f13.net

Just saw Kingdom of Heaven.  I really liked it, particularly how a great deal of it plays out in a subdued tone.  Kind of reminded me of The Razor's Edge and a little of Seven Years in Tibet.

I'm sure a lot of people will hate it, and I don't give a shit.  It felt nice to see Jeremy Irons playing a non-shit role once again.

The attached trailer for Legend of Zorro was okay, although excessively cookie-cutter.  Hopefully the movie won't suck.

Great cinematography as always (the moonlight scene with the Muslim army and the big daylight scene of the first Jerusalem army in particular).  Battle scenes still a wee bit jakey.  Pacing could have used some work though, but I'm told that is due to an hour of cut footage.  And despite a horrible track record (see Blade Runner) a recut version might be worth seeing.

I'd give it an 8/10
(compared to Gladiator's 8.5 and BR's 9.5 IMHO)

footnote: Orlando Bloom can act?!?!?

My brother liked it.  Personally, I'm really sick of the EPIC WAR MOVIE, but I might watch this one on DVD.

It is fairly epic, but it's hard to really call it a war movie, or at least I thought so.

It's always nice when people let me know ahead of time to discount thier opinions.

I think he was saying the recut Blade Runner was better than the original, hence a recut Kingdom of Heaven would be better than the original.

Or maybe he's frothing.

I also rather liked it.  At least, liked it enough to not want my 17 bucks back.

My only issue is that everytime Orlando talks, I want to kill a smurf.

Some other actor, and the movie would've been 3x better.

There were also some un-neccessary scenes that left me saying why, but whatever.

I enjoyed it.  I would recommend to anyone who enjoys historical fiction.

I, too, hate Orlando Bloom. For some reason up until like 2 weeks ago, I thought Heath Ledger was the lead. And now I wish he was. The theater I parttime at might be getting it soon. I'll see it then.

Next week we get the Interpreter. I'd rather pass a rosebush through my peehole. Fucking Sean Penn.

Edit: Apologies for saying Peehole. And before anyone asks - I've no clue why I hate Orlando Bloom, but his on screen presence makes me stabby. Other Actors that do this: Kiefer Sutherland (yes, even sometimes during 24), Katie Holmes, Tara Reid, ..Madonna, any singer turned actress, and any of the Baldwins (outside of GGGR).

Ah, nice pick for the lead Schild.  Think he would've been better.  I wanted Clive, but I always do.

Heath Ledger impressed the shit out of me in Knight's Tale and 10 Things I hate about you. The guy can go from deadpan to utter silliness in the blink of an eye. Not many people today can do that. Except Johnny Depp. Oh and Clive Owen. He can do anything.

We should turn F13.net into a Clive Fan Club.

OMG, you're right. That would be the best.

Wait...

No.

Only person I really liked in that movie was Paul Bettany as Chaucer.

Well yes, he was the best actor in the movie. Just as he was better than Crowe in A Beautiful Mind. My point was that Heath was better than Orlando. Which you ignored. :cry: That makes me sad. Mostly because I'm tired but instead of sleeping I'm responding to this thread. Stupid Clive Owen. Stupid Stupid Stupid.

I dunno about that. "The Patriot" really hurts Heath's cause.

Props for the Arabs actually being Arabs.

But a big thumbs down for making them talk english to each other (although they were all from different places so the arabic would have been very very wrong, hell the guy who played Saladin (Ghassan Massoud) was Iranian, which isn't even arab).

Edit: Oh shit, haha, I thought that one guy was Norton, but wasn't sure.  Awesome.

No, it doesn't. Just like Patriot doesn't make me like Braveheart any less.

I suppose I'm the only person here that doesn't hate Orlando or think he's a particularly bad actor.  Not saying he's a great actor, mind you.

I don't particularly dislike him....But in a world where every other current British actor and actress seems to be able to pull off flawless American accents (and others as well), I kind of wonder why he's so one dimensional. That he can't do them makes me think that he can't do much else either.

