BBC History: Feb 2007
Since the March edition arrived today, I thought I should finally finish the Feb edition. Some of the highlights:
An overview of the Basque issue – I’ve been fascinated by Basques since I was at school; I loved Mark thingo’s book about how Basques changed the world.
Two contrasting articles about the Suffragettes – one that essentially argued that they were essentially terrorists, and they didn’t have much popular support; the other saying that view is a load of bollocks. As a chick, I found it troubling to have the women who I thought had gained me my right to vote might be terrorists. One woman’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter… I’m not sure where I stand on this issue now. I definitely don’t hold with violence at any time, and never have, but the question of whether violence was necessary to gain suffrage… we’ll never know, I do certainly approve of exploding (tee hee) too-rosy mythology about historical events, especially ones so recent and still so pertinent.
The article on ‘the ghost that convicted the bishop’ was a bizarre look into the mindset of at some people in the seventeenth century… and a rather dismal look at the state of the church.
One of the big article is about Little Bighorn, and the possibility that one main reason why Custer was defeated was because his deputy Capt Benteen hated his guts. I am a military history baby, and the detailed stuff about directions etc really don’t work for me (the map helped a bit), but the stuff about how the two men interacted was quite interesting.
Another big article was about Klaus Fuchs, who passed nuclear secrets from the Anglo-American research he was involved in onto the USSR. Complements a BBC series, which hopefully the ABC will pick up sometime; very interesting because it mostly looked at his motivations and attitudes.
Two articles about Tudors – 1534, when Henry VIII officially decalred his ’empire’, and the consequences of this for the entire British Isles and Ireland… and a quick look at how Elizabeth I treated Dudley, and how she was regarded because of it, compared with Catherine of Russia and Potemkin, and Anne Stuart and the Churchills.
Much fun!
Tshirts
My Threadless tshirts turned up today! Yay! I got a Communist Party tshirt – which I’ve been hankering after ever since my bro got one; a Funkalicious one, with a spaceman carrying a boombox; and one that says “Books are good for you,” with a dude eating a book on the front.
Very, very excited.
I have emphysema
Nah, not really; but I sounded like it last night. Head cold moved to chest cold, as they do, and of course it flared my asthma. Which is usually only annoying, but I was huffing and puffing like a grampus* all night, and I got maybe a couple of hours of sleep if I’m lucky. Because the inhaler I was sucking on turned out basically to have no drugs in it – I think I was really only getting propellant. Lovely.
*What is a grampus? I have no idea. I believe it’s some sort of marine critter, maybe a whale? – but I don’t know for sure. I’ve just read that phrase somewhere.
Clean coal?
Clean coal = cold fusion.
Just my 2c.
Ivanhoe
If the 1997 (?) adaptation of Ivanhoe is accurate, then I know a few things about Walter Scott:
1. He didn’t like the Templars.
2. He didn’t much like most of his characters.
3. He was a vicious old bugger who liked inflicting, or at least imagining, pain on other people.
I really enjoyed the portrayal of John. Young, childish, scared, weak – with a streak of ruthless cruelty. The scene with Richard, John and Eleanor is hilarious, with her treating her sons like children and ordering them around… just a pity that it was so ahistorical, since Richard was her favourite and she would have had problems with Richard spending little time in England in favour of Aquitaine, as he did. Which brings in the other ahistorical bit, with Richard and John both being abe to communicate with the Saxons very easily… unlikely, since neither of them spoke English, and I doubt that many of the Saxons – the peasants, anyway – spoke Norman. But, tut; so many people make these assumptions.
I really enjoyed Blois Guibert’s character – he was so very bad, and then to twist his heart in such a way as to make him fall for Rebecca was a terrible, tragic thing. And Christopher Lee as the Grand Master – superb!
I bought a second-hand copy of the book a while ago… not sure I can read it any time soon, now.
Nachos Libre
We got this on DVD for Christmas. I had thought it looked dubious in the movies… and we didn’t finish it tonight. We got about 2/3 of the way through and then gave up. It’s just silly. And not particularly funny, nor original. The best thing was the sidekick – he was good.
