Tag: Ben Hur

bookmark_borderAnyone seen my horse?

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Off to see Troy.

Update: It’s very big. That horse. In fact the entire movie is very big, epic in fact. Think of Ben Hur. Then don’t try and compare Troy to it as it lacked the one thing Ben Hur had. A central character you believed in.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not bad, and definitely on of those movies you really should see on a big screen. But the script is dodgy, the editing ropey, the direction so cliched it almost lapses into pastiche at times… the actors are all OK but no stand out performances, and they handle a varied script as well as can be expected.

I did enjoy it overall but it could’ve been much better, however I would probably recommend it – if you liked Gladiator, you’ll love Troy.

And yes, according to Louise, Brad is luscious.

(I’m not going to comment on an aspects of accuracy to the original story, suffice to say my understanding of the original isn’t as good as it should be, but is good enough to know that attempting to fit the scale and dimesions of Homer’s story into a two and a half hour movie would be beyond most directors)

bookmark_borderTroy

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Troy

It’s very big. That horse. In fact the entire movie is very big, epic in fact. Think of Ben Hur. Then don’t try and compare Troy to it as it lacked the one thing Ben Hur had. A central character you believed in. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not bad, and definitely one of those movies you really should see on a big screen. But the script is dodgy, the editing ropey, the direction so cliched it almost lapses into pastiche at times… the actors are all OK but no stand out performances, and they handle a varied script as well as can be expected. However the sum of it’s parts holds it together and I did enjoy it, but it could’ve been much better. If you liked Gladiator, you’ll enjoy Troy.

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We didn’t start the fire
A while back I said that I was going to use Billy Joel’s track to give my modern history a bit of an updating.

Seems I now have another little learning aid based on the same song. I wonder if Mr.Joel thought his song would live on in this kind of way…

“‘Harry Truman, Doris Day, Red China, Johnny Ray, South Pacific, Walter Winchell, Joe DiMaggio.
Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Studebaker, Television, North Korea, South Korea, Marilyn Monroe. [chorus]
Rosenbergs, H-Bombs, Sugar Ray, Panmunjom, Brando, The King And I, and The Catcher In The Rye.
Eisenhower, Vaccine, England’s got a new Queen, Maciano, Liberace, Santayana goodbye. [chorus]
Joseph Stalin, Malenkov, Nasser and Prokofiev, Rockefeller, Campanella, Communist Bloc.
Roy Cohn, Juan Peron, Toscanini, Dancron, Dien Bien Phu Falls, Rock Around the Clock.
Einstein, James Dean, Brooklyn’s got a winning team, Davy Crockett, Peter Pan, Elvis Presley, Disneyland, Bardot, Budapest, Alabama, Khrushchev, Princess Grace, Peyton Place, Trouble in the Suez. [chorus]
Little Rock, Pasternak, Mickey Mantle, Kerouac, Sputnik, Chou En-Lai, Bridge On The River Kwai.
Lebanon, Charles de Gaulle, California baseball, Starkwether, Homicide, Children of Thalidomide.
Buddy Holly, Ben Hur, Space Monkey, Mafia, Hula Hoops, Castro, Edsel is a no-go, U2, Syngman Rhee, payola and Kennedy, Chubby Checker, Psycho, Belgians in the Congo. [chorus]
Hemingway, Eichman, Stranger in a Strange Land, Dylan, Berlin, Bay of Pigs invasion, Lawrence of Arabia, British Beatlemania, Ole Miss, John Glenn, Liston beats Patterson, Pope Paul, Malcolm X, British Politician sex, J.F.K. blown away, what else do I have to say. [chorus]
Birth control, Ho Chi Minh, Richard Nixon back again, Moonshot, Woodstock, Watergate, punk rock.
Begin, Reagan, Palestine, Terror on the airline, Ayatollah’s in Iran, Russians in Afghanistan.
Wheel of Fortune, Sally Ride, heavy metal, suicide, Foreign debts, homeless Vets, AIDS, Crack, Bernie Goetz, Hypodermics on the shores, China’s under martial law, Rock and Roller cola wars, I can’t take it anymore! [chorus]”

Phew.

What? I did say my muse had left me… (and I’m sure to get some interesting hits from Google now! 😉

bookmark_borderWeird Samba

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Brazil. The film. Strange. Very, very strange. It’s age is obvious, but that aside it is entirely uninvolving. It’s not the most painful movie I’ve seen but more of a time-filler than anything. Ben-Hur is next on the list.

Quiet weekend. Half-Life practice soon. Then more time mucking about in DreamWeaver. Shouldn’t we be doing more? Yes, usual constraints are stopping us though… and once again we didn’t win the lottery. Sigh. 😉

bookmark_borderMegane

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Still really tired.. permanently – mind you I’ve got Thursday, Friday off work this week. Heading up to Inverness (for a suprise for Louise), and we might be heading through to Edinburgh at some point over the weekend.. hear that Sal? (BTW – how do you spell her name again?)

Had a good weekend. Bought a NEW car (brand new – 19 miles on clock), got TPM on video as well as The Third Man, Ben-Hur, and Brazil (at last). Now just have to find time to watch them. Also got Pearl Jam’s recent album, pretty good, bit samey though, although I don’t think I was in the right mood to listen to it.

Ohh and re-design hell continues. Maybe I should just concentrate on tweaking the current design. Hey it worked for Zeldman. Question: why does no-one call him Jeffrey?

Ohhh and have a look here, more (maybe) later.