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Aug. 3rd, 2004
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Review time
Aug. 3rd, 2004 07:36 amFilm
I watched Baltasar Kormákur's The Sea last night. It's only the second Icelandic film I have seen and it's worth seeing, if not always easy to watch. In some ways it struck me as being an Icelandic version of Twin Town with Swansea replaced by a decaying fishing village but The Sea is crueller and less broad in its humour. It's easy to recognise the Iceland of the sagas. The people are hard, greedy and cruel. Rape, incest and uncontrollable anger are dominant themes and the sea and the bleak Icelandic landscape form an appropriate setting.
Book
Geoffrey Elton's Reform and Reformation--England, 1509-1558. More hard, greedy and cruel people; in this case the middle three Tudor monarchs and many of their advisors. I read this one because there is probably no period of English history that I know less about than the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI and Mary. What little I thought I knew was mostly driven by movies like A Man For All Seasons and Lady Jane which left me with positive impressions of, for example, Edward VI, and a very negative view of Thomas Cromwell. Elton's view is very different. Cromwell in many ways is the hero of the piece; architect of the modern English state and builder of the foundations of the Reformation in England. Edward is an adolescent bigot with an ego as big as his father's. Elton even speculates that he may have been responsible for settling the succession on Jane Grey against the advice of Northumberland.
Mary and Henry VIII don't look any more attractive. Mary comes across as dim, bigotted and with a disastrous taste in counsellors. Henry as an unprincipled, rather lazy megalomaniac with a nasty habit of turning on people who had served him well. All in all, the book reinforces my belief that the Tudors were "a bad thing". Richard III remains one of my favourite monarchs and I bear a grudge against his usurper and said usurpers descendants.
I watched Baltasar Kormákur's The Sea last night. It's only the second Icelandic film I have seen and it's worth seeing, if not always easy to watch. In some ways it struck me as being an Icelandic version of Twin Town with Swansea replaced by a decaying fishing village but The Sea is crueller and less broad in its humour. It's easy to recognise the Iceland of the sagas. The people are hard, greedy and cruel. Rape, incest and uncontrollable anger are dominant themes and the sea and the bleak Icelandic landscape form an appropriate setting.
Book
Geoffrey Elton's Reform and Reformation--England, 1509-1558. More hard, greedy and cruel people; in this case the middle three Tudor monarchs and many of their advisors. I read this one because there is probably no period of English history that I know less about than the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI and Mary. What little I thought I knew was mostly driven by movies like A Man For All Seasons and Lady Jane which left me with positive impressions of, for example, Edward VI, and a very negative view of Thomas Cromwell. Elton's view is very different. Cromwell in many ways is the hero of the piece; architect of the modern English state and builder of the foundations of the Reformation in England. Edward is an adolescent bigot with an ego as big as his father's. Elton even speculates that he may have been responsible for settling the succession on Jane Grey against the advice of Northumberland.
Mary and Henry VIII don't look any more attractive. Mary comes across as dim, bigotted and with a disastrous taste in counsellors. Henry as an unprincipled, rather lazy megalomaniac with a nasty habit of turning on people who had served him well. All in all, the book reinforces my belief that the Tudors were "a bad thing". Richard III remains one of my favourite monarchs and I bear a grudge against his usurper and said usurpers descendants.
iKobo is crap
Aug. 3rd, 2004 10:18 amI have been trying to pay for an eBay purchase using a service called iKobo.com. It's basically a PayPal clone but it is utter and total crap. They send emails with references to needed links but which don't have the links. Their website is all Javascript but none of it works on my Mac. They don't have a toll free number and they don't return calls when one leaves a message. Total bloody disaster!
Kitten feeding
Aug. 3rd, 2004 01:47 pmThe kitten hasn't shown much interest in canned cat food yet but we just introduced him to kibble. He's snarfing it like nobody's business though of course he has spilled it all over the place.