Of Race Cars and Kings
Good Job to the Bud Team this weekend! :D WAY to GO! in the pits and WELL DONE!! to Dale for staying out of trouble in a track that creates more than it’s share. I read the race report and was glad to hear Dale was so happy with the car. Slowly but surely, DEI progresses, sometimes not fast enough for the fans (I admit getting frustrated myself sometimes), but they will get there in their own time, in their own way.
Good run for Mark despite his spinout and impressive save. He only lost 2 spots! Dayum. I think people better keep an eye on Mark this year because that guy is hungry for it in ways the Young Guns can never imagine.
Wanted to cuff Todd Parrott for putting a full round in the track bar of a third place car just before the sun went down. Too bad for Elliott. :(
Mikey and Jeff Green. Well, that was entertaining to say the least but given Michael’s completely stunned reaction to Green putting him into the wall, not surprising. Missed why Kurt Bucsh got called into the hauler until the next day. Now that’s one of the times I would have liked to have the in car audio at home. *chuckle*
Hendricks-schmendricks, the guys everyone has to catch up with is Roush. Congrats to Biffle on another win and to the Lady in Black for getting the last word.
I hope Darlington races continues to sell out and NASCAR keeps this historic track in the circuit.
BTW-Since Robbie Gordon didn't qualify with his engine, does he get to return it? ;) Golly, I hope he kept the receipt.
Kingdom of Heaven
I had the pleasure of seeing this Sunday and though it does not have the emotional impact that Gladiator did, it was a fantastic historical epic. Unlike many directors *cough*Fuqua*cough* when Scott shoots an historical epic, he actually goes for the history. He’s not quite as meticulously detailed as Peter Weir, but he always does make an excellent effort that allows me to enjoy the film without nitpicking.
(Unlike "Troy" in which I was twitching ten minutes into the film.)
As a film, it is quite good and definitely worth the hard earned dime to see it in the theatres. The story/plot is a good one, the characters are solid, though perhaps not incredibly compelling. Saladin is especially well done (a kudos to a man who probably had to compete with thousands of other Persian, Semitic and Arabian actors who would have crawled through broken glass for the role). The actors who play the roles are utterly spectacular with what they have been given. I mean, really. Liam Neeson and Jeremy Irons, how can you lose? The message of tolerance in the Holy Land is an integral part of the story but only once does the audience feel smacked over the head with it.
The only issues I had with it as a film were with Bloom’s character, which sometimes acts in a contradictory manner and is a little too tightly controlled. It would be nice to see the man emote a little more to draw us in. As an audience member, you felt everything Maximus went though in Gladiator, but not as much with Balian.
The battles are, of course, spectacular. Utterly. Completely. We get to see all the best aspects of seige warfare, including using a ballistae for what it was meant to be used for rather than spearing big ugly villans. And the trebuchets....*sigh* And the battles range in size throughout the piece to keep one entertained. There's a bit of exotic forbidden romance for the ladies and enough natual humor scattered throughout to keep one of the darkest times in both Western and Eastern culture breathable.
Now, how does this stack up to a historian?
Actually, fairly well. In broad terms Scott got the story right and the poetic license taken with the characters was something I could easily cope with for drama sake. I could find nothing glaringly wrong with the technology or costumes presented. He even got the medieval cogs and dhows right. About the only major flaw outside the realm of dramatic license with the story and characters, the film had was showing the Templars, the guys in white with the red crosses on their tabards, as subject to the King of Jerusalem. They weren’t. They were a monastic order with their own strongholds along the major pilgrim trails and answered only to the pope.
FYI. David Thewlis’ character is a Hospitaler, a similar order of knights, though less strict about the monastic part of it, answering only to the Pope. As you can imagine, both orders couldn’t stand one another.
The story covers the transition between the First Crusade and the beginning of the Second crusade, which is the most famous one for Richard the Lionheart and his chivalric nemesis: Saladin. The First Crusade was the most successful, if one can apply such a term to a mission that was completely co-opted. The original call to save Jerusalem came not from the Christians in Jerusalem, but from the emperor Alexis II of Byzantium, who was actually more scared of the Seljuk Turks who are running rampant over Middle East towards his capital than he is about getting Jerusalem back. He just figured it was a good ploy to get the Pope of the Roman Catholic Church involved. The problem is by the time the Crusaders got to Jerusalem, the Fatimid Moslems, under whom Jerusalem had flourished as a open city for all religions (though you did have to pay an extra tax if you weren’t Muslim) for several hundred years before the Turk showed up had regained control of the city. And they were just peachy, thanks.