Not that I think doing accents are hard or even essential to what acting is. Some of the greatest actors can't do them or don't bother with them. It's just that it's a tell tale sign for a young British actor particularly.

And even if he's just choosing to be the "British Guy", he still doesn't have any other angle to work with. He's really dull. Handsome maybe. But dull.

There are other actors who remain "British" all the time, of course, but they can also do something else besides that. At least Hugh Grant can be "funny". At least Terrence Stamp can be "cold". At least Sean Bean can be "menacing". At least Jeremy Irons can be "pompous". What exactly can Bloom do? He's just the token "British" guy, with nothing else.

If anything, all he can do is look "worried" (y'know, that look where his eyes widen and his eyebrows kind of sink?).

EDIT: Hmm....Just so you know: I haven't put as much thought into it as it would seem. I'm just....Bored.

Ah... just Stray thoughts then neh?

Heh.  Define please.

It's a great fantasy epic involving real place names and quasi-historical figures. If you want real history then don't bother.

Try watching "Teh Order." Yes, I like Heath Ledger, but fuck, that movie sucked it big time. And he couldn't help it.

I don't mind Bloom. He's not a great actor, but as long as he doesn't fuck it up, I'm ok with him. He just happens to be this decade's Leo.

He hasn't done a turd like Titanic yet. That set me up for a solid decade of Leo hate. If Bloom has done something that twatty, I haven't seen it yet.

I'm sorry.  I was pretty sure that's what historical fiction was.

Hehe.

Umm...Leo did Basketball Diaries, Gilbert Grape, and This Boy's Life. He stole the show from Johnny Depp of all people. Bloom didn't.

Leo didn't steal any show from Johnny Depp. But he's certainly better than Bloom. Maybe, in a vacuum his performance in Titanic wasn't bad. But the movie that surrounded it and the script. Omfg, horrible.

He's free to menace me anytime he likes. 

No, I have nothing else to contribute to this thread.

Just saying is all.

If this movie is anything like Troy, my Hate will be unfathomably great.

Sorry, my own personal slang that means sort of a mixture of jerky and shakey.  A poorly filmed scene is shakey, but a good one can jerk the camera in tune to the action (most good anime does this because its easy to change the art to accomodate it, but its tough in live action).  Or you can cop out like Jackie Chan does and use long shots so everyone can see exactly who you are and what you are doing.  Kingdom of Heaven is jakey because its borderline - the costumes and choreography are good yet mostly realistic, and they try to pull of active camera work, but don't quite make it.

Or I could just be rationalizing my dislike of American rip-offs of Asian martial art flicks, so take that with a grain of salt.

If this ruins the movie for anyone who still may need to see it then don't answer...

What group is the hero of the movie? Is it the Christians off slaughtering the muslims because muslims are evil? Or is it the Muslims who are fighting back against the Christians who are off on a land-grab. Or is the history of the crusades signifiicanlty altered to make it not seem like an embarrasing/evil time of the church.

It seems like it would be hard to make a movie about the crusades right now. I don't see that a lot of people would want to cheer for the muslims and the christians were not slaughtering them for any noble (movie-worthy) cause. Either way you do it would seem to either fuel anti-muslim or anti-christian sentiment.

The villan is God.

What often gets lost in the noise is that the worst losers were the non-Muslims already there.  And of that group they were mainly Christians - just the "wrong" kind.

I've been told that in the Near East, people, to this day, still argue and feel resentment over the Crusades.

They've got to fill time somehow. Camel tipping only goes so far.

Wtf is Near East?  Philly?

It's Historical jargon...

Places like Egypt, Israel...that's Near East.

I want to know where the big "YOU ARE HERE" sticker is that the historians base their directions on.

I could've sworn that was Middle East...

Probably the same place that most navigation stuff is based off of - the prime meridian. And probably Greenwich for point of reference.

If you look at a globe (http://www.mapquest.com/atlas/?region=asia) you will see that Israel and those guys are closer to Greenwich than Iran. Iran is Middle East, Israel is Near East.

No.  Iran is Persia.

