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"I cannot lift this!" "Grow stronger."
Jul. 24th, 2003 07:10 pmWoman cannot live on pirate movies alone (though she can certainly try, she thought as she studied the movie schedule for next week).
With that in mind, but still stuck in PotC mode, I hied myself to the local Bucket O'Videos and stocked up on The Gypsy Films of Johnny Depp (Chocolat and The Man Who Cried), a movie that, like PotC, shouldn't have worked but did (A Knight's Tale), a pirate movie because I have no willpower (Swashbuckler), and The 13th Warrior. Chocolat and Knight's Tale weren't new to me, but they're happy-fun movies that it would probably be cheaper for me to buy at this point. The Man Who Cried was very Sally Potter, but Cate Blanchett was good as always and Johnny Depp was beeeeeeooootiful. He certainly does make a gorgeous, sexy Gypsy. Nice horses, too. Swashbuckler was dated and silly, but fun. Young, skinny pirate James Earl Jones and young, very tall, knife-throwing, possibly-a-pirate (it's never that clear) Geoffrey Holder are nearly the only characters worth watching, but there's also a pair of slashily married pirates who are so the ancestors of Pintel and Ragetti. Oh, and an extremely young (and thin, and surprisingly cute) Beau Bridges in the Norrington role, only less competent and more twitchy. So that was all good. And then there was The 13th Warrior.
It really is deeply bizarre that I'd never seen The 13th Warrior before. I mean, just look at it: a Jerry Goldsmith-scored pseudo-epic about Vikings, heavily Beowulf-flavored (loosely based on, with a few direct quotes, even), full of big, fierce, attractive warrior-types, and topped with Antonio Banderas in eyeliner and chainmail. It's rather like some film execs sat down in a trendy bistro and said, "You know, that Joan's a good kid. She's given us an awful lot of money over the years, and she's pretty forgiving of movies' flaws, as long as she's not bored. So let's make her one, okay?" And then they went and made The 13th Warrior.
And somehow I trala'd along in ignorance of this fact- I always meant to see it, but the stars just never aligned. Oh well. Now I know better, and now I need to buy it.
Antonio is gorgeous, as always, though he sounds very Spanish for a poet from Baghdad. He looks quite small and slender next to all the big, brawny Vikings, and the contrast is pretty amusing (and the eyeliner is a nice touch). He does a good job with the various "eek!" and "ew!" and "help!" expressions that Ahmad (unsurprisingly) wears throughout much of his adventures, and his transformation into Fierce(ish) Warrior Guy was not overdone. Vladimir Kulich was nicely Beowulfian. It was a pleasant change to see him not wearing fifty layers of latex for once, and now I have the urge to dig up his episode of X-Files, which I've always liked. All of the Vikings were great (Tony Curran, the Invisible Man from The League of Copyright-Expired Characters, is one of the cuter ones), but Herger (Dennis Storhoi) was completely adorable, in that shaggy, violent, funny, fatalistic, Viking way I always go for. Can I have him for my birthday? I promise I'll take good care of him, and I won't even break him. Please?
And it's fic-able, thanks to the inherent slashiness of warrior bonds between men, huzzah. Ahmad does have a girl, sort of, but since she looks like the female version of Herger and she has about seven minutes of screen time, that's not really a problem. So naturally I spent some time hunting for fic and came up with a grand total of... seven stories, one not finished. Oh well. It's better than nothing, anyway.
So the moral of the story is that The 13th Warrior is cheesy but terribly fun, and anyway, beggars can't be choosers when it comes to Viking movies. The other option is what, Kirk Douglas and Tony Curtis as the sons of Ernest Borgnine? Yeah, I think I'll stick with Dennis Storhoi, thanks.
Oh, and look at the shiny new icon![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
castalianspring made me! So, so true. And so making me want to see PotC again. No willpower a'tall, not a whit. Eh, I should just enjoy this fannish/movie-crush while it lasts. What's summer without an infatuation?
With that in mind, but still stuck in PotC mode, I hied myself to the local Bucket O'Videos and stocked up on The Gypsy Films of Johnny Depp (Chocolat and The Man Who Cried), a movie that, like PotC, shouldn't have worked but did (A Knight's Tale), a pirate movie because I have no willpower (Swashbuckler), and The 13th Warrior. Chocolat and Knight's Tale weren't new to me, but they're happy-fun movies that it would probably be cheaper for me to buy at this point. The Man Who Cried was very Sally Potter, but Cate Blanchett was good as always and Johnny Depp was beeeeeeooootiful. He certainly does make a gorgeous, sexy Gypsy. Nice horses, too. Swashbuckler was dated and silly, but fun. Young, skinny pirate James Earl Jones and young, very tall, knife-throwing, possibly-a-pirate (it's never that clear) Geoffrey Holder are nearly the only characters worth watching, but there's also a pair of slashily married pirates who are so the ancestors of Pintel and Ragetti. Oh, and an extremely young (and thin, and surprisingly cute) Beau Bridges in the Norrington role, only less competent and more twitchy. So that was all good. And then there was The 13th Warrior.
It really is deeply bizarre that I'd never seen The 13th Warrior before. I mean, just look at it: a Jerry Goldsmith-scored pseudo-epic about Vikings, heavily Beowulf-flavored (loosely based on, with a few direct quotes, even), full of big, fierce, attractive warrior-types, and topped with Antonio Banderas in eyeliner and chainmail. It's rather like some film execs sat down in a trendy bistro and said, "You know, that Joan's a good kid. She's given us an awful lot of money over the years, and she's pretty forgiving of movies' flaws, as long as she's not bored. So let's make her one, okay?" And then they went and made The 13th Warrior.
And somehow I trala'd along in ignorance of this fact- I always meant to see it, but the stars just never aligned. Oh well. Now I know better, and now I need to buy it.
Antonio is gorgeous, as always, though he sounds very Spanish for a poet from Baghdad. He looks quite small and slender next to all the big, brawny Vikings, and the contrast is pretty amusing (and the eyeliner is a nice touch). He does a good job with the various "eek!" and "ew!" and "help!" expressions that Ahmad (unsurprisingly) wears throughout much of his adventures, and his transformation into Fierce(ish) Warrior Guy was not overdone. Vladimir Kulich was nicely Beowulfian. It was a pleasant change to see him not wearing fifty layers of latex for once, and now I have the urge to dig up his episode of X-Files, which I've always liked. All of the Vikings were great (Tony Curran, the Invisible Man from The League of Copyright-Expired Characters, is one of the cuter ones), but Herger (Dennis Storhoi) was completely adorable, in that shaggy, violent, funny, fatalistic, Viking way I always go for. Can I have him for my birthday? I promise I'll take good care of him, and I won't even break him. Please?
And it's fic-able, thanks to the inherent slashiness of warrior bonds between men, huzzah. Ahmad does have a girl, sort of, but since she looks like the female version of Herger and she has about seven minutes of screen time, that's not really a problem. So naturally I spent some time hunting for fic and came up with a grand total of... seven stories, one not finished. Oh well. It's better than nothing, anyway.
So the moral of the story is that The 13th Warrior is cheesy but terribly fun, and anyway, beggars can't be choosers when it comes to Viking movies. The other option is what, Kirk Douglas and Tony Curtis as the sons of Ernest Borgnine? Yeah, I think I'll stick with Dennis Storhoi, thanks.
Oh, and look at the shiny new icon
castalianspring made me! So, so true. And so making me want to see PotC again. No willpower a'tall, not a whit. Eh, I should just enjoy this fannish/movie-crush while it lasts. What's summer without an infatuation?
