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Reviews
Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief (2010)
Dumbed down sword and sorcery for American teens
Percy Jackson discovers that he is the son of a god (Poseidon) and has been framed for stealing Zeus's thunderbolt. His mother is kidnapped and taken to the Underworld. He must rescue her and clear his name.
Why does anyone think Percy took it? No one presents any evidence or a theory or anything.
And as for Hades – this can refer to the Underworld or the the god of the Underworld (this confusion is sidestepped in the film) but Hades IS NOT HELL. The Underworld was where all mortals went when they died. Depicting it as a place of damnation was just Christian propaganda to help win recruits. (Why go down there when you can go up there to heaven?)
10,000 BC (2008)
Amusingly bad movie.
So our hero lives in the tundra hunting woolly mammoths. One day the bad guys raid the village and kidnap people (including the hero's missus). He and some friends set off to rescue them.
Crossing the mountains they are suddenly in jungle. On the other side of the jungle we seem to be in Africa. Is this how they teach geography these days? Our hero raises a ragtag army, and reaches the bad guys just as they get on boats and disappear off.
Rather than follow the river WHICH IS MADE OF WATER our friends walk off into the middle of the desert with out any food or drink. They reach the bad guys city which seems to be in Egypt (Is that a sphinx?) where they are using slaves to build pyramids. That was a long way to go for a dozen slaves. How on earth is that cost effective? These bad guys are going to go bust.
Biggest laugh out moment was seeing woolly mammoths being used to drag stone blocks in the middle of the desert. Incidentally I seem to remember that Egypt was lush and green in 10,000 BC. Hero rescues his people. Worst moment was the twist at the end which let the film have its cake and eat it. Lazy film.
The Mark Steel Lectures (2003)
Excellent!
Absolutely stunning and entertaining short series of programmes covering great historical people.
In each 30 minute episode Mark manages to deliver a summary of the person's life and work at breakneck speed, put into a modern context by hilarious asides.
What I really like is the loving attention to detail e.g. fake newspaper pages revealing in-jokes etc. These flash on to the screen so quickly that you really need to pause a recording to appreciate them all. Plus more become apparent with repeated viewing.
Immensely watchable.