8-Year-Old Reviews: Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom Trailer

Here we go again!

Palaeontology Weeps in a Jurassic World

It's been... jings, over four months!?! As many of you will know, I've been very preoccupied over the last few months, but with that over, I'm getting back to normal - if you can call it "normal."

Since I was talking about dinosaurs, I feel like I should make a few comments about the Jurassic World trailer, especially after my typically far-too-detailed analysis.

Of course, you cannot trust a trailer to always give an accurate representation of a film, yet at the same time, I'm not sure what I think.

8-Year-Old Aly Reviews: Walking With Dinosaurs IN 3D CANCELLED

29-year-old Aly here. A while ago, I saw Walking With Dinosaurs in 3D, figuring it would make for a good 8-year-old review. But unfortunately shortly after returning from the cinema, 8-year-old Aly was suddenly unwell, and is now in his room with a hot toddy.

Please ignore the ominous rumbling, I assure you there is nothing to worry about...

The Amazons of Far Harad

This lady appears for less than 10 seconds in the film, yet she is by far the most interesting character in the entire ensemble.

I went to see The Hobbit: The Disenfranchisement of Smaug. I cannot really say anything I didn't already say about the first one. What follows is a snippet of one of the strange mental gymnastic routines that happens to me when thinking about justifying narrative issues.

Scene: a group of friends are playing a tabletop role-playing game, not unlike Dungeons & Dragons. There is Pete (the Dungeon Master), Ian (a Wizard), Eva (an Elf), John (a Dwarf), Vickie (a Ranger), and Fran (a Hobbit). Their game is very loosely based on The Hobbit, where the DM has decided to make a few changes for the sake of inclusion and to keep the group's interest. Everything in italics is "in character," with breaks in character denoted by normal text.

DM: You now take in the sights around you, shaking the fish-slime from your eyes. An eclectic and unusual town stretches beyond. It is not built on the shore, though there are a few huts and buildings there, but right out on the surface of the lake, protected from the swirl of the entering river by a promontory of rock which forms a calm bay. A great bridge made of wood ran out to where on huge piles made of forest trees was built a busy wooden town, not a town of elves but of Men, who still dared to dwell here under the shadow of the distant dragon-mountain. They still throve on the trade that came up the great river from the South and was carted past the falls to their town; but in the great days of old, when Dale in the North was rich and prosperous, they had been wealthy and powerful, and there had been fleets of boats on the waters, and some were filled with gold and some with warriors in armour, and there had been wars and deeds which were now only a legend. The rotting piles of a greater town could still be seen along the shores when the waters sank in a drought. Among the townsfolk you see strange people unlike any you've seen in Bree - men with dark beards and unusual garb, ladies with strange eyes and silken hair, a woman with the darkest skin you've ever seen on a human - 

The Wizard: Where did they come from?

DM: (Sighs) Is this going to be a problem for you, Ian?

The Wizard: Is what going to be a problem?

(The rest of the group sighs and mutters, knowing what's coming next)

Star Wars Into Darkness

No Darth Vader, though.

So I've given you my thoughts on the previous Star Wars film, and since I've now seen Star Wars Into Darkness, I think it'd be fun if I did a review of it.

... This was a Star Wars movie, right?

Bite-Sized Blog: Prometheus, Frost-Giants and Indo-Europeans

"The Frost-Giant's Daughter" may be only 9 pages long, but it's one of Howard's biggest stories, tying in an awful lot of themes and ideas from across multiple stories and mythic inspirations. It's one of the stories that I feel is really important to do justice to, which is why it's taken such a blasted long time to finish: I could've skipped ahead to "The God in the Bowl," but I really want to do everything in the order Howard wrote the stories, since that in itself takes up a big chunk of proceedings. Probably should've split it into multiple parts a while ago. So, in lieu of the next 80 Years of Conan, here's a round-up of links I found of interest.

Good Scot/Bad Scot: The Avengers

I never thought I'd live in a world where I can choose from three different sets of illustrations with the theme "what if the Avengers were dinosaurs," but apparently we as a species have reached this point.