Thank you for calling. Have a nice day.
After three years and tens, maybe hundreds, of thousands dead that was just not good enough. The Crusade became a religious war against all Moslems and the crusaders entered the city and slaughtered all non-Christians inside.
Over the entire course of the crusade, various leaders had taken and claimed various major cities/areas in the Middle East, establishing not a single unified Christian kingdom, but a series of small kingdoms called by historians as the Crusader States. (Any resemblance to the territories controlled by robber barons or warlords is completely coincidental.) By the time the movie starts, we are almost 80 years removed from that final conquest.
There was a Leprous king of Jerusalem at this time: Baldwin the IV who died at the age of 24. Despite his health, he was one of the most capable and honorable leaders the crusader kingdoms had ever seen and was held in high regard on both sides of the battle lines. His sister was Sibylla, wife of Guy De Lusignan. (The De Lusignans are an interesting family. Wherever you are, whenever you are, in the middle ages a De Lusignan pops up to make things interesting in a Chinese curse kind of way.)
However it was she who took the throne out from under the regent after the sudden death of her young son Baldwin the V and then crowned her husband Guy quite willingly. Guy was not an arrogant bastard hell bent on genocide, but something of a pushover who was easily manipulated by those around him.
Raynald however was severely toned down for the script because he was one of those characters that Hollywood could not have invented if they had tried. He was a nutcake, pure and simple. And nutcakes are hard enough to take in our daily lives, but a nutcake with an army is nothing but trouble. Contemporaries of his describe him as “a man of violent impulses, both in sinning and repenting.” kind of like a blood bulima. Utterly paranoid, he once had the Bishop of Antioch stripped, scourged bloody, painted in honey and left tied to a roof for a few days…just because he believed that the Bishop had said something nasty about him to a couple of his friends in private.
Neither Guy nor Reynald were Templars, who must take a vow of chastity, but Reynald did repeatedly attack Moslem caravans in defiance of the treaty, one of which was escorting Saladin sister, though that time Saladin ensured that caravan was well protected and she escaped. Guy actually attempted, weakly as pushovers do, to get Reynald to ameliorate the situation by returning the stolen goods, to which Reynald laughed openly and essentially told Guy to blow himself. He is pretty much the sole reason the Crusader States fell.
And he was killed by Saladin after Guy handed him the cup, which maybe confusing to some of the western audience. Moslem tradition is that if a person has eaten or drunk from your hand, they are your guest and fall under your protection. By Guy handing Reynald the cup, Raynald was not a guest and Saladin could kill him at his leisure, which was immediately. Guy did go on to be the court amusement at Damascus.
Saladin is the major power player in the region at this time as the one man who has unified the squabbling Moslem nations in the area against the crusaders. Saladin is a fascinating character to historians because it’s really hard to believe that someone that good was that successful for that long. Not that Saladin was a tolerant pacifist driven to violence. Heck no. His single goal in life was to rid his lands, whether they knew they were his lands or not (ie. the Middle East), of the Infidel. Period. And if he had to paint the landscape red to do it, fine. But while he was using a great amount of common sense to do so, he also managed to do so with a chivalric style that impressed even his enemies.
Once, in the time period that the movie happens in, Saladin had chased Reynald back to Kerak where it turned out the Reynald was hosting a wedding part for his stepson. Reynald's wife sent plates of the wedding banquet out to Saladin's tent. He was delighted and asked in what tower the newlyweds would be staying. He then refrained from bombarding the tower until morning. Once during a battle between King Richard and himself, when Richard was unhorsed Saladin sent him out another mount.
10 points for style, and upteen zillion for substance because he did drive the crusaders from much of the Middle East and held it for his entire lifetime.
Balian of Ibelin, our protagonist, was the man in charge of the garrison at the last stand of the Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem. Balian, known as Balian the Younger (Guess what his dad was known as? No, it wasn’t Geoffery) was perfectly legitimate (as well as older) and his family were players in the factional infighting between crusaders. The family seems to have been some poor knights (possibly Italian) making good as nothing appears about them prior to Balian the Elder making Constable of Jaffa. Good service earns him the Lordship of Ibelien and Ramla. Needless to say, Balian the Younger was not pumping forges in France but was watching and playing in the politics of the crusader states. One of Balian's elder brothers ended up with Ramla and Balian got Ibelien. Balian and his brother were in the anti-Sybilla/Guy faction but ended up in the disastrous battle of Hattien. From which he went to Tyre and there Saladin gave him permission to enter Jerusalem to fetch out his wife and children. Once there he relented to the people’s demand and took over the defense of the city (but not until writing a letter explaining and apologizing to Saladin for breaking his word, Saladin forgave him.) He didn’t hold the against Saladin's massive army for three days but for two weeks, and he did threaten to raise it and all the holy sites to the ground if Saladin continued his assault, and he was man enough for Saladin to take him at his word.
