Those who love with irony, last
Jan. 27th, 2005 11:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexsarllApologies for the interruption in service there; accidentally underdosed on echinacea, enabling the cold that's been trailing me for a while now to pounce. Still, I always seem to have my Ill Day in January. It's like the ritual some societies used to have where the king's dethroned for a day. Much recovered today, but not really in any state for Freaky Trigger at the Chapel tonight; I'd still recommend it to the living among you, though.
On which topic, in my absence I have seen two films, of which one was Alexander and the other But I'm A Cheerleader. Yes, I know I should have found space for some Judy Garland in there too. The latter is an utterly charming, soppy romcom like romcoms ought to be, which is itself quite an achievement when its subject is something as horrific as reorientation camp. It deserves more attention than I can currently give it, because right now my head is almost entirely full of Alexander. I know the public at large hasn't taken to it; but frankly I don't give a tinker's cuss, because this was pretty much made for a target demographic of Me. Someone called Alexander who has very nice eyes, draped in pretty boys and girls, conquering the known world in the name of freedom with frequent invocations to the Olympians! Angelina Jolie draped in snakes! Two wonders of the world!
Yes, it's too long. But it has to be too long. We have to feel as weary as his men, have to understand why they fall out of love with him. When they say they're tired of glory, this is the only way we can feel anything but contempt for them. We have to be appalled by the butchery of the final battle as we were awed by the sheer scale of the first one (and yes, there are only two real battles in the film, but with them Oliver Stone reminds us that he can shoot violence like no one else). And like the campaign, even though it's too long, too much is missing. Anyone who thinks the film was de-gayed by cutting the Alexander/Hephaestion scene is a moron, but I'm still looking forward to the extended DVD which this film so clearly deserves.
And of course, it all ends in tears - mine included. He achieved more than any human being before or since, but to what end? Even had he not made that regrettable line about the succession, bequeathing his empire to "the best among you", it wouldn't have lasted unless he did. Unless he really did become a god, of course, and he was close enough in so many ways but not, alas, the immortality.
On the bus home I found myself eye-to-lens with a CCTV camera; I told it not to bother, because there's nothing worth filming anymore.
I think my greatest achievement over the last two days was to describe a popular comics character as "Flashman with a few half-@rsed science fiction trappings" - while sat between the series' writer and artist. Obviously I did this because I am uncompromising and not through simple cluelessness. No, really.
Oh, and The blood libel is alive and well and living in the Russian parliament. It occurs to me that some of my readers won't even remember the fall of the Berlin Wall, or that glorious period where it seemed like the East would be free at last. I suppose some of them have managed it - the Czech Republic, for instance - but who would have been pessimistic enough to expect night to fall on Russia again so soon?
On which topic, in my absence I have seen two films, of which one was Alexander and the other But I'm A Cheerleader. Yes, I know I should have found space for some Judy Garland in there too. The latter is an utterly charming, soppy romcom like romcoms ought to be, which is itself quite an achievement when its subject is something as horrific as reorientation camp. It deserves more attention than I can currently give it, because right now my head is almost entirely full of Alexander. I know the public at large hasn't taken to it; but frankly I don't give a tinker's cuss, because this was pretty much made for a target demographic of Me. Someone called Alexander who has very nice eyes, draped in pretty boys and girls, conquering the known world in the name of freedom with frequent invocations to the Olympians! Angelina Jolie draped in snakes! Two wonders of the world!
Yes, it's too long. But it has to be too long. We have to feel as weary as his men, have to understand why they fall out of love with him. When they say they're tired of glory, this is the only way we can feel anything but contempt for them. We have to be appalled by the butchery of the final battle as we were awed by the sheer scale of the first one (and yes, there are only two real battles in the film, but with them Oliver Stone reminds us that he can shoot violence like no one else). And like the campaign, even though it's too long, too much is missing. Anyone who thinks the film was de-gayed by cutting the Alexander/Hephaestion scene is a moron, but I'm still looking forward to the extended DVD which this film so clearly deserves.
And of course, it all ends in tears - mine included. He achieved more than any human being before or since, but to what end? Even had he not made that regrettable line about the succession, bequeathing his empire to "the best among you", it wouldn't have lasted unless he did. Unless he really did become a god, of course, and he was close enough in so many ways but not, alas, the immortality.
On the bus home I found myself eye-to-lens with a CCTV camera; I told it not to bother, because there's nothing worth filming anymore.
I think my greatest achievement over the last two days was to describe a popular comics character as "Flashman with a few half-@rsed science fiction trappings" - while sat between the series' writer and artist. Obviously I did this because I am uncompromising and not through simple cluelessness. No, really.
Oh, and The blood libel is alive and well and living in the Russian parliament. It occurs to me that some of my readers won't even remember the fall of the Berlin Wall, or that glorious period where it seemed like the East would be free at last. I suppose some of them have managed it - the Czech Republic, for instance - but who would have been pessimistic enough to expect night to fall on Russia again so soon?
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Date: 2005-01-27 11:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-27 11:19 am (UTC)See, while I hadn't made the connection when I said that, I didn't retract it after I was informed. Especially since it had been in the context of having just read "the first Dante strip I've seen which wasn't just Flashman..." &c.
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Date: 2005-01-27 11:18 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2005-01-27 01:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-27 01:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-27 02:07 pm (UTC)The celts did arrive via that general direction, after all
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Date: 2005-01-27 02:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-27 04:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-27 04:25 pm (UTC)An Irish superhero as invented by the Americans, yesterday.
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Date: 2005-01-27 04:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-27 11:35 am (UTC)-x-
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Date: 2005-01-27 11:39 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2005-01-27 12:16 pm (UTC)When men lie together in lust
Date: 2005-01-27 12:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-27 12:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-27 12:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-27 01:51 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2005-01-27 04:46 pm (UTC)