2012 is a year inundated with projects that seem like licenses to print money.  We had 3D re-releases of the first instalment of a pop culture phenomenon and one of the most successful films in cinematic history, and we have yet to look forward to the finale of Chris Nolan's shockingly lucrative Batman series, the return of Ridley Scott to the Alien universe, and the first half of a cinematic prequel to what is undoubtedly one of the biggest fantasy film success stories in recent memory. The Phantom Menace, Titanic, The Dark Knight Rises, Prometheus and The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey would be sure things in any one year, but fate has brought them all together - and to top it all off, in the same year as a film many comic fans considered an impossible dream not five years ago.

I saw The Avengers on the 26th of April with my ever-tireless assistant.  In a year filled with undeserved flops like John Carter and infuriating successes like Wrath of the Titans,* I really could do with a blockbuster that wasn't criminally underrated or undeservedly successful, at least in my estimation. It remains to be seen whether The Avengers gets the type of money Disney were looking for, but I would be astonished if they didn't.

The Hunger Games, and Hope for Dark Agnes

"A star of darkness shone on her birth, of darkness and unrest. Where ever she goes shall be blood spilling and men dying. I knew it when I saw her standing against the sunrise that turned to blood the dagger in her hand."
 - Robert E. Howard, "The Sword Woman"

So while John Carter's doing a wee bit better than Disney and most of the world's media predicted, it still isn't the resounding success it really should be, certainly not in the homeland of the story's creator. In contrast, another literary adaptation, The Hunger Games, is doing gangbusters (to use a favourite vernacular) to the tune of being the most profitable box office debut for the first film of a franchise, only The Dark Knight and Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows: Part 2 beating it.

Unlike John Carter and, well, most films adapted into books, I haven't read so much as a page of the source material on which The Hunger Games was based. This, then, was a rare opportunity to go in to an adaptation and not be informed or distracted by my preconceptions of the source material. This is a double-edged sword: I may not get as much out of the film as I would had I read the books, and I could stumble upon plot points that are explained in the book - but at the same time, I may not be as distracted by divergences or clashes with my personal preconceptions.

Well, I fairly enjoyed it, and was pleasantly surprised, not least because my faith in the future of blockbuster cinema has been revived, at least a little.

8-Year-Old Reviews: The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn

As we wait for the Beeb to respond, here are my thoughts on my most recent trip to the cinema, which again can only be expressed through the medium of 8-year-old.

The Blog That Time Forgot: Bite-Sized: Exploitation and Shock Value

Since I'm still on the mend, but feeling awfully guilty about not keeping up to date, I'm trying out a new concept: little quick posts where I keep you all up to date on what I'm doing.  (I swear, one of these days, I'll comment!  I mean it!)

So, I watched Children of Men. How's this for a contentious, blanket statement: Children of Men is an absolutely beautifully directed film with masterful technical directions and magnificent visual design, which is regrettably bogged down by some of the most exploitative, blatant, backbreakingly unsubtle political pretensions I've seen in a film. There's a fascinating science fiction story at its core about a world where humanity has become infertile, and indeed it does dwell on some of those great questions. It also has some strong ideas. Unfortunately, it's also one of those films that just doesn't know how to do subtlety. From the choice of songs (want something to be poignant? Why, pick a melancholy tune to accompany it! Want an ambiguous and politically motivated ending? Go with John Lennon!) to the dialogue, it's a film that holds your hand all the way through, not daring to allow the viewer to make up their own mind.*

It's also one of the most galling exploitation films I've seen in a while.  People die in brutal and matter-of-fact ways, rows of shrouded bodies are seen, crying innocents are packed into what are obviously concentration camps, surrendering protesters are gunned down whilst waving white flags. This seems to be a thing for Mexican** filmmakers: Cuaron's compatriot Guillermo Del Toro did the same in Pan's Labyrinth, where he had no qualms in showing acts of brutality which make it difficult not to hate those enacting them - it's just unfortunate it's done in such a cartoonish and obviously exploitative manner.

It's like having your villain kick a puppy or shoot a kitten: you're obviously going to hate him by default, unless you have a particular aversion to kittens.  Thus it's easy to make a villain hateful when he does something so monstrous.  It's the same thing which bothers me about A Serbian Film: it's just so easy to shock people with profoundly shocking images, but it doesn't make you think about the characters, film or themes, you just can't help but think about the image. Or, more succinctly, it's like the jump scare. Surprising someone is easy, you just say boo and make a scary face, but that doesn't make you a grandmaster of horror - in the same way, showing a man committing unspeakable acts doesn't make the man despicable, just the act.

