Haven't really done much of anything...

[shipperx]

I've pretty much been a useless, lazy bum for the weekend (which is always nice). Spent a truly astonishing amount of time watching the marathon airing of "Band of Brothers" on the History Channel. Incredibly violent mini-series. Damn scary. I'm not sure that its a drawback, but one issue is that with a few exceptions, it was often difficult to distinguish one soldier from another. I was surprised by how small David Schwimmer's role was. Collin Hanks did a fairly good job (I vaguely remember reading on some Roswell board at the time that he had a role in the series, but as he wasn't in the first 8 eps I had thought that he must have been little more than an extra. Turned out he had a highlighted role in a single one of the eps as a West Pointer who was only very briefly assigned to the company. All in all it showed WWII for the terrifying ordeal it no doubt was and when they liberated the death camp, I started crying.

I'm cheap and have never paid for HBO so even though the series played a few years ago, this is the first time I've watched it.

I also watched the documentary on the historical origns of King Arthur. It was also interesting, but I'm still rather annoyed by the commercials for the new Jerry Bruckheimer King Arthur movie where suddenly Gweneviere is running around in Braveheart makeup with a bare midriff on the battle field. Give me a break. King Arthur and Lancelot look cute though.

Comments

[kassto.livejournal.com]

Re the historical origins for King Arthur -- well I'm the soppy type that believes he actually existed but I have a very unromantic vision of what he was like -- Rosemary Sutcliff's book Sword at Sunset seems the most accurate to me -- Romano-Celtic warlord, uniting the various British fiefdoms for a few short decades in the 5th century AD to drive out the invading Saxons, and eventually they lost. Bring on the Dark Ages.

No Camelot, no Round Table, no Knights and questing, no grail -- that was all medieval romantic bollocks.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

That's pretty close to the conclusion drawn in the documentary. The people interviewed basically seemed to believe that it was an evolving legend that perhaps started with a Roman/Britton warlord named Ambrosius (sp?) and very possibly his successor. And that exploits of another Britton warlord of a later generation were added onto it. Also that it was propogandized by the Normans. That as the Saxons drove out the original Celts/Brittons many of those ended up in Brittany/Normandy in France. And that when the Normans then took over Great Brittan the tales of Arthur were used by Normans as establishing their right to rule in Great Brittain. The Norman connection was also used to explain the addition of Lancelot to the story who they felt was probably an entirely fictional creation.

And I tended to agree with the scholar who said that while it's interesting to search out the historical origins of Arthur, what's really most important is the legend as it is the legend/myth that holds the greatest sway in the history of Great Brittain. The actual person, whoever he was. . .if he was even one person, is far less important than the heroic legend that permeats western mythology.

And actually, I think that the astonishing part of it, and why it lasts is that it's such a complex and interesting legend. The whole Arthur/Quinevere/Lancelot triangle with two good men, the Mordred as betrayer/son. The "perfect" kingdom with the fatal flaw that falls apart. Psychologically it ends up a very interesting myth and that's really probably more important in the long term than the warlord(s) the myths were probably initially predicated upon.

Though I always love history of where things really originated.

[cy-girl.livejournal.com]

I had the same problem with BoB in recognizing soldiers. People who I thought were killed were actually just wounded so when they later rejoined the unit, it was quite a surprize. We had all the characters sorted out by the final episode.

My favorite episode was the one focusing on the medic.

Yummm...Clive Owen in armor.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

For some reason I liked Malarky a lot and was happy to see that he made it through. I think the most terrifying ep was the Battle of the Bulge. I think that may have been my favorite ep. I'm not sure. There were several excellent episodes in the mini-series. The one that caused me to cry, though, was the liberation of the death camp.