Though I utterly love the brief exchange in the film here, I doubt Saladin would have ever said such a thing. He was a good follower of Mohammed. In the deepest recess of his common sense, he sure as heck might have thought it though.
However, Balian did not win complete freedom for the people of Jeruselem. They had to pay their ransom out. Though Saladin did grant a thousand captives each to Balian and the Christian bishop of the city, Saladin’s bother freed a thousand as an offering to Allah and Saladin remitted the payment for the elderly. But 15,000 poor Christians ended up on the slave markets of Damascus.
As well as restoring the Dome of the Rock, Saladin also reopened the Church of the Sepulcher to Christian worshippers three days after he captured Jerusalem.
It would be nice to think of Balian just going off to have a well earned beer and fading into happy obscurity with the girl of his dreams, but he remained a player in crusader politics and even received a lordship from Saladin himself.
Thus endeth the First Crusade and as you can see, where Scott deviated he really didn't do so *that* much.
Adendum: There is one little deviation in Kingdom of Heaven that I forgot to mention that while it does not detract from the film in anyway, I thought folks might find interesting.
When Balian says his oath as a knight, Geoffery hits him “So you’ll remember it”. Knights were struck as part of the initiatory ceremony, but it wasn’t to remember their oath. It was the last time a noble or knight could strike them without risk of reprisal, so it was kind of a ceremonial “Good Bye” to their role as an underling. Depending on the culture and how well the prospective knight and the lord got on, the “buffet” could be a light cuff to a full round house. There are several accounts of knights being knocked flat on their ass by it.
Oh, and "Tiberius" was actually Raymond III of Tripoli, Lord of Tiberius, hence the name. I guess Scott thought "Reynald" and "Raymond" would get confusing.
BTW
I will say it was nice to see Orli kicking butt again. After seeing his work in LOTR and POTC one couldn’t sit through Troy without thinking, “Aw man, c’on. Orli can kick this guys ass!”
Good run for Mark despite his spinout and impressive save. He only lost 2 spots! Dayum. I think people better keep an eye on Mark this year because that guy is hungry for it in ways the Young Guns can never imagine.
Wanted to cuff Todd Parrott for putting a full round in the track bar of a third place car just before the sun went down. Too bad for Elliott. :(
Mikey and Jeff Green. Well, that was entertaining to say the least but given Michael’s completely stunned reaction to Green putting him into the wall, not surprising. Missed why Kurt Bucsh got called into the hauler until the next day. Now that’s one of the times I would have liked to have the in car audio at home. *chuckle*
Hendricks-schmendricks, the guys everyone has to catch up with is Roush. Congrats to Biffle on another win and to the Lady in Black for getting the last word.
I hope Darlington races continues to sell out and NASCAR keeps this historic track in the circuit.
BTW-Since Robbie Gordon didn't qualify with his engine, does he get to return it? ;) Golly, I hope he kept the receipt.
Kingdom of Heaven
I had the pleasure of seeing this Sunday and though it does not have the emotional impact that Gladiator did, it was a fantastic historical epic. Unlike many directors *cough*Fuqua*cough* when Scott shoots an historical epic, he actually goes for the history. He’s not quite as meticulously detailed as Peter Weir, but he always does make an excellent effort that allows me to enjoy the film without nitpicking.
(Unlike "Troy" in which I was twitching ten minutes into the film.)
As a film, it is quite good and definitely worth the hard earned dime to see it in the theatres. The story/plot is a good one, the characters are solid, though perhaps not incredibly compelling. Saladin is especially well done (a kudos to a man who probably had to compete with thousands of other Persian, Semitic and Arabian actors who would have crawled through broken glass for the role). The actors who play the roles are utterly spectacular with what they have been given. I mean, really. Liam Neeson and Jeremy Irons, how can you lose? The message of tolerance in the Holy Land is an integral part of the story but only once does the audience feel smacked over the head with it.
