Troy first (Atlanta later)

[chanaleh]

msmidge is now MrsMidge! But more on that in a bit.

Before I left for Atlanta, I went out to see Troy with tenore Thursday night. I now have a deeper appreciation for Troy in Fifteen Minutes (which was pretty freaking funny to begin with), because the whole movie is just like that: self-MST3K'ing. Nevertheless, I actually didn't hate it. All I have to add are my Top Ten Impressions of Troy the Movie:

1. Still the Prettiest. -- Paris, not Helen. Duh.
2. But Hector was oh so far and away more appealing. (I didn't even remember that that was Eric Bana. I didn't remember him being that cute.) I suspect this is yet more evidence that I am getting old. Responsible, competent, civic-minded family man. Yum!
3. Okay, Brad Pitt is awfully pretty himself. However,
4. Achaean Greek soldiers != blond surfer dudes.
5. In that opening scene where Achilles is discovered sleeping with two other naked bodies draped around him, is the one in the back Patroclus? Just askin'.
6. Agamemnon was actually really well played. I got a feel immediately for exactly what kind of asshole he was.
7. Giant Flaming Balls of Twine!
8. It is All Wrong to see Boromir attacking Minas Tirith.
9. If they go on to remake the Odyssey, Sean Bean could play Odysseus for that too. Rock on!
10. The whole thing actually made me want to go back and pull out my copy of the Iliad (the one I could only get through, freshman year of college, by taking a highlighter and marking every sentence where Something Actually Happened). If it does that for even a small percentage of the population, it will have been worth making.

With that, it's off to the chiropractor for me. Then food pantry, then a 20s&30s committee meeting, then I crash for the evening. Gee, it's good to be home. :-}

Comments

Goodness, Greatness...

[zenala.livejournal.com]

Great Balls of Twine!

Hm... I'm almost hoping Troy is still playing the next time I'm in Ohio. The combination of special effects, acting, and historical/scientific plausibility sounds like a perfect father-daughter bonding experience...

(Basically, my mom doesn't like long movies with loud explosions.)

[navrins]

I suppose you won't be surprised if I must disagree with you on the Helen/Paris question. I don't know if I'd call her the most beautiful woman in the world, but certainly enough to catch my eye as I'm fast forwarding through commercials on Tivo. Which isn't rare, but, y'know, Paris and Hector and the giant flaming balls of twine didn't.

[goljerp]

OK, call me a geek (or a guy), but I read the Iliad when I was in high school. I don't remember if it was just because, or after I found out that it was required for freshman year in college. I'm pretty sure I read it again in college, and then in the last year or two I pulled it out again and read it again. I found that it was a good thing for me to read before going to sleep -- I could read a chunk of it, find it interesting, yet still be able to put it down and go to sleep when I needed to.

[hauntmeister.livejournal.com]

I, somewhat to my own surprise, quite liked Troy! Amazing special effects, very good human performances, and you can't beat the author. :-) One thing I really did appreciate was that they didn't glorify the battles and the violence -- Each battle had two sides you could identify with, not cartoon good guys and bad guys, and there were consequences from the killing! Something too seldom seen in movies.

Unfortunately, instead of flashing back to my reading of The Iliad in English 129 at Yale, at various critical plot points I kept remembering Asimov's retelling of the story in limericks.

Agamemnon, the top-ranking Greek
To Achilles in anger did speak
The argued a lot
Till Achilles got hot
And went stamping away in a pique

Iliad in limericks

[zdenka]

Oooh, can you tell me where to find that?

[hauntmeister.livejournal.com]

There are three or four in "Tales of the Black Widowers". I don't know if he ever completed the collection, though...

[silver1226.livejournal.com]

:)

um. . . your icon, is that from gilbert and sullivan, bcus it looks like kates in ti and i was wondering if I was insane or it was her.

[chanaleh.livejournal.com]

Sharp eyes! You are quite right, that's me and Kate (katfairy) playing Leila and Celia in Iolanthe in November 1999. That was my first mitgsp show.

(And now we're doing Iolanthe again this fall. Yowza!)

[76trombones.livejournal.com]

Mine was Patience, so I don't have to feel old yet!

[navrins]

Funny... I've seen this icon for quite some time and it was only seeing it on this post - BEFORE this comment thread - that I noticed it was Kate behind you.