Speaking of which, it's not the violence which I found the most exploitative (though it was very exploitative).  No, what was worse was the politixploitation.  As surely as sexploitation is filled with scenes of carnality and blaxploitation is suffused with black stereotyping, this film is full of pandering to a particular viewpoint .  The British government is shown as the most odious caricature liberal Britons think of the goose-stepping conservative Middle Englanders: the police are brutal and aggressive thugs; the news is the sleaziest this side of Fox News.  In contrast, the heroes are composed of long-haired ganja aficionados, New Age holistic midwife, and a young black woman who is the Saviour Of Our People.  Not a single one of them felt like a character, so much as a proxy for a designated political argument.  Michael Caine is defined by his love of marijuana and little else; Pam Ferris is a caricature of alternative medicine adherents. Only Clare-Hope Ashity had anything resembling depth, and even then, her accent was barely tolerable.

Now, I'm not getting into the politics of this, but this film was so obtuse about its political leanings, and particularly its duality (one side is wrong and the other side is right), that I felt insulted by it.  Half the dialogue was clumsy exposition, the other half political filibusters.  It's frustrating, because even ignoring the nauseating political "subtext" (or, rather, supertext), Children of Men is a really good film.  I just wish the script was handled as well as the direction.

*I'm going to get into spoiler territory here, so you might want to watch out here: the film just doesn't understand the idea that viewers might be able to get things for themselves without redundant clarifications.  For one thing, there's a certain revelation which turns the film's narrative upside down, and the ramifications of said revelation are right there. Here it is:

All through the film, the heavy handed commentary on immigration is hard to miss, so when it's discovered that one such refugee is pregnant, the most obvious irony is clear: the key to humanity's salvation lies in a woman who would normally be rejected entry into the last functioning society.  It's so obvious that you'd think it speaks for itself - but no, because the writers assume viewers are idiots, they actually have one of the characters point out that very irony in dialogue.  It was effective as an unspoken idea, but having a character outright say "isn't it ironic that the first person to be pregnant in 20 years would be a refugee?" removes all the eloquence and power, pushing it right into preachy, pretentious melodrama.  It's like "did you get it audience?  Do you see what we did there?  Oh, my stars, aren't we clever clogs!"

**Kike kindly points out that Cuaron & Del Toro are in fact Mexican, not Spanish.  I have no excuse, but I have an explanation of sorts.  My train of thought was mixed up, since Pan's Labyrinth was set in Spain and Y Tu Mama Tambien had Spanish characters: ergo, because I tend to make leaps like that, I mistakenly "remembered" that both directors were Spanish.  I knew it was one of the two, I swear!

"What Happened To Waiting 20 Years For Remakes?"

Last weekend, the cinemas of America were bursting with several fine films — Captain America and Harry Potter in the multiplexes, The Guard, The Future, Tabloid, Project Nim at the art houses — yet the big hit was The Smurfs, a CGI-enhanced big-screen version of the intolerable, one-joke cartoon series from the 1980s. The film has been a punch line for months, but when the receipts were tallied up, The Smurfs came within a hair of beating the weekend’s top grosser, Cowboys & Aliens, co-starring no less than James Bond and Han Solo.

Suddenly, the previous big question surrounding The Smurfs (“How the hell did that get made?”) has been replaced by a bigger one (“How the hell did that make so much money?”) and sadly, both questions have the same answer: the ’80s nostalgia factor. It is not a phenomenon confined to the singular occurrence of The Smurfs; my own visit to multiplex this weekend confirmed the existence, via trailers and posters, of similarly unnecessary and unwelcome remakes of artifacts like Conan the Barbarian, Footloose, and Fright Night.

