Larger than life
I was a local production of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown tonight. The cast was good, the production was pretty good. The direction was kind of flat. It's terrible to see actors with wonderful body control and delivery trapped into exchanges that just aren't quite right. There were a good few places where the character just needed to be allowed to run, and the actor was holding that back. And it wasn't the actor's choice.
I watched the most recent Disney The Three Musketeers the other night. This was my sister's favorite movie once; I recalled not caring for it so much, but I needed something silly. Both the best and worst thing about the movie is Tim Curry. He's so wonderfully evil, and yet . . . it's too much. The places where the movie clunks are the places where the characters are over the top, and the evil cardinal is the most over the top. One of those situations where they actually needed to pull back and be a little more understated.
In the armchair-quarterback opinion of someone who doesn't act, of course. ;)
I watched the most recent Disney The Three Musketeers the other night. This was my sister's favorite movie once; I recalled not caring for it so much, but I needed something silly. Both the best and worst thing about the movie is Tim Curry. He's so wonderfully evil, and yet . . . it's too much. The places where the movie clunks are the places where the characters are over the top, and the evil cardinal is the most over the top. One of those situations where they actually needed to pull back and be a little more understated.
In the armchair-quarterback opinion of someone who doesn't act, of course. ;)
posted by Journey | 9:33 PM
5 Comments:
The problem I have with the three so-called "Musketeers", is, why do they only fight with swords?
-durangodave
If I recall rightly, muskets at the time were a single-shot load. Then it took several minutes to reload with powder and musket ball before you could fire again. So while they'd be the first line of contact with the enemy, they didn't have a lot of staying power.
Besides, nobody wants to watch three minutes of somebody loading a gun in the middle of a fight scene? ;)
You are exactly right. One can't really swashbuckle with a long clumsy muzzle-loader. I suppose "musketeer" just rolls off the tongue better
than "swordfighter."
--durangodave
I tried watching that once. Found myself screaming "Dar-tah-NYAAH, dammit! It's pronounced Dar-tah-NYAAH!" at the screen every few minutes. At least I wasn't in the theatre.
journey is right - the muskets were single shot (the repeating rifle didn't really appear until the 1860s). They took several minutes to load and were terribly inacurrate and prone to breaking and/or jamming. There is also the fatc that many of these men would have been younger sons of the lower noblity and the sword was considered more gentlemanly and befitting their social rank.
-Pete (yes THAT Pete)
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