I thought it was Turkey and anything to the east of it is 'the east' (The Orient) and anything to the west of it is 'The West'.  The Far East being India and on and the near east being anything near Turkey and the middle east being whatever the hell is between Turkey and India.

Nope.

That's helpful. Thanks for enlightening us. :P

At least from my understanding, Iran kind of flip-flops, because of it's position. I usually put it under "Middle East", because it's pretty far east of the Mediteranean (and no, I suck at spelling that damn thing).

Generally, the Near East consists of places that were active in western civilization within the Ancient World; again, Egypt, Israel, Turkey, et al.

Back in the day (way, way back, that is) Turkey was considered "Near" East, while places like India and Persia were considered "East". This is before the discovery of the American continent, and before places like China, Mongolia, or Japan were being explored by Westerners. The terms may be a misnomer now, but they still endure to some extent to this day. Turkey, as well as it's surrounding areas, used to be called Little Asia, Asia Minor, Anatolia (Rising Sun), etc..

Woohoo necro...

Just got around to seeing it....Wish I had given it a chance earlier now. This turned out to be much better than I thought it'd be (and would have been better in a theater).

I agree that someone could have been more suitable than Bloom (which is one of the reasons I avoided it), but he didn't exactly ruin it for me. At least it wasn't Colin Farrell.

I didn't know until now that Ed Norton was in it too. That was strange.

Anyways...Another reason why I thought it wasn't going to be good was because Ridley Scott also did Gladiator and 1492 (I like Scott, but up to this point, his historical epics sorta disappoint me). This time around though, everything moves right along at the same pace, it isn't jumbled, and it pretty much just tries to be a good action movie.

He definitely improved on fight scenes and choreography too (not to mention that this contains the coolest depiction of seige warfare that I've seen to date). All of the cast was good (I think he hired the REAL Saladin to play the role actually).

Also rented Hitchhikers Guide -- Which sucked. I never read the books, but the guy who played Arthur was a complete asshole. He was just an unsympathetic character. Beeblebrox had my sympathy -- Sam Rockwell, once again, steals the show.

The Hitchhiker's movie had none of the charm of the books.

"So Long And Thanks For All The Fish" isn't as funny when you hear it repeated 50 times in a musical.  Mostly just funny as one line.

Kinda like if Dave Chapelle came out with an "I'm Rich, Bitch!" musical, accompanied by the "O-KAYYY!" dancers.  Funny wears thin.

Just wanted to further comment on this. Heh....Apparantly he has a lot of fans at imdb (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1586095/) (you'd have to be a registered imdb member to read the threads). Fans like "Moon Preacher" and "bhaktigirl" all want him to be nominated for Best Supporting Role.

Funny thing is, I agree with them. Biased fanatics or not. A Jihad on whoever disagrees!

I finally saw it a few weeks ago. It was a ton better than I thought it would be. Bloom was good in it, though he still falls back on that wistful nancy boy look on his face too much. I liked that it was gritty and fairly accurate. There were no "good" guys. Bloom was a bit too perfect in regards to morality and such, but the whole thing was just a decent depiction of the intricacies of one part of the Crusades. I could have done without the romance angle, but not knowing the particulars of that part of the Crusades very well, I don't know that that part wasn't accurate.

I thought Hitchhikers' Guide was hysterical. Sam Rockwell definitely stole the show.

I liked Kingdom of Heaven, but I didn't like the parts where Bloom was trying to be inspiring, like when cheered the crowd to have them stand against the saracens at Jerusalem. 

BELCE! You pecker! Where HAVE you been??

I, too, recently Netflixed Kingdom due to this thread. Liked it quite a bit but didn't understand the point of even having the female lead. Her character added nothing to the story.

Maybe I am too much of a political junky, but the last scene with King Richard riding off to re-take Jerusalem made me think of the terrorists trying to retake Iraq over and over again. Religious fanaticism is silly.

Sibylla was of the royal family of Jerusalem (and later the queen), and there were actual rumors of her having an affair with Balian. It's hard to blame Hollywood for jumping on the idea. It's a convenient fact for them.