Why are these films being made? Because the people who make movies (and even, increasingly, decide what movies are made) are getting younger and younger — young enough to have been children and teenagers in the 1980s, and to have fond memories of a show like The Smurfs and a film like Footloose, and if it was good then, it would be even better now, yes?
 -  Jason Bailey

As I put on the comments section:

The new Conan film isn't a remake any more than Captain America is a "remake" of the 1990s Matt Salinger film - or the Reb Brown tv movies, for that matter. Like Captain America, Conan has had a long following in books, comics and other media dating back to his first appearance in 1932, in "The Phoenix on the Sword" by Robert E. Howard. A new Conan film had been in development since the 1990s, but was only made into a film now because of constant fumbling and missteps by Warner Brothers. There were at least two occasions where development on a Conan film were getting pretty far along, before something or other (usually because Arnold chose to do a different film, or went into politics). To attribute Conan being made only now due to '80s nostalgia is to completely ignore the recent history of the film franchise.

In fact, this idea of Hollywood executives making films they're nostalgic for is nothing new in Hollywood. Why do you think so many black-and-white films like Ben-Hur and The Man Who Knew Too Much suddenly got colour films in the '50s and '60s? For the same reason that silent films were remade into talkies - and the same reason '80s films are being remade now - because Hollywood was never about originality. Remakes have been a fixture of Hollywood since the dawn of the business.

Don't believe me? Here are a list of remakes made before 1970, which were made ten years or less after the original. I'm not including adaptations, because the list would be preposterously huge otherwise. But it shows that this insane notion of Hollywood only now running out of original ideas is nothing short of... inaccurate.  (that's all I could think of saying.)

Hoodman Blind (1913) remade as Hoodman Blind (1923) - 10 years
The Golden Chance (1915) remade as Forbidden Fruit (1921) - 6 years
The Three Godfathers (1916) remade as Marked Men (1919) - 3 years
The Grocery Clerk (1919) remade as The Counter Jumper (1922) - 3 years
His Royal Slyness (1920) remade as Long Fliv the King (1926) - 6 years
Outside the Law (1920) remade as Outside the Law (1930) - 10 years
The Unknown Cavalier (1926) remade as Ride Him, Cowboy (1932) - 8 years
Duck Soup (1927) remade as Another Fine Mess (1930) - 3 years
Land Beyond the Law (1927) remade as The Big Stampede (1932) - 5 years
Love 'em and Weep (1927) remade as Chickens Come Home (1931) - 4 years
London After Midnight (1927) remade as Mark of the Vampire (1935) - 8 years
Seventh Heaven (1927) remade as Seventh Heaven (1937) - 10 years
Somewhere in Sonora (1927) remade as Somewhere in Sonora (1933) - 6 years
The Phantom City (1928) remade as Haunted Gold (1932) - 4 years
Lost Patrol (1929) remade as The Lost Patrol (1934) - 5 years
Teacher's Pet (1930) remade as Bored of Education (1936) - 6 years
The Dawn Patrol (1930) remade as The Dawn Patrol (1938) - 8 years
Range Feud (1931) remade as The Red Rider (1934) - 3 years
The Mayor of Hell (1933) remade as Crime School (1938) - 5 years
Penthouse (1933) remade as Society Lawyer (1939) - 6 years
The Life of Jimmy Dolan (1933) remade as They Made Me a Criminal (1939) - 6 years
Viktor und Viktoria (1933) remade as First a Girl (1935) - 2 years
Intermezzo (1936) remade as Intermezzo (1939) - 3 years
The Walking Dead (1936) remade as The Man They Could Not Hang (1939) - 3 years
Pépé le Moko (1937) remade as Algiers (1938) - 1 year(!)
Le Corbeau (1943) remade as The 13th Letter (1951) - 7 years
Van Gogh (1947) remade as Van Gogh (1948) - 1 year(!)
Cat-Women of the Moon (1953) remade as Missile to the Moon (1958) - 5 years
Seven Samurai (1954) remade as The Magnificent Seven (1960) - 6 years
Jigoku (1960) remade as Jigoku (1970) - 10 years
Yojimbo (1961) remade as A Fistful of Dollars (1964) - 3 years
Irma la Douce (1963) remade as Irma la Douce (1972) - 9 years

What about some modern examples of quick-turnaround remakes?

L.A. Takedown (1989) remade as Heat (1995)) - 6 years

... That's it.

But what about foreign-to-English Language remakes, which I'll expand to include modern times?

