I just watched a movie called Druids in English, and Vercingétorix in French. It wasn’t a great movie. But it portrayed a period of history that had never even crossed my mind before. In fact I wasn’t sure it was based on real history at all until I did some Googling.

Turns out that Vercingétorix was a Gaul chieftain who opposed Julius Ceasar for a time around 52BC (when Ceasar finally defeated him). If you search on his name you’ll find a lot of pages in French, but sadly I don’t read French very well. But I did find a couple of links in English:
The Iron Age in the Auvergne
From Antiquity to the Middle Ages
Neither of these are extensive references but they at least show that the movie was based at least loosely on history. And so I’m glad I saw it, from the point of view of it exposing me to a bit of history that, as I said, I’ve never even considered before.

I just found out (because I am the Last to Know Everything!) that Ioan Gruffudd is going to play Lancelot in the upcoming King Arthur movie.

You may know Gruffudd from The Titanic (I know he was in it, but as I never saw the movie I don’t know how big a part he had) but to me, he is Horatio Hornblower!

Looking forward to seeing him portray Lancelot…

Yesterday I vegged out in front of the TV and watched two movies: Apollo 13 and Igby Goes Down.

Apollo 13 is a great movie, but everyone knows that by now. What really struck me was how, even though I lived through the events and even though I’ve seen the movie a few times, I still get totally caught up and find myself perched on the edge of my seat, tense as can be. Seems to me that says volumes about Ron Howard’s abilities as a film maker. If for some reason you haven’t seen it, make a point to do so.

Igby Goes Down on the other hand… well, I did like it, but if the lead character was supposed to be garnering my sympathy, well, I didn’t get that. I find it hard to feel for a bratty trust-fund kid who has issues with his parents. Growing up in The Hamptons, I just hung out with too many of these kids during my late teen summers. I mean, yeah he has problems, but so does everyone else, y’know? At least he’s got people handing him cash every 5 minutes so he isn’t going to starve.

But maybe I’m reading too much into it. Watch it as a dark comedy and its fairly entertaining. Everyone in it is a caricature, but they’re all played pretty well, in my very amateur opinion. I especially liked Jeff Goldblum as “D.H.” since I’ve not often seen him in a role like this one and he was pretty good.

[Disclaimer for all the above: I am no student of film. I don’t really take movies all that seriously. So this is just the opinions of an average joe…]

At the risk of proving what you’ve already suspected — that I’m a complete and utter geek-nerd — I have to draw your attention to a Major Error in the “100th Episode” of Angel (the one in which Cordelia returns). And yes, I’m sure this has been pointed out by many others, but darnit, I’m behind in my Tivo watching.

Anyway, in this Angel ep, Spike is shown playing a video game. We’re facing him so we can’t see the screen, but we can see the console. It’s an XBox. But we can also hear the sounds, and he’s playing Donkey Kong, of all things! In fact his dialog even says something about a big ape throwing barrels.

So what’s up with that? Playing Donkey Kong on an XBox? If they’d gone with Galaga or something, we could pass it off as him playing one of those Namco Museum type games, but a Nintendo property on Micrsoft hardware! That just ain’t right!!! 🙂

I jest of course. Actually, it was a pretty damned potent episode, and yet one more reason to lament the fact that the show has been cancelled.

So my latest Britcom ‘discovery’ is Next of Kin starring Penelope Keith (To the Manor Born) and Richard Gaunt (No Place Like Home). They play an older couple whose son and daughter-in-law were killed in a car accident. Now their three grandchildren have come to live with them.

It’s a comedy with a definite dark edge. First, the basic premise…here’re 3 orphans, after all.

Second is, the couple, and especially the wife, really aren’t thrilled with the arrangement. They’ve been living the good life: weekends in France, lounging about drinking wine with friends…just a comfortable life of idle retirement. Now they’re going to football matches and cleaning up after kids and pets and frankly, they resent it. Continue reading “Next of Kin”

USA spills the beans on some of the new scenes we’ll get when the Extended Version of The Two Towers hits the stores this December.

Overall, I’m quite pleased. There’s more on Boromir, Faramir and their father, ent draughts for Merrie and Pippin, and some fleshing out of Eowyn’s love of Aragorn. Should make a great movie spectacular.

And, the evil bastards are releasing it the day after Return of the King opens!

Saw a few movies this weekend: About Schmidt, Chocolat, and Bridget Jone’s Diary.