The only issues I had with it as a film were with Bloom’s character, which sometimes acts in a contradictory manner and is a little too tightly controlled. It would be nice to see the man emote a little more to draw us in. As an audience member, you felt everything Maximus went though in Gladiator, but not as much with Balian.
The battles are, of course, spectacular. Utterly. Completely. We get to see all the best aspects of seige warfare, including using a ballistae for what it was meant to be used for rather than spearing big ugly villans. And the trebuchets....*sigh* And the battles range in size throughout the piece to keep one entertained. There's a bit of exotic forbidden romance for the ladies and enough natual humor scattered throughout to keep one of the darkest times in both Western and Eastern culture breathable.
Now, how does this stack up to a historian?
Actually, fairly well. In broad terms Scott got the story right and the poetic license taken with the characters was something I could easily cope with for drama sake. I could find nothing glaringly wrong with the technology or costumes presented. He even got the medieval cogs and dhows right. About the only major flaw outside the realm of dramatic license with the story and characters, the film had was showing the Templars, the guys in white with the red crosses on their tabards, as subject to the King of Jerusalem. They weren’t. They were a monastic order with their own strongholds along the major pilgrim trails and answered only to the pope.
FYI. David Thewlis’ character is a Hospitaler, a similar order of knights, though less strict about the monastic part of it, answering only to the Pope. As you can imagine, both orders couldn’t stand one another.
The story covers the transition between the First Crusade and the beginning of the Second crusade, which is the most famous one for Richard the Lionheart and his chivalric nemesis: Saladin. The First Crusade was the most successful, if one can apply such a term to a mission that was completely co-opted. The original call to save Jerusalem came not from the Christians in Jerusalem, but from the emperor Alexis II of Byzantium, who was actually more scared of the Seljuk Turks who are running rampant over Middle East towards his capital than he is about getting Jerusalem back. He just figured it was a good ploy to get the Pope of the Roman Catholic Church involved. The problem is by the time the Crusaders got to Jerusalem, the Fatimid Moslems, under whom Jerusalem had flourished as a open city for all religions (though you did have to pay an extra tax if you weren’t Muslim) for several hundred years before the Turk showed up had regained control of the city. And they were just peachy, thanks.
Thank you for calling. Have a nice day.
After three years and tens, maybe hundreds, of thousands dead that was just not good enough. The Crusade became a religious war against all Moslems and the crusaders entered the city and slaughtered all non-Christians inside.
Over the entire course of the crusade, various leaders had taken and claimed various major cities/areas in the Middle East, establishing not a single unified Christian kingdom, but a series of small kingdoms called by historians as the Crusader States. (Any resemblance to the territories controlled by robber barons or warlords is completely coincidental.) By the time the movie starts, we are almost 80 years removed from that final conquest.
There was a Leprous king of Jerusalem at this time: Baldwin the IV who died at the age of 24. Despite his health, he was one of the most capable and honorable leaders the crusader kingdoms had ever seen and was held in high regard on both sides of the battle lines. His sister was Sibylla, wife of Guy De Lusignan. (The De Lusignans are an interesting family. Wherever you are, whenever you are, in the middle ages a De Lusignan pops up to make things interesting in a Chinese curse kind of way.)
However it was she who took the throne out from under the regent after the sudden death of her young son Baldwin the V and then crowned her husband Guy quite willingly. Guy was not an arrogant bastard hell bent on genocide, but something of a pushover who was easily manipulated by those around him.
Raynald however was severely toned down for the script because he was one of those characters that Hollywood could not have invented if they had tried. He was a nutcake, pure and simple. And nutcakes are hard enough to take in our daily lives, but a nutcake with an army is nothing but trouble. Contemporaries of his describe him as “a man of violent impulses, both in sinning and repenting.” kind of like a blood bulima. Utterly paranoid, he once had the Bishop of Antioch stripped, scourged bloody, painted in honey and left tied to a roof for a few days…just because he believed that the Bishop had said something nasty about him to a couple of his friends in private.
Neither Guy nor Reynald were Templars, who must take a vow of chastity, but Reynald did repeatedly attack Moslem caravans in defiance of the treaty, one of which was escorting Saladin sister, though that time Saladin ensured that caravan was well protected and she escaped. Guy actually attempted, weakly as pushovers do, to get Reynald to ameliorate the situation by returning the stolen goods, to which Reynald laughed openly and essentially told Guy to blow himself. He is pretty much the sole reason the Crusader States fell.