Castle of Blood (1964) remade as Web of the Spider (1971) - 7 years
Le Jouet (1976) remade as The Toy (1982) - 6 years
La Chèvre (1981) remade as Pure Luck (1991) - 10 years
Three Men And A Cradle (1985) remade as Three Men and a Baby (1987) - 2 years
Force Majeure (1989) remade as Return to Paradise (1998) - 9 years
La Femme Nikita (1990) remade as Point of No Return (1993) - 3 years
La Totale! (1991) remade as True Lies (1994) - 3 years
Eat Drink Man Woman (1994) remade as Tortilla Soup (2001) - 7 years
Nattevagten (1994) remade as Nightwatch (1997) - 3 years
Un indien dans la ville (1994) remade as Jungle 2 Jungle (1997) - 3 years
L'Appartement (1996) remade as Wicker Park (2004) - 8 years
Shall We Dansu? (1996) remade as Shall We Dance (2004) - 8 years
Taxi (1996) remade as Taxi (2004) - 8 years
Abre Los Ojos (1997) remade as Vanilla Sky (2001) - 4 years
Insomnia (1997) remade as Insomnia (2002) - 5 years
Ringu (1998) remade as The Ring (2002) - 4 years
Nueve Reinas (2000) remade as Criminal (2004) - 4 years
One Missed Call (2004) remade as One Missed Call (2007) - 3 years
Shutter (2004) remade as Shutter (2008) - 4 years
Il Mare (2000) remade as The Lake House (2006) - 6 years
L'ultimo bacio (2001) remade as The Last Kiss (2006) - 5 years
Mostly Martha (2001) remade as No Reservations (2007) - 6 years
Infernal Affairs (2002) remade as The Departed (2006) - 4 years
The Eye (2002) remade as The Eye (2008) - 6 years
Klatretøsen (2002) remade as Catch That Kid (2004) - 2 years
Interview (2003 film) remade as Interview (2007 film) - 4 years
Ju-on: The Grudge (2003) remade as The Grudge (2004) - 1 years
Brødre (2004) to Brothers (2009) - 5 years
Sigaw (2004) to The Echo (2008) - 4 years
Anthony Zimmer (2005) remade as The Tourist (2010) - 5 years
# 13 (2010) from 13 Tzameti (2005) - 5 years
[REC] (2007) remade as Quarantine (2008) - 3 years
LOL (Laughing Out Loud) (2008) remade as LOL: Laughing Out Loud (2011) - 3 years
Anything for Her (2008) remade as The Next Three Days (2010) - 2 years

So next time someone complains about a remake of Krull or The Breakfast Club as another example of Hollywood running out of ideas, remember - this is nothing new. Stop acting as if it is.

Michael J. Bassett, Silent Hill, and Robert E. Howard

I've been quite critical of Michael Bassett's Solomon Kane in many regards. I even nominated him for the de Campista awards, which, in retrospect, I don't think was entirely deserved. Not because the changes he made to Kane's origin were any less objectionable, but because he did such a damn good job of praising Howard, without qualifiers or nonsense. His weird ideas on Solomon Kane's origins are an honest, artistic derivation, not one dictated by focus groups or trying to fit in with other stories he wrote. I'm not going to defend Solomon Kane as a Howard adaptation (which it isn't in the first place), but I know Bassett's heart was in the right place.

Anyway, Solomon Kane still hasn't hit North American theatres for reasons unimaginable, but Bassett's next adventure has been announced at Bleeding Cool - Bassett's writing and directing Silent Hill: Revelations, the sequel to the not-great-not-terrible Silent Hill.

Somebody call Scott Oden!

He'll know what to do.

Synopsis:
Orcs Orcs Orcs are battle ready, ugly, peeved and pouring out of the mountain to wreak havoc and destruction on outdoor enthusiasts and eventually all of mankind. Our collective fates lie in the hands of our hero trio; a couple of bumbling but well-meaning park rangers and Katie, a hot and feisty, over-the-top environmentalist.

So, a film called Orcs! Which has an exclamation mark at the end.  For emphasis, no doubt.

This is either right up Scott's alley, or his worst nightmare.