About Schmidt is the hardest to talk about. I liked it…I think. In a way, it wasn’t about anything. In another way, it was about life itself. Gak, that sounds idiotic. Basically, Jack Nicholson plays a 66 year old fellow named Warren Schmidt whose life is changing drastically, setting the poor fellow more or less adrift. It was worth seeing, but don’t fall all over yourself getting to the rental store. Oh, and contrary to what you might think from seeing the trailers, the bulk of the movie is *not* about him going to his daughter’s wedding. Nicholson is…well, Nicholson, and I mean that as praise. He spends a lot of the movie with that “this guy is searching inward with all his might, leaving no room for outward expression” look on his face, and you’re just waiting for him to explode.

Chocolat was a sweet (sometimes bitter-sweet) story of a woman and her daughter who move into a quiet, deeply Catholic village in France, and open a chocolate shop…during Lent. That puts her at odds with the village’s mayor and young priest. Her chocolate has a faintly magical effect on the people who eat it, and she ends up stirring up the folk of the village in some wonderful ways. Very sweet, sometimes funny, well worth watching…I think I’ll buy this one to have at hand whenever I need a pick-me-up.

And finally, Bridget Jone’s Diary was laugh-out-loud funny. A love story with not many surprises, but you never care because you spend the film worried about Bridget…or laughing at her…or laughing with her. As a guy, I got to peer into the female intellect and the problems girls face where men are concerned. Such as, do I wear the teeny tiny thong panties in case I get lucky, or do I wear the big tummy-control panties that aren’t the least bit sexy but make me look better dressed, and thus improve the chances of getting lucky. Girls worry about this? Who knew? A fine, funny film. I was very pleasantly surprised.

For a laugh, rent BJD. To feel good in your soul, rent Chocolat. And to observe the human condition, rent Schmidt.

I’ve been thinking about anime lately, and what makes it so special. And what I’ve decided is this: anime gets away with showing us stuff that live action could never get away with. I was watching the series “Now and Then, Here and There” a while back. The star is a young boy who, at times, gets beaten horribly. A young girl gets raped several times and finally murders her attacker. In “Grave of the Fireflies” [SPOILER INCOMING] we watch a very young girl slowly, painfully, starve to death while her older brother does everything he can think of to prevent it. When we see him put her in a coffin and light the pyre…man, its devastating.

Live action could show this stuff, but not so bluntly. And in having to soften it, the imagery loses some of the impact. So that’s part of it of what makes it special. It pulls certain subject matter out of the realm of taboo. But that’s not all…

At the same time anime is showing you these horiffic visuals…they are animated, and that triggers some kind of release in the brain. When Shu is getting horribly beaten by King Mondo, his neck actually stretches, cartoon style, as his head snaps back and forth. Now don’t misunderstand…this doesn’t make the scene funny. Instead, it both intensifies the action and makes it less real at the same time. And I really think that ‘less real’ bit gives us a mental escape valve.

For me anyway, this lets me walk away from “Now and Then…” thinking about the story, but not…scarred. I mean, seeing that kind of violence done to a young boy in live action would just be horrific. I’d feel guilty about watching it as ‘entertainment’ and just deeply disturbed by seeing it at all. That lizard part of my brain the doesn’t understand the difference between fact and fiction would just curl up into a ball.

Contrast “Now and Then…” with “Grave,” which never used any cartoon exaggeration of any sort. Days later, I’m still thinking about the movie and choking up. Since the misery here isn’t due, directly, to violence, the filmmaker didn’t feel the need to give us that kind of escape, I suppose. You won’t wake up screaming from a nightmare after seeing “Grave” and you might have if you saw a version of “Now and Then” where the violence hadn’t been ‘cartoonized’ a little.

Oh, and by the way, if you don’t watch anime, please don’t take this little brain-dump of mine out of context. Yes, there are scenes of great violence and sadness in anime, but there are also scenes of great happiness and love. It’s a medium of extreme emotions, I suppose. But no one needs an escape from too much happiness.

I’d heard about this anime movie for a long time and tonight, I finally watched it. Whew. If you’re someone who thinks that anime is all about giant robots and is just for kids, Grave of the Fireflies will set you straight.

It’s the story of a boy and his young sister struggling to get by in Japan in the waning days of World War II. Their mother has been killed in an air raid and, well, the world is a hard place for them. Everyone is hungry, most of all two children out on their own.

Make no mistake, its a powerful, sad movie. And very much worth watching.