant. According to the publisher, Transworld, the "on sale" date for the hardback was 1 October 2009 although the official publication date is 8 October 2009. Bookshop chain Borders included a small set of exclusive Discworld football cards with each book.
Mark Rappaport is an American special make-up effects artist.
The Millennium Falcon is a fictional starship in the Star Wars franchise. Designed by Joe Johnston for the movie Star Wars (1977), it has subsequently appeared in The Star Wars Holiday Special (1978), The Empire Strikes Back (1980), Return of the Jedi (1983), The Force Awakens (2015), The Last Jedi (2017), Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018), and The Rise of Skywalker (2019). Additionally, the Falcon appears in a variety of Star Wars spin-off works, including books, comics, and games; James Luceno's novel Millennium Falcon focuses on the titular ship. It also appears in the 2014 animated film The Lego Movie in Lego form.
Jim Henson's Creature Shop is a special/visual effects company founded in 1979 by puppeteer Jim Henson, creator of The Muppets. The company is based out of Burbank, California, United States.
Discworld is a comic fantasy book series written by the English author Terry Pratchett, set on the Discworld, a flat planet balanced on the backs of four elephants which in turn stand on the back of a giant turtle. The series began in 1983 with The Colour of Magic and continued until the final novel The Shepherd's Crown, which was published in 2015, following Pratchett's death. The books frequently parody or take inspiration from classic works, usually fantasy or science fiction, as well as mythology, folklore and fairy tales, and often use them for satirical parallels with cultural, political and scientific issues.
Steve Gawley is a visual effects artist who was nominated at the 62nd Academy Awards in the category of Best Visual effects for his work on the film Back to the Future Part II. His nomination was shared with John Bell, Michael Lantieri and Ken Ralston.
David Acord is an American sound editor and voice actor best known for his contribution as a supervising sound editor of the 2015 film Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Acord received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Sound Editing and British Academy Film Award for Best Sound for his work on The Force Awakens, with fellow sound editor Matthew Wood. He also provided the voice of several characters in the film, including the stormtrooper FN-2199. Though the voice role is minimal, the character gained considerable attention on the Internet following the film's release. Acord also had minor voice roles as an Imperial Male PA and two stormtroopers on episodes of Star Wars Rebels. Acord also voiced Grogu for the Disney Plus series The Mandalorian. In 2015, Acord was one of the sound designers for Disney Infinity video game. In 2020, he received his second Academy Award nomination for Best Sound Editing for 2019 film Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, shared with Matthew Wood.