(Also, an update: you may have noticed I've been a bit less frequent in my postings.  This is due to work on the Newcomer's Guide, as well as The Secret Thing, and half a dozen other items and articles.  Truly I have created a monster...)

Keeping up with the Grinses

I miss Leo quite a bit.  I remember clicking on The Cimmerian, eager to read his latest news from the world of Howardom, or Tolkienalia, or Dunsanya.  I've been reading his essays in The Cimmerian journal, and I'm really rather saddened that he hasn't been around for such a while.

Luckily, though, Leo hasn't completely skipped planets, as he can be found at Big Hollywood.  Leo never made the connection between his work at TC with his work at BH, and for good reason: Big Hollywood is a site for conservative movie lovers.  Given how powerfully divisive politics can be in America - as circumstantially portrayed at TC itself, where John J. Miller, a writer and Howard fan who just happened to be a proud conservative, had his books "one-star bombed" at Amazon.com for the simple reason that his politics are not the same as another group's politics - this was unquestionably a choice for the better.  I would've hated for TC to be the recipient of such childish, petty antics, regardless of what I think of an author's political stance.

But this blog isn't TC, and I since I'm not an American, my opinions on the American political spectrum hopefully won't attract too much attention.  Not that I'm going to comment on them, of course: this blog is a politics-free zone.  There are enough things to disagree about within the realms of fiction without hauling deeply-set fundamental beliefs into it.

Anyway, reading up on Big Hollywood has allowed me a way of keeping up with Leo, and reminding me that he hasn't stalked off into the wilderness to hunt and forage.  So I come to my latest linkage and thinkage, as Leo discusses something that had been bothering me for a while: the treatment of vampires and other supernatural horrors linked with Christianity in cinema and television in recent years.

Solomon Kane DVD Review

The day has come, folks!

Michael Bay turns his monstrous gaze to another childhood property

I have a complicated relationship with Michael Bay.  I never saw Bad Boys, and am not particularly interested in changing that, since Martin Lawrence irritates me, and Will Smith in anything other than Men in Black or The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air has been worthless to me. I vaguely liked The Rock, but that was basically because Sean Connery and Ed Harris never fail to deliver.  Armageddon was entertaining because... actually I don't know why, but I do recall that there was a lot of meteoric action therein.  I loved the scenes on the meteor, simply because I love that sort of science-fictiony sort of thing.  Pearl Harbor was ungodly, and I'm glad I didn't see it in theatres.  I never saw The Island, but I haven't heard good things.

And then there's Transformers. Truth be told, Bay is disturbingly good at making his films (apart from Pearl Harbor) an enjoyable experience for me.  I had a good time at the films I went to see at the cinema - and Primus forgive me, that includes Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. I think in the case of Transformers, the power of nostalgia completely overwhelmed me: I was just so happy to hear Pete Cullen's voice, to see giant robots on screen, and generally excited about everything that I was in an incredibly cheerful state.  So it's very bizarre that while I immensely enjoyed the two Transformers films when I watched them, I don't think it was the films themselves that I enjoyed.

Mishmash of the Cretins: Director's Cut

Hades, I don't even think I have them all. Still...

Unanswered Questions: Solomon Kane

A fridge moment is a thought that occurs to someone after the initial viewing experience, derived from the idea that you watch the show, enjoy, then when you open the fridge door for the milk... you remember something.

It's usually something like a plot hole, forgotten thread, or something along those lines, but other times, it's just a case of being inattentive or not reading between the lines. I had a few of these for Solomon Kane. Sometimes, further thought reveals hidden depths you didn't think of beforehand, as well as a rather crazy theory that actually makes everything fall into place.

Naturally, thar be spoilers in these waters!

Solomon Kane Review Reviews: Robert Mann

A good review, for once: Robert Mann.

Still, a few queries.

The creation of pulp fiction writer Robert E. Howard, known for characters such as Conan the Barbarian, Kull the Conqueror and Red Sonja, Solomon Kane is a character that can be distinctly classified as an anti-hero. Extremely dark, even by the standards of Howard, who has written some pretty dark stuff, he is a character that makes even the likes of Batman seem quite tame by comparison and, given the big screen potential for such a character, it is actually rather surprising that he hasn’t been brought to the big screen before.

