Glug, glug, glug...
Apr. 3rd, 2012 12:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
carmen_ljSpartacus has departed from the telly. It's very sad, but it was beautiful and sort of perfect while it was here. And I'm pretty sure I read that it'd been renewed for another year, so it's not gone forever.
I CANNOT BELIEVE THEY KILLED MIRA. I was really quite omg at that since it happened in the first five minutes and it clearly wasn't a fake out since there was A GIANT AXE IN HER. I thought she was going to die AGES ago, but cause they made her more prominent and there was some character development and then she burned down a whacking great arena I ended up assuming that there wasn't going to be a Verinia (Spartacus' actual hisorical wife) and she'd be there instead. BUT NO.
And clearly Spartacus needed more manpain. It wasn't enough that he blamed himself for the loss of his wife, had to kill his BFF (who wasn't really his BFF cause that is Crixus clearly), and blames himself from the Romans killing his BFF's wife. Now his girlfriend's dead and HE'S REALLY SAD AND VENGEFUL.
Would really like the writers to just ignore history and have a nice happy ending for everyone. Especially Crixus and Naevia, they are lovely. HER VENGEANCE IS EPIC. And then Crixus romantically tells her he'll teach her how to cut off someone's head in one blow, as you do.
I also am very sad at Onenomaus' eye. It is gone. AND THEN ONENOMAUS GOT KILLED. THAT WAS NO FUN AT ALL.
A finale swordfight between Spartacus and Glaber is not very exciting since clearly this is not how Spartacus dies. I will miss Craig Parker, but not as much as I miss him in LotS, cause he had a Beard of Evil back then.
BUT OH the conclusion to Illythia and Lucretia's storyline? To see the last reveal in their relationship? IT IS A BEAUTIFUL THING. It's so fucked up. I'm not saying it's the most fantastic female friendship telly has ever done BUT IT MIGHT BE. I love them so, and the writers clearly do too. Whilst half the climax is the epic Romans vs rebels battle, the other half is just Lucretia and Illythia and HOW THEIR FRIENDSHIP ENDS. And it is really really over now, but I don't feel bitter. I wouldn't have wanted it to drag on indefinitely, and what we got over the past two seasons has been this dance of ambition, greed, power, pride and genuine friendship between them, culminating in the dark, twisted climax that it deserves.
Have also been watching Julian Fellowes' Titanic series cause The New Companion is in it. And she's good. Even very good. She can certainly act and she has a fair bit of charisma. Sadly the same cannot be said of the script which is made of bland blandness. Fellowes is terribly interested in class, but has nothing interesting to say about it. And while I did appreciate the acknowledgment of what was going on in Ireland at the time, it was a bit "oooh, scary Catholics want to bomb us" with no mention of the militancy on the Protestant side. That said, the two best characters are Irish, though I suspect that's less to do with the scipt and more to do with the fact they're played by Maria Doyle Kennedy and Toby Jones. Lols, Catherine of Aragon and the Dream Lord are married...yeah, best thing about Titanic? Actor spotting. The cast is pretty nifty and most of them have been in some genre show or other that I've watched, or listened to: Braxiatel's in it, identifiable by his epic moustache. Alas, he's drowned toast, since he's playing whathisname Astor, the richest dude on the ship.
And I watched a lovely film at the weekend. It was called Ironclad and was not, thank goodness, about early steamships with bits of metal stuck on them (spaceships good, sailing ships bad). I assume the title's a reference to chainmail. Anyway, IT WAS AMAZING. Firstly, the cast: James Purefoy, Derek Jacobi, Brian Cox and Charles Dance were in it. And Mackenzie Crook. And Guy Siner, for about two minutes before he got trebucheted to death. TREBUCHETS. GODS AMONG SIEGE ENGINES. They were brilliant.
(Women? WHAT WOMEN? This was set in the 13th century, and as I know from all good male medieval-inspired fantasy authors, all woman did in the middle ages was be oppressed.
