Posted on 11/24/2004 4:10:44 AM PST by jalisco555
If you played a word-association game with "Alexander the Great," you'd probably come up with "conqueror," "king," "warrior," "legend," "despot," "wastrel" or "killer." Unfortunately, Oliver Stone has chosen to build his epic of the Macedonian military genius around a word highly unlikely to make the list: "crybaby."
In Stone's view, this is a highly neurotic young man whose emotions, far from being repressed or disciplined as one would expect of a great soldier of the 4th century B.C., are worn on his sleeve, except, of course, that he doesn't have sleeves, the shirt still being two millennia down the road. So he wears them on his wrist -- and it's a limp one.
As Alexander's mother, Angelina Jolie (replete with snake) is given a thankless role, while star Colin Farrell gets lost in the shuffle in another been-there, seen-that battle scene. (Photos Jaap Buitendijk -- Warner Bros. Pictures)
That's the weirdest aspect of the extremely weird, if absurdly expensive, movie. Stone gives himself much credit of "telling the truth" about Alexander's bisexuality as if it's some progressive badge of honor, but at the same time he can't get away from the cruelest, least imaginative stereotyping: His Alexander, as expressed through the weepy histrionics of Colin Farrell, is more like a desperate housewife than a soldier. He's always crying, his voice trembles, his eyes fill with tears. He's much less interesting, except as a basket case, than Richard Burton's Alexander of far less enlightened times -- 1956 -- in Robert Rossen's "Alexander the Great."
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Oops, make that John (not Johng) Podhoretz.
He's right. It's really, really, really, really bad.
LOL! HaHa!
"My goodness...Scrapps is a boy!"
"Joey, have you ever been in a Turkish prison?"
Place names are one of the things that survive conquest and that tell us of the one time existence of people long since gone. Place names in Italy tell us of an Etruscan past, and in Britain of a Celtic one. In southern Russia, place names have Iranian origins, and in Anatolia, many have Greek origins. Sicily was a Greek colony. Is it ok to call it Sicily still? Thanks.
Give it a rest.
I'm kind of embarassed to say it but I really liked Titanic.
My reaction to most characters DiCaprio plays.
Some historians have made the argument that the Ottoman Empire was just an Islamic extension of the Roman/Byzantine Empire.
Oh, and Hungarians are descended from the Huns.
Not really. The Huns were a pretty small tribe. They settled down and were assimilated by the local population. Hungarians are mostly descended from the Magyars, who came later.
I liked DiCaprio in Gangs of New York (vastly underrated movie, IMHO). He seems to be growing up into a good actor. Titanic will always be an albatross for him, though.
the trailer for THE AVIATOR looked so intriguing, I started doing some research on it and it looks like it's the must see film of the year. The say Leonardo DiCaprio is unbelievable as Howard Hughes. This movie is about his early years, but hints at some of the reasons he became the kook that he became. I can't wait to see it!
I remember reading 1978's Empire as a kid. Then in the nineties' encountering an article on a more recent biography of Hughes. It seems now that tertiary syphillis ate his brain.
There's another Steven Pressfield book you have to read (if you haven't already) called Gates of Fire. It's a brilliant retelling of the stand that King Leonidis and the 300 Spartans made against the Persians at Thermopolai (sp). Incredible book! I've heard it's also going to be made into a movie, hopefully by someone better than Oliver Stone.
This movie reviewer hates the movie because it doesn't say the latest things about homosexuality. But the author badly contradicts himself in adjacent paragraphs:
" It offers the standard 1950s melodramatic theory of Alexander's sexual orientation: the scheming, sexualized, domineering mother, and the distant, uncaring father. So much for today's theories of genetic predetermination. ... His bisexuality, after all, is fairly commonplace in the world of this movie,..."
