Movie tonight
May. 27th, 2004 01:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
petroniaWent and saw Troy, which I quite enjoyed. I mean, sure there were little deviations from Homeric canon here and there, but they were minuscule, barely noticeable - not as if one was sitting there the entire time expecting the wrong people to die or anything.
...Okay, okay. XD Seriously, though, I enjoyed it. It was basically your good ol' Hollywood costume epic like they used to make'em forty years ago (and in another forty years the women's eye makeup and gauzy Bronze Age couture will be just as unconvincing as when Liz Taylor's waterproof waxed lashes were out to here) - except they've gotten a lot better at things like embossed metal detailing that doesn't make a casual National Geographic reader twitch, or faking nasty gaping wounds and blood-mist spraying in the heat of battle, or making soundstages look like outside and not soundstages with a painted sky backdrop and dried bushes in the foreground. That's good with me. That's what I'm there for. If it occurs to me that in the book it seemed like the siege took longer than ten days, or hey what happened to all those other characters - well, Homer's not going anywhere. But this saves the effort of imagination made while holding the Iliad in one hand and pics of various Achaean digs in the other, metaphorically speaking.
(I'm not saying it's as historically correct as it could possibly have been. I wouldn't really know. But it's more convincing than Hollywood used to make it. I have a problem with paying automatic attention to all this stuff, in movies and books; I can't buy a purportedly realistic approach without that level of detail and intricacy in the worldbuilding.)
The casting was spot-on too. So spot-on it came close to funny. Peter O'Toole's still t3h bestest: he nearly made me cry. No hilarious overacting there. And I think on the whole I'm a bit disappointed that there won't be a Troy II: Ulysses Returns next summer. XD (Well, there won't. They'd have a deal more trouble removing the supernatural element from the sequel.)
...Okay, okay. XD Seriously, though, I enjoyed it. It was basically your good ol' Hollywood costume epic like they used to make'em forty years ago (and in another forty years the women's eye makeup and gauzy Bronze Age couture will be just as unconvincing as when Liz Taylor's waterproof waxed lashes were out to here) - except they've gotten a lot better at things like embossed metal detailing that doesn't make a casual National Geographic reader twitch, or faking nasty gaping wounds and blood-mist spraying in the heat of battle, or making soundstages look like outside and not soundstages with a painted sky backdrop and dried bushes in the foreground. That's good with me. That's what I'm there for. If it occurs to me that in the book it seemed like the siege took longer than ten days, or hey what happened to all those other characters - well, Homer's not going anywhere. But this saves the effort of imagination made while holding the Iliad in one hand and pics of various Achaean digs in the other, metaphorically speaking.
(I'm not saying it's as historically correct as it could possibly have been. I wouldn't really know. But it's more convincing than Hollywood used to make it. I have a problem with paying automatic attention to all this stuff, in movies and books; I can't buy a purportedly realistic approach without that level of detail and intricacy in the worldbuilding.)
The casting was spot-on too. So spot-on it came close to funny. Peter O'Toole's still t3h bestest: he nearly made me cry. No hilarious overacting there. And I think on the whole I'm a bit disappointed that there won't be a Troy II: Ulysses Returns next summer. XD (Well, there won't. They'd have a deal more trouble removing the supernatural element from the sequel.)