It's fairly clear he doesn't have much experience with the literary character, since he considers him "distinctly classed as an antihero" who would make "even the likes of Batman seem quite tame."

This is entirely the creation of the film, based on a very extreme interpretation of the poetry. In reality, Solomon Kane is possibly the LEAST "anti-heroic" of his characters. Sure, he's dark and conflicted, but he's also immensely kind and gentle to the innocent. He'd only be an antihero if he was put into a modern context, where laws, society and mores are very different from the 15/1600s.

There are, however, a few things that set this film apart from other films in the sword and sorcery genre, things you may not expect. For starters, the acting is much better than it really needs to be. James Purefoy is excellent as the titular character, delivering a thorughly convincing performance of a character that is actually more complex than you might expect.

He mentions the performances being "better than they needed to be", but also says Kane is "a character more complex than you might expect"... surely a performance would need to be good in order to portray such a character?

Still, those problems aside, it's an interesting review, well thought out, and actually explaining why and how he came to his conclusions. Would that more critics took after his example.

Triangulation: Jim Lad, Lil' Leo, Weird Tales Troika, Momo, and Painbrush

Getting back in my stride, I think.

Monday sees an interview with James Purefoy. I am totally sold on Jim lad, which is amazing considering how much I disliked him in "Rome": turns out, you're not really supposed to consider Marc Anthony a swell chap. Jim lad, though, he's awesome. I'd love to meet him and say "job well done" on his Blackbeard, the best performance of Teach between him and Angus McFadyen.


Tuesday's scoop is Leo Howard cast as the Littlest Barbarian. As with Momo, I'm not fighting down the urge to vomit in rage, even though there are certain problems. Give him blue contacts/digital colour correction, give him a more Cimmerian hairstyle, and he could work. His theatrical martial arts styles means he has great control over his body and strong athleticism: I can definitely see him climbing sheer cliffs, felling hawks on the wing, spearing wild beasts and killing Picts at a 10th-grade level. I still think he's too cute, though.

Thursday brings us an update on the Howard-Lovecraft-Smith poetry books. I can't help but be a bit disappointed. On the Howard side, I lament the absence of "Cimmeria," "A Word From The Outer Dark," "Red Thunder," "The Bell of Morni," and the Solomon Kane pieces, which is strange, since "The King and the Oak" appears. Amazingly, not a single one of the Smith poems I thought would be foregone conclusions--“The Hashish Eater, Or, The Apocalypse of Evil,” “Lament of the Stars,” “The Titans in Tartarus,” “The Sea-Gods” and “The Song of the Worlds”--made the cut, not even the stupendous "The Hashish-Eater," which utterly bemuses me. I was also woefully inaccurate in guessing stories for the Lovecraft collection, where again, none of my predictions--“The Cats,” “Providence,” “The House,” “Festival,” and “The City”--are present. I'm also surprised that Lovecraft's epic "Fungi from Yuggoth" is represented by only a handful of its thirty-six chapters, especially since Lovecraft's poetic output is considerably smaller than that of his Texan and Californian friends. Still, these books weren't meant to be "the complete Howard/Lovecraft/Smith" Weird Poetry collections, and the omissions might well be the result of copyright and public domain issues.


Friday, Momo Spaketh! There's a minor controversy over at the Robert E. Howard forums, as his mention of hoping Conan could get him a role on Pirates of the Carribean rubbed some REH fans the wrong way, the implication being that Momo viewed Conan as a mere "stepping stone" onto more worthy projects. I think it's a bit of an overreaction: more likely, Momo was simply saying what other jobs he'd like to do, and I'm sure being Conan would be a springboard if it was any good. Just talkin' bout his job. Besides, i can officially never make fun of him again after seeing his mammy's face. Her little smile will haunt me whenever I think of poking fun at Momo. Damn it.

That was originally going to be my Saturday post, but yet again, I posted too early. Rather than cash in one of my "week off" chips, I decided to put together a quick one for Saturday. I'd been meaning to mention Strom's wonderful and touching memorial to Dan on The Cimmerian, but never got around to it: I wanted it to be more than just a link and a paragraph. Still, it's more important it's on TC at all than worry about its content.