Friday 15 October 2010

How wrong can one reporter be?

I generally try to get the word of Conan and Howard out there. Having a blog is great, but it can quickly become preaching to the choir.  You guys all know my grievances, and I sometimes feel like I'm repeating myself.  So, whenever I feel it worthwhile, I make a point of clarifying errors and mistakes wherever I see them.  Most people are fairly appreciative, while others are just silent.  Yet occassionally I run into... others.  Such as one Martyn Conterio.

Now, I have provided two versions of the article.  This is the article as it appears on the site now:

Marcus Nispel has spent a good majority of this year working on his Conan The Barbarian reboot out in sunny Bulgaria. There’s been plenty of stills knocking around these past few months but none like the ones here, which show off the beautiful lighting, art direction and costume design.
Conan will be released worldwide in 2011 and Nispel’s $90 million dollars sword, sorcery and sandals epic could be a great slice of b-movie heaven… we hope. Television actor Jason Momoa won the role of the Cimmerian blacksmith’s lad forced into human bondage after his village is wiped out by some mean bastards.
Filling out the cast alongside Momoa is Stephen Lang as villain Khalar Zym, Ron Perlman, Rachel Nichols, Rose McGowan and Saïd Taghmaoui.
Conan The Barbarian is based upon fantasy writer Robert E. Howard’s 1930s series and in the 1980s launched Arnold Schwarzenegger on the road to stardom in John Milius’s 1982 epic. Arnie followed up the original with Conan The Destroyer in 1984.
You may recall Rose McGowan was much touted to play the flame-haired lady warrior in a reboot by Robert Rodriguez, but the project is currently languishing in development with other lost movie souls. In Nispel’s film she plays the character Tamara.
Conan The Barbarian is undergoing 3D cosmetic surgery. Shame that. 

Now here's the article as it originally appeared, with my corrections.

Marcus Nispel has spent a good majority of this year working on his Conan The Barbarian reboot out in sunny Bulgaria. There’s been plenty of stills knocking around these past few months but none like the ones here, which show off the beautiful lighting, art direction and costume design.

Conan will be released worldwide in 2011 and Nispel’s $90 million dollars sword, sorcery and sandals epic could be a great slice of b-movie heaven… we hope. Television actor Jason Momoa won the role of the Cimmerian prince forced into human bondage after his village is wiped out by some mean bastards.
Filling out the cast alongside Momoa is Stephen Lang as villain Khalar Zym, Ron Perlman, Rachel Nichols, Rose McGowan and Saïd Taghmaoui.

Conan The Barbarian is based upon fantasy writer Robert E. Howard’s 1930s series and in the 1980s launched Arnold Schwarzenegger on the road to stardom in John Milius’s 1982 epic. Arnie followed up the original with Conan The Destroyer in 1984, which introduced the character of Red Sonja to proceedings.

You may recall Rose McGowan was much touted to play the flame-haired lady warrior in a reboot by Robert Rodriguez, but the project is currently languishing in development with other lost movie souls. In Nispel’s film she plays the character Tamara.

Conan The Barbarian is undergoing 3D cosmetic surgery. Shame that.

Notice the differences?  Now, I had responded to the article in its original form, and - in my own placid, unconfrontational style - corrected Martyn on those points. I also noted that it was Rachel Nichols who plays Tamara, not Rose McGowan, who plays Marique.  Happily, Martyn appears to have taken these suggestions aboard.  Unhappily, not only was my comment not published, but...



Now that's just a bit rude, isn't it?

4 comments:

  1. Another crap journalist. The world is lousy with them. I work at a newspaper so I know whereof I speak. The profession is in a downward slide, sadly and this kind of shoddy work is all too common.

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  2. I know the feeling, Al. I just discovered that a comment I left on Jason Sanford's blog was deleted. I posted two pieces of evidence directly contradicting his thesis that Howard's racism was excessive and abnormal for his place and time, and I took them from the two official biographies of REH (one of which, Blood and Thunder, he "supposedly" read). They are as follows:

    If a racist, Robert Howard was, by the standards of his time and place, a comparatively mild one.

    --Dark Valley Destiny, L. Sprague de Camp

    It is incredibly naive to throw a twenty-first-century value judgment onto people who were living a hundred years ago. For every instance of racism found in Howard's work, a compelling counterargument can be found elsewhere.

    --Blood and Thunder, Mark Finn

    They're gone now. I suppose cowardly deletions and censorship are what pass for dialogue and accountability these days, eh?

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  3. And he didn't even change the last bit!

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  4. M.D., ain't that the truth? Shades of Bamigboye, and at least Baz was working on an actual newspaper, not a website like Martyn is.

    Brian, I'm surprised and rather disappointed in Jason if that's the case. Lame.

    Anon, that's what smarts too. He evidently checked for the first two, but not the last one, for some reason. Bizarre.

    ReplyDelete