Besides that, her one notable purpose in the script was when the king asked Balian to take her as his wife, and to rid of everyone of Guy. It was good to show how seriously Balian took his position as a knight....That he'd sacrifice his chances even with her for the sake of honor (and to show how much of a sacrifice that was to him, you'd have to show at least some of their relationship).

You explanation of the historical context helps, but the movie gave it such a short shrift that it might as well have been excluded. Their relationship had no weight in the movie so Balian's refusal carried no dramatic weight.  His honor was adequately established in other ways. It is good to know, though, that Hollywood didn't just invent her.

I like how in this movie all the people who lived 1000 years ago are perfectly politically correct and have a deep respect for the religions of each other even though that's the exact opposite of how things were.  PC FTW!

Except really, they didn't. See how many of the Crusaders followed Guy and the big Viking fucker happily to slaughter innocent Muslims and how the Muslim guy who pressured Saladim to retake Jerusalem even though as Saladim said it meant nothing and was worth nothing.

Oh right, you're just trolling like a douchebag again.

Actually, there were plenty of Western poems and songs of the time praising Saladin. Quite a few crusaders themselves stated that he'd be just as an honorable as their greatest knights.....If he only he was Christian, of course. Even Dante wrote of him as one of the "redeemable" heathens, not to be sent to Hell.

There were actually a lot of people who wanted it all over with, who wanted to find a means of peace over Jerusalem. It was the Templars who were the main faction that spoke otherwise, and where the typical image of the warmongering crusader stems from.

And just to note, while these guys were at first considered heroes, they later were seen as a threat and a nuisance. Within a short amount of time, they were all either banished or executed. The general populace started seeing crusaders like Guy and Reynaud as greater enemies than the Muslims themselves.

Not to say that the movie is highly accurate or anything, but there is truth to the idea that both sides held respect for each other.

Btw, did anyone notice that the assistant to Saladin was played by the guy who played Dr. Bashir on ST: Voyager?

I never got into Star Trek until Voyager actually (yeah, yeah, it's supposed to be the lame one), so it's the only reason I know.

Anyways, it's always nice to see an ex ST cast member (other than Stewart) show up in a non Sci Fi role ([EDIT] And be good at it).

[edit] Bah. Goes to show how much I know about Star Trek. He wasn't on Voyager was he? I think it was Deep Space Nine.

Correct.  Alexander Siddig played Dr. Julian Bashir on Deep Space Nine, also known as "BEST STAR TREK EVAR".

Yeah, I forgot that the doctor on Voyager was the hologram dude.

After I got sucked into Voyager, I started watching reruns of Deep Space Nine. Mixed them up, I guess.

I'm not sure about "Best Star Trek Ever", but Deep Space Nine had two of the best episodes I've ever seen (the Tribbles remake and the episode where Quark goes back in time and crash lands in New Mexico, circa 1950.....In a small town named Roswell).

No, DS9 really was the best Star Trek after the original series. It was at least watchable. And yes, I noticed it.

They cleaned up history a lot to make sympathetic characters, or the movie would have had nobody to root for.

The real Balian was not such an upstanding guy,  As one example, he trampled his own footsoldiers while fleeing from the battle of Hattin (that's the one where Saladin crushed the crusaders before going on to Jerusalem).  Nor was he a bastard living in France with a recently-deceased wife--he was married to Sybilla's step-mother, of all things.  

Sybilla, meanwhile, was not interested in Balian but may have had the hots for his older brother Baldwin.  She was also highly supportive of Guy (who really was a dick and survived the whole thing to go on to further acts of assholism)

Incidentally, Saladin didn't let everyone go free--he released those who could pay ransom but sold a lot of the poorer folk into slavery.

I thought Balian WAS Baldwin? I knew he had brothers, but I could have sworn that was just a different version of the name.

[edit] Eh, you're right.

Besides, the character in the film is an amalgam anyways. The main point still stands: There's grounds for putting Sybella in it.

They probably included the scene of Balian killing the priest to show he had done some terrible things. Of course, they also had to make the priest be a grave robber, so that the killing was justified.