I wore stupid shoes yesterday
Seriously, girls wear stupid shoes for stupid reasons. Like weddings. it was a great wedding, I had a lot of fun – the reception was at Fed Square, and it was brilliant – but the shoes took the shine off. I just should have worn flats and been comfortable.
The friends who got married didn’t realise until last week that it’s Moomba at the moment. As a consequence, we got fireworks at 9.30. It was very exciting – and what was funnier was that there was a speech happening as they started, but he wrapped it up pretty much immediately so that everyone could go out on the balcony and watch the pretty lights. Not just the few kids who were there, but the few 20- and 50-somethings, and lots of 30- and 40-somethings too. All standing around looking at lights in the sky. Brilliant.
Nicholas and Alexandra
As I mentioned a while ago, we put on a showing on this film at school for the kids doing Revolutions (we’re doing Russia, of course, and eventually China, which is a bit scary for me…). Very few turned up, which was a bit disappointing, but since I hadn’t seen it it was at least a good chance for me to watch it.
It was made in 1982, and it moves very slowly. Very slowly. If it wasn’t for the historical aspect, I would go so far as to say that it was very boring. Except for the point at which I realised that Ra-Ra-Rasputin was played by Tom Baker; that was a very funny moment, almost brain-messingly so.
The most interesting part was how the relationship between Nicky and ‘Sunny’ (I think that was her nickname) was shown… which makes sense, given the title. Most of the time, she is shown as completely domineering, which I think does indeed have some historical evidence to back it up. There are a few occasions where Nicky stands up to her, but very few. And Nicky’s reaction when he has to admit his abdication to Alexandra – it was amazing, and heartbreaking, and horrifying as well – that he broke down, and seemed almost to have a nervous breakdown, I think from the sheer shame of the event. I wonder how much evidence there is to support that idea.
We didn’t get to the end – it was hometime right when Lenin started doing his April Theses thing. Related to this is one of my biggest beefs with the film: I don’t think Trotsky had anything to do with Lenin and the Bolsheviks in 1905 – in fact, not even by 1917, really – and yet in the film they are shown together right back as far as Bloody Sunday, almost. Pft.
Kerensky was probably my favourite bit-part. Possibly because I think he is in ‘real life’, too.
Forbes Billionaires’ Club
SBS is showing some stuff from America about the world’s billionaires. The point of the spot is the women who are (finally) on it. One is JK Rowling – a billionaire from just one set of books!* Another is someone at eBay, another Oprah,** and one from China who did something with paper.
Woohoo! That there are women on there now. Boo hiss that it’s only 1% of the whole list who are self-made women. Hello, gender equality….
*Yeh yeh, plus the merchandising – but still just from one set of books.
**Who, despite being painful, must be one helluva smart cookie, and I can’t help but admire her: female black.
Ghostrider…
… was forgetable.
We went to see it on the spur of the moment today, since we were at Highpoint anyway. We’ve been wanting to see it at least partly because bits of it were virtually shot in our backyard (virtually as in nearly in our backyard, not virtually as in concerning computers. And where ‘nearly’ is a few km away).
Basically, disappointing. I don’t know what Cage has done, but he is looking less craggy and character-ish, and more Tim Allen, which was a bad thing for the character in this film. I thought the effects were ok, although J disagrees about that; the female character was pretty pahetic – partly her acting, largely the script. With which I have several major issues – like lack of character and/or plot development. It would have been heaps better if the devil characters had been more interesting, and there had been more back story: like, why were they going against Mephistopheles? And why were they so damned easy to beat? I think I’ve mentioned this before – I like it when villains actually make sense, when you can appreciate the twistedness of their logic. And the same goes for Meph himself, here: yep, he’s the Devil (well, it seems like he should get the ‘the’, but I’m not convinced it’s justified), but… so what? I need a bit more to go on!
It was redeemed by being about half shot in Melbourne. It is always fun to spot places you know/ have been to in films. The amount shot in the cemetry didn’t seem to justify the weeks that the film crew spent there, blocking off the road….
Randomly Yours, Alex 