John Carter of Mars and ERB

ERB, of course, being Edgar Rice Burroughs, creator of Tarzan.

Many years ago, when I was a teenager starting high school in McLean, Virginia, my cousin Buck introduced me to ERB's science fiction. I started with the John Carter of Mars series and devoured them. Ace paperbacks was reprinting all of ERB's fiction back then and their artists for the covers were Roy Krenkle and Frank Frazetta, both of whom I idolized.

Back then.

But now Walt Disney is making an epic movie of John Carter! It even looks like it might be good, at least from looking at the trailer. Stranger things have happened.

I think it was either Isaac Asimov or Arthur C. Clarke who once wrote that Burroughs was one of the very few authors who could successfully evoke the feeling of an alien world.

unfortunately he continued that you had to be younger than 18 to find them readable!

The Catalan Vengeance

Catalan is making a comeback, thanks to some rather dramatic government intervention in the film industry. I wish them luck (as I stumble through one more article on the Alans in Catalan)

Movie reviews of Bad Crusader movies

One more URL from Mediev-L, this one of a student's reviews of more movies about the Crusades than I ever dreamed existed. Especially on "the female side of fighting." (the reviews revolve around the idea of examining the role of women in the Crusades)

Medieval Noir

No, I didn't know there was a medieval version of Sam Spade, nor did I know that murder mystery novels now have movie trailers.

But take a look.

a medievalist I know tore the historical accuracy of this little film to shreds. Oh well.

Star Wars - The Oral Tradition!

"Star Wars" as told by someone named Amanda who has not actually seen the movie.

Whatever.

I can't wait until she tackles the Russian version of "War and Peace."

thanks to The Daily Dish.


Update: Carmen loves this. She thinks Amanda is so sweet.

Update II: I wonder if the Iliad started out this way.

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More on Robin Hood as "Gladiator"

More news is bubbling up among the medievalists. They seem fascinated, in a stunned sort of way.

Read this.

Robin Hood

Another remake of the Robin Hood story, this one from the wonderful folks who brought you "Gladiator." Apparently this one plays it as a love triangle between Robin, Marion, and the Sherrif of Nottingham.

Could be fun.

Great Cinematic Moments in History

The Swedish army, 17th century, invades Poland. They're Lutherans and they mean business.
If the creepy Protestant music doesn't tip you off, the hats and hair will.


from the film Potop

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The 10 Worst History Films ... ever

Better make that "Within the last 10 Years" - which, come to think of it, for people these days in America is forever.

Anyway, here they are, with thanks to National Review Online for pointing it out.


Now if we were talking about EVER, read the last post and then add "Charge of the Light Brigade," "The Scarlet Empress" and my personal favorite "The Imperial Japanese Empire" (was there ever an empire that wasn't Imperial?).


Late Update: btw, did you notice that three of these turkeys involved Mel Gibson?

Movies that really really stink

At least according to William Booth at the Washington Post. And he does seem to have fun ripping into the worst 10 of the year. No 1 of the worst ten is an effort by Diane Keaton of all people, something called "Because I Said So." Didn't see that one, but critical reaction like this doesn't lead me to want to:

"Unusually toxic waste" is the blurb from the usually decorous Wall Street Journal. The Christian Science Monitor used the term "wince-inducing." The general lament: Why, Diane, why? As in, "Diane Keaton has a lot to answer for," according to the Toronto Star. Richard Roeper called it "the worst performance of Diane Keaton's career." Or as the Rotten Tomatoes "critical consensus" puts it: "an unfunny cliche-ridden mess that manages to make Diane Keaton temporarily unlikable."

They really didn't like "The Reaping" either. How much did they really not like it?

Hilary Swank. "The Reaping." Why? Alimony? Chad Lowe not working? "What, I shudder to think, were the projects Hilary Swank turned down in favor of this?" asks the Seattle Times. ... "The Reaping" is one of those biblical mumbo-jumbo Satan- spawners that was hailed for its well-executed locust attack. As noted by the New York Times, the "only remotely notable thing about this particular jumble of boos, bangs and door creaks, swaying Spanish moss, creeping blond kids and swelling decolletage, creatively presented from various angles in various contexts, is that it tries to wed the horror trend with the heated-up God market."

Let's hear it for swelling decolletage.

It gets worse, believe it or not. So what was the worst movie you have seen this year? I can't really member mine. I saw one or two almost stinkers, but they were children's' movies and were redeemed by the fun had by the children I was with.

But what were your picks for the worst of the worst?

Beowulf ... the motion picture

I am sure that Beowulf is everyone's favorite Dark Age hero. You probably loved having to read the poem in school, right?

Well, never mind. While doing some serious historical research on my lame Angelina Jolie allusion I discovered this link from Mediev-L, the listserver of serious medievalists. Check it out and tell me if Grendel and Grendel's mother don't look just like you imagined them, way back when you read Beowulf for class.