And he was killed by Saladin after Guy handed him the cup, which maybe confusing to some of the western audience. Moslem tradition is that if a person has eaten or drunk from your hand, they are your guest and fall under your protection. By Guy handing Reynald the cup, Raynald was not a guest and Saladin could kill him at his leisure, which was immediately. Guy did go on to be the court amusement at Damascus.
Saladin is the major power player in the region at this time as the one man who has unified the squabbling Moslem nations in the area against the crusaders. Saladin is a fascinating character to historians because it’s really hard to believe that someone that good was that successful for that long. Not that Saladin was a tolerant pacifist driven to violence. Heck no. His single goal in life was to rid his lands, whether they knew they were his lands or not (ie. the Middle East), of the Infidel. Period. And if he had to paint the landscape red to do it, fine. But while he was using a great amount of common sense to do so, he also managed to do so with a chivalric style that impressed even his enemies.
Once, in the time period that the movie happens in, Saladin had chased Reynald back to Kerak where it turned out the Reynald was hosting a wedding part for his stepson. Reynald's wife sent plates of the wedding banquet out to Saladin's tent. He was delighted and asked in what tower the newlyweds would be staying. He then refrained from bombarding the tower until morning. Once during a battle between King Richard and himself, when Richard was unhorsed Saladin sent him out another mount.
10 points for style, and upteen zillion for substance because he did drive the crusaders from much of the Middle East and held it for his entire lifetime.
Balian of Ibelin, our protagonist, was the man in charge of the garrison at the last stand of the Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem. Balian, known as Balian the Younger (Guess what his dad was known as? No, it wasn’t Geoffery) was perfectly legitimate (as well as older) and his family were players in the factional infighting between crusaders. The family seems to have been some poor knights (possibly Italian) making good as nothing appears about them prior to Balian the Elder making Constable of Jaffa. Good service earns him the Lordship of Ibelien and Ramla. Needless to say, Balian the Younger was not pumping forges in France but was watching and playing in the politics of the crusader states. One of Balian's elder brothers ended up with Ramla and Balian got Ibelien. Balian and his brother were in the anti-Sybilla/Guy faction but ended up in the disastrous battle of Hattien. From which he went to Tyre and there Saladin gave him permission to enter Jerusalem to fetch out his wife and children. Once there he relented to the people’s demand and took over the defense of the city (but not until writing a letter explaining and apologizing to Saladin for breaking his word, Saladin forgave him.) He didn’t hold the against Saladin's massive army for three days but for two weeks, and he did threaten to raise it and all the holy sites to the ground if Saladin continued his assault, and he was man enough for Saladin to take him at his word.
Though I utterly love the brief exchange in the film here, I doubt Saladin would have ever said such a thing. He was a good follower of Mohammed. In the deepest recess of his common sense, he sure as heck might have thought it though.
However, Balian did not win complete freedom for the people of Jeruselem. They had to pay their ransom out. Though Saladin did grant a thousand captives each to Balian and the Christian bishop of the city, Saladin’s bother freed a thousand as an offering to Allah and Saladin remitted the payment for the elderly. But 15,000 poor Christians ended up on the slave markets of Damascus.
As well as restoring the Dome of the Rock, Saladin also reopened the Church of the Sepulcher to Christian worshippers three days after he captured Jerusalem.
It would be nice to think of Balian just going off to have a well earned beer and fading into happy obscurity with the girl of his dreams, but he remained a player in crusader politics and even received a lordship from Saladin himself.
Thus endeth the First Crusade and as you can see, where Scott deviated he really didn't do so *that* much.
Adendum: There is one little deviation in Kingdom of Heaven that I forgot to mention that while it does not detract from the film in anyway, I thought folks might find interesting.
When Balian says his oath as a knight, Geoffery hits him “So you’ll remember it”. Knights were struck as part of the initiatory ceremony, but it wasn’t to remember their oath. It was the last time a noble or knight could strike them without risk of reprisal, so it was kind of a ceremonial “Good Bye” to their role as an underling. Depending on the culture and how well the prospective knight and the lord got on, the “buffet” could be a light cuff to a full round house. There are several accounts of knights being knocked flat on their ass by it.
Oh, and "Tiberius" was actually Raymond III of Tripoli, Lord of Tiberius, hence the name. I guess Scott thought "Reynald" and "Raymond" would get confusing.
BTW
I will say it was nice to see Orli kicking butt again. After seeing his work in LOTR and POTC one couldn’t sit through Troy without thinking, “Aw man, c’on. Orli can kick this guys ass!”
posted by KiplingKat | 2:53 PM
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