Okay, it's not quite that bad, there's even a scene that flirts with passing the Bechdel test, but the best you can say about the female lead is that given the massively underwritten 'romance' storyline, she's clearly not in love with the Brooding Hero but would just quite like some sex cause she ain't getting it from her husband, and she's doing all the pursuing. So that, at least, felt a bit novel.)
So, yes, it's 1215, and King John has just signed the Magna Carta and thus is a unhappy bunny cause he's pretty into that whole divine right of kings thing (despite one or two rebellions against his father and brother, but obv it's different if he's the king). He's not going to stick to the agreement, and the barons who made him sign it know he's not going to stick to it. The film's about the opening action of the First Barons' War: the siege of Rochester Castle. It's all terribly exciting, lots of siege weaponary, burning missiles, stuff exploding, boiling oil, sappers and all that. And gore, there's quite a lot of bits of bodies being cut off rather graphically. The boring siege bits - sitting around and slowly starving to death - are covered in montage, heh. (There's also an amusing montage at the beginning where The Heroic Team are put together that looks a bit more like the final episode of The Blackadder than a Srs Historical Film.)
The best scenes though are the political stuff between Cox and Jacobi - it's smashing watching them together. In fact, any scene Cox is in is great (I bought this for shallow James Purefoy related reasons, but he's playing the Brooding Hero, which is not quite as fun as Cox's pragmatic and determined baron turned wool merchant) and he's even trying an English accent.
Did the Knights Templar have much to do with the Barons' War though? I don't know. Other than that, I'd say the history's not exactly accurate but it keeps to the spirit of things. Though the voiceover at the end is a bit hrrm, cause it says the barons won the war within a year and a French prince took the English throne. The End. It doesn't mention that Prince Louis had it for about A MINUTE (and was never actually crowned) before John conveniently died of dysentery and the barons switched sides from Prince Louis to John's son and chucked Louis out after making him sign a treaty that said he'd never been a real King of England anyway.
And bits of it have some really, really gorgeous scenary. It was filmed in Wales, so well done Wales.
I CANNOT BELIEVE THEY KILLED MIRA. I was really quite omg at that since it happened in the first five minutes and it clearly wasn't a fake out since there was A GIANT AXE IN HER. I thought she was going to die AGES ago, but cause they made her more prominent and there was some character development and then she burned down a whacking great arena I ended up assuming that there wasn't going to be a Verinia (Spartacus' actual hisorical wife) and she'd be there instead. BUT NO.
And clearly Spartacus needed more manpain. It wasn't enough that he blamed himself for the loss of his wife, had to kill his BFF (who wasn't really his BFF cause that is Crixus clearly), and blames himself from the Romans killing his BFF's wife. Now his girlfriend's dead and HE'S REALLY SAD AND VENGEFUL.
Would really like the writers to just ignore history and have a nice happy ending for everyone. Especially Crixus and Naevia, they are lovely. HER VENGEANCE IS EPIC. And then Crixus romantically tells her he'll teach her how to cut off someone's head in one blow, as you do.
I also am very sad at Onenomaus' eye. It is gone. AND THEN ONENOMAUS GOT KILLED. THAT WAS NO FUN AT ALL.
A finale swordfight between Spartacus and Glaber is not very exciting since clearly this is not how Spartacus dies. I will miss Craig Parker, but not as much as I miss him in LotS, cause he had a Beard of Evil back then.
BUT OH the conclusion to Illythia and Lucretia's storyline? To see the last reveal in their relationship? IT IS A BEAUTIFUL THING. It's so fucked up. I'm not saying it's the most fantastic female friendship telly has ever done BUT IT MIGHT BE. I love them so, and the writers clearly do too. Whilst half the climax is the epic Romans vs rebels battle, the other half is just Lucretia and Illythia and HOW THEIR FRIENDSHIP ENDS. And it is really really over now, but I don't feel bitter. I wouldn't have wanted it to drag on indefinitely, and what we got over the past two seasons has been this dance of ambition, greed, power, pride and genuine friendship between them, culminating in the dark, twisted climax that it deserves.