See, the movie is not hip to the "truth" about homos because it doesn't assert that homosexuality is genetically determined. Of course, he says there were a LOT of gays back then. Why? A bad accident at the HellenChem (tm) chemical refinery plant? Or had natural selection simply not had as much time to weed out the homosexual population?
I like your tag line... Victory, or course, IS a French word.
You have answered your own question. Macedonia of ALEXANDER the Great has nothing to do with the territory of present day "Macedonia". They are different geographical entities. That's why this is fraud.
Imagine the sctipt: Cuban province Matanzas breaks out from Cuba, declared independence and call itself FLORIDA, using the Star Spnghled Banner and U.S. Coat of Arms as state symbols, claiming Jorge Washington was their president usurped by Americans and claiming Florida panhandle as their territory? Imagine Chicoms recognize Matanzas under name Florida.
How would State Department react?
"Communists first invented Macedonian langage (butchered dialect of Bulgarian). Once the nation without historical root was invented, Communists in charge started with falsifying history. As a result, many "Macedonians" today sincerely believe that they are descendants of Alexander The Great and consider Churches and Monasteries built by Serbian kings are their own. To top the achievement, communists invented Macedonian Orthodox Church (not recogized by any Orthodox Church).
This is one of the larger scale forgeries of the 20th century, delusion of the masses as if Americans started to believe to be descendant of Mayan Empire.
"Alexander" is entertainment one may choose to patron or not. The Box Office will be the judge.
"Macedonia" is State Department endorsed fraud and Americans have no say wether to be a part of it or not. This shameful decision has to be REVOKED."
____________________________________________________________
Funny you should bring that up. The Romans themselves were the ultimate in shameless self-invention. I did some digging recently when I was trying to learn the origins of the "Aneid of Virgil" (Rome being founded by two wandering warriors fleeing the sack of Troy). It was commissioned by Emperor Augustus (Virgil was none to eager for the job) and incorporated into Rome's official mythology. The earlier Romulus and Remus legend was rewritten to fit. In fact the romans were originally a tribe dominated and ruled by their neighbors the Etruscans, whom they eventually threw off with spawning many heroic legends to suit the occasion (Horatius at the Bridge, the sacred geese giving alarm, etc.) They were history's masters at borrowing and adapting, and claiming for their own, their neighbors technology, culture and gods. Especially the Etruscans and the Latin Greeks (Magna Graecia, Epirus of Phyrrus). The earlier republican roman patricians were fanatics at ancestor worship (which they didn't hesitate to invent the farther back they reached). They pretty much acquired and renamed the entire Greek celestial linup. Everywhere they conqured and colonized they adopted local gods and cults. It can get downright hilarious when you look into it.
Excerpted from American Heritage Talking Dictionary
vic-to-ry (vikt-re)n.pl. vic-to-ries. Abbr. V 1. Defeat of an enemy or opponent. 2. Success in a struggle against difficulties or an obstacle. 3. The state of having triumphed.[Middle English, from Old French victorie, from Latin victoria, from victor, victor-, victor. See VICTOR.]
"ALEXANDER'S ACCOMPLISHMENTS [John Derbyshire]
Not many people -- prob. only math freaks & horologists -- know that among Alexander's many other achievements, he invented an utterly original method of timekeeping. He noticed a thing no-one had noticed before: that certain dye-like substances extracted from mineral bases would change darken in color when exposed to the sun, but *at different rates*. Alexander, or more likely one of his courtiers, would soak a long strip of cloth in these substances, with the slower-reacting ones at one end and the faster at the other in stripes across the length of cloth. This was exposed to the sun, and you could tell at a glance what time of day it was by seeing how far along the strip of cloth these stripes had darkened. Ingenious, no? This remarkable invention is know to historians of science as Alexander's time-band rag."
____________________________________________________________
Also from The Corner; "Alexander's time-band rag." LOL
Irving Stone ("The Agony and the Ecstasy" among others) has opened me up to a lot of history I never would have gotten into otherwise.
Put some ice on it, Eva.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.