Some of the medievalists seem to think it is a parody and are planning to see it for giggles.

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Serenity II ?

A few months ago Carmen brought a movie home from the library called "Serenity." She said it was based on a failed TV series but she thought the reviews of it had been good. It being a very small town where we live with not much to do on a Saturday night, we watched it.

And loved it.

Someone who is now on a slow plane to Vietnam loaned us a DVD set of the series it was based on, "Firefly." When Carmen is feeling a bit low or tired she pops one in the machine and watches an episode or two. I have to admit, they are fun.

So this news about a sequel to the movie might be of some interest. Believe it or not, I read about it and found the link on National Review Online.


I'm a bit puzzled though: I thought they had killed off most of the interesting characters in "Serenity I."

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It depends on what the meaning of 'weird' is

"If you thought that Johnny Depp was a weird pirate, wait until you see him as a barber in "Sweeny Todd."

Newsweek in a mini-review of the move due in December.

Aside: rumor has it that this guy will co-star.

Manuel de Falla, Spanish music and El Cid

I have discovered the joys of quality headphones attached to my laptop. At the moment I am listening to Manuel de Falla's La vida breve. He's one of my favorite composers. Falla was greatly influenced by native Spanish music and his interpretation of these themes virtually created the image of "Spanish" music for all time. A few bars of his music and your mind automatically pictures Spain in a type of aural iconography. We instantly know what it is supposed to mean. The composers of movie scores would have almost nothing to work with if such iconography didn't exist. Carlos Saura made a great movie of Falla's El Amor Brujo* that probably could have been performed actors without sets or costumes and the music itself would have set the scene.

That is why Miklos Rozsa's music for "El Cid" is so brilliant. He took snatches of genuine medieval Spanish music, mostly from one source, the Cantigas de Santa Maria, jazzed them up with some Falla-esque touches, added a full symphonic orchestra, et voila. An "authentic," thoroughly "Spanish" score, or at least so our ears tell us without the need to think.

Although laughable today, "El Cid" the movie was arguably the best, and certainly the most intelligent of the great Hollywood epics of the 50s and 60s. As virtually all movies set in the Middle Ages (and most novels) do, it invents its own private Mediaevalia that has little to do with reality. Still, it is impressive. I think its success owed as much to Rozsa's music as to Charlton Heston's clenched teeth or Sophia Loren's - well, everything.

And after all, while professional medievalist might do a much more accurate job of reconstructing the late 11th century, we would not get it right either, and our version would be almost incomprehensible to the audience. So stick with the Hollywood version if only for the sake of the music.

* and if you like flamenca, you should see each of Saura's trilogy: "Blood Wedding," "Carmen," and "El Amor Brujo."

Results of Harry Potter's Puppet Pals Post

(... or is too much alliteration a bad thing). Actually I am talking about this post which showed the lost episode of Harry Potter and the Mysterious Ticking Noise. I thought it was so dumb it was brilliant, and I love Valdemort in it.

No response here yet, but I talked to Maeráed and Mulan both (Maeráed is five and Mulan is twelve). They both loved it and wanted it played over and over. In fact, Mulan visited me in my office and asked to see it again.

Their parents, on the other hand, thought it was dumb.

So what does this tell us about Clemens' sense of humor?



Oh well. AOL had it posted for all its subscribers and it has even generated a fan parody - a parody of a parody. But I am not sure that makes me feel any better.

Harry Potter and the Mysterious Ticking Noise

I don't recall reading about this episode in any of the novels so far, so it may be in "Harry Potter: the Lost Episodes." Watch it carefully and see if you can explain exactly why Dumbledore loses his robes.

Enjoy.

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More on Movie Accents

Where were we? Oh.

Movie accents are indeed very tricky. The one historical epic that I thought got the tricky business of the subjective feel of accents in now dead languages was "Alexander the Great."
And critics roundly panned it for doing so. These were American critics, so I supposed they thought that everyone in the ancient world should sound like Johnny Carson, or Charlton Heston or something.

But consider: the Macedonians all had Irish accents, the Greeks all British accents, and Angelina Jolie an accent all of her own.

This makes sense: the Greeks, especially the Athenians, were the arbiters of all good taste in things linguistic and the modern British seem to feel the same way. The Macedonians were a mountaineer people who spoke Greek so poorly they could barely convince the Greeks they were speaking their language! At least according to the Greeks. And Queen Olympias, she of the really odd accent, was a foreigner to the Macedonians. She would have spoken Greek with a most peculiar accent.

So one thing Oliver Stone got right, was not appreciated by the American critics.

Clemen's Comedy Break

Still hard at work on the article about the Second Master of the Temple. Still procrastinating. And in so doing found this: "BOOGIE NIGHTS: the Star Wars Edition."

Didn't you always kinda suspect that 'Star Wars' had a porn movie trapped inside trying to get out?

And now, back to 12th Century France, trying to shake this dame Mora. 'The horror. The horror.'



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