Have also been watching Julian Fellowes' Titanic series cause The New Companion is in it. And she's good. Even very good. She can certainly act and she has a fair bit of charisma. Sadly the same cannot be said of the script which is made of bland blandness. Fellowes is terribly interested in class, but has nothing interesting to say about it. And while I did appreciate the acknowledgment of what was going on in Ireland at the time, it was a bit "oooh, scary Catholics want to bomb us" with no mention of the militancy on the Protestant side. That said, the two best characters are Irish, though I suspect that's less to do with the scipt and more to do with the fact they're played by Maria Doyle Kennedy and Toby Jones. Lols, Catherine of Aragon and the Dream Lord are married...yeah, best thing about Titanic? Actor spotting. The cast is pretty nifty and most of them have been in some genre show or other that I've watched, or listened to: Braxiatel's in it, identifiable by his epic moustache. Alas, he's drowned toast, since he's playing whathisname Astor, the richest dude on the ship.
And I watched a lovely film at the weekend. It was called Ironclad and was not, thank goodness, about early steamships with bits of metal stuck on them (spaceships good, sailing ships bad). I assume the title's a reference to chainmail. Anyway, IT WAS AMAZING. Firstly, the cast: James Purefoy, Derek Jacobi, Brian Cox and Charles Dance were in it. And Mackenzie Crook. And Guy Siner, for about two minutes before he got trebucheted to death. TREBUCHETS. GODS AMONG SIEGE ENGINES. They were brilliant.
(Women? WHAT WOMEN? This was set in the 13th century, and as I know from all good male medieval-inspired fantasy authors, all woman did in the middle ages was be oppressed.
Okay, it's not quite that bad, there's even a scene that flirts with passing the Bechdel test, but the best you can say about the female lead is that given the massively underwritten 'romance' storyline, she's clearly not in love with the Brooding Hero but would just quite like some sex cause she ain't getting it from her husband, and she's doing all the pursuing. So that, at least, felt a bit novel.)
So, yes, it's 1215, and King John has just signed the Magna Carta and thus is a unhappy bunny cause he's pretty into that whole divine right of kings thing (despite one or two rebellions against his father and brother, but obv it's different if he's the king). He's not going to stick to the agreement, and the barons who made him sign it know he's not going to stick to it. The film's about the opening action of the First Barons' War: the siege of Rochester Castle. It's all terribly exciting, lots of siege weaponary, burning missiles, stuff exploding, boiling oil, sappers and all that. And gore, there's quite a lot of bits of bodies being cut off rather graphically. The boring siege bits - sitting around and slowly starving to death - are covered in montage, heh. (There's also an amusing montage at the beginning where The Heroic Team are put together that looks a bit more like the final episode of The Blackadder than a Srs Historical Film.)
The best scenes though are the political stuff between Cox and Jacobi - it's smashing watching them together. In fact, any scene Cox is in is great (I bought this for shallow James Purefoy related reasons, but he's playing the Brooding Hero, which is not quite as fun as Cox's pragmatic and determined baron turned wool merchant) and he's even trying an English accent.
Did the Knights Templar have much to do with the Barons' War though? I don't know. Other than that, I'd say the history's not exactly accurate but it keeps to the spirit of things. Though the voiceover at the end is a bit hrrm, cause it says the barons won the war within a year and a French prince took the English throne. The End. It doesn't mention that Prince Louis had it for about A MINUTE (and was never actually crowned) before John conveniently died of dysentery and the barons switched sides from Prince Louis to John's son and chucked Louis out after making him sign a treaty that said he'd never been a real King of England anyway.
And bits of it have some really, really gorgeous scenary. It was filmed in Wales, so well done Wales.
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no subject
Date: 2012-04-03 01:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-03 01:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-03 01:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-03 10:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-03 10:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-03 11:47 am (UTC)Unless someone has done the three-minute All Mackenzie Crook, All The Time edit. The Internet being what it is, I shouldn't be surprised...
no subject
Date: 2012-04-03 06:31 am (UTC)This makes me happy. Because not even the temptation of New Companion could make me watch Titanic...
no subject
Date: 2012-04-03 10:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-03 03:40 pm (UTC)