Palmerin

Every time BM and TV introduce a movie that involves someone like Dalton Trumbo and other blacklisted people, there is sure to be mention of the Unamerican Activities Committee. This example of historical context should be applied to, well, practically every movie ever made. For example, when TV introduced THE MASTER OF BALLANTRAE on 17-06-2017, it would have been very enlightening to speak about the Jacobite Rebellions; certainly the Italian who rendered the name of that movie as THE PRINCE OF SCOTLAND is unlikely to have known the impact of the Battle of Culloden on Scottish history. Scotland certainly had a huge impact on the making of this particular feature, as attested by its abundance of Keltic names, such as FLYNN, CAMPBELL and LIVESEY. Le Roy's QUO VADIS is an even better example. Henryk Sienkiewicz wrote his novel as an allegory where the Roman Empire is the Romanov monarchy, Nero is Nicholas II, and the Christians are the very unhappy subject peoples of the Russians, such as Poland, whose Latin name was LYGIA. In the 1951 production, the Roman Empire is now the Soviet Union, and the Antichrist known to history as Nero is clearly Stalin. This background to the movie and the original book is of much greater value than trivia about how Elizabeth Taylor was supposed to play the role that eventually went to Deborah Kerr, and how Sophia Loren was an extra in the crowd scenes. One regrettable thing about HS's allegory is that its analogies are not perfect. The Roman Republic and Empire was one of the greatest, if not the greatest, civilizations in history; an outstanding example is the fact that English is written in the Latin alphabet, and that about half the words in the English language, such as CONSTITUTION and REPUBLIC, come from Latin. The Soviet empire was a culture of kitsch, with little of value to show for the less than three quarters of a century that it lasted. Prokofiev and Shostakovich certainly wrote some great music, but also a lot of junk of which they were heartily ashamed. Ever heard the LENINGRAD SYMPHONY? A lot of empty sound and fury, signifying nothing!

And speaking of the House Borja=Borgia, one of the present day descendants of HH Alexander VI is the King of Spain, who also has Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Velazquez among his many illustrious ancestors.

Jeremy Irons does look quite a bit like DD-L, but even less like HH Alexander VI.

Is DD-L ashamed of THE BORGIAS, in which he played an historical character to whom he bears absolutely no resemblance? (Then again, that miniseries bears hardly any resemblance to the events that supposedly inspired it).

ARID? Dont you mean ACID, as in sweet and sour? My favorite Chinese dish is sweet and sour pork, but I would not use those terms to describe BM's limp stabs at humour.

The Italian poster for Keighley's THE MASTER OF BALLANTRAE rendered its title as THE PRINCE OF SCOTLAND. That is because, in Italian, the title of prince is not limited to royalty, but instead applies to members of eminent families such as the Derrys of Stevenson's story and the most illustrious House of Visconti.

How do you pronounce ARANTXA? ARANCHA; TX is the letter CH in Basque.

How would you dress if you wanted to look dressy but not stuffy? I like those Russian tunics that have their buttons on the right side of the chest.

Look up the account BELIANIS at deviantart.com, which includes several selfportraits.

So why don't B, M, and Mr dress in a more comfortable and attractive manner? I have not worn ties since the 1970s, and no dress code could persuade me to strangle myself with those garish hangman's nooses.

Why is there objection to N--E--G--R--O, which is simply BLACK in Spanish?

What is the ethnicity of Solitaire in LIVE AND LET DIE? If she is supposed to be mulatto, she doesn't look anything like the many mulattos I have met in PR and Florida.

She is an employee of a business, so shouldn't she dress like her fellow hosts Baldwin, Mankiewicz and Muller?

The Great Tyrant deserved more scenes.

To quote SOUTH PACIFIC: THERE IS NOTHING LIKE A DAME, NOTHING IN THE WORLD! THERE IS NOTHING YOU CAN NAME THAT IS ANYTHING LIKE A DAME!

That is a capital offense of practically all BONDS: that they reveal the identity of the villain at the very beginning, instead of building the suspense by keeping the villain and his plot a secret until the very climax.

The MacGuffin of CHARADE is a trio of postage stamps that are all STAMPED ON THE SAME ENVELOPE. How is it that nobody finds it odd that stamps of three different countries are on the same envelope? And one of those countries is the KINGDOM OF HAWAII!

The entire plot of the 1968 PLANET OF THE APES, where Taylor witnesses what are obviously orangutans, gorillas and chimpanzees riding horses and shooting bolt action rifles, who speak in 20th century English, use the Latin alphabet and Latin names--and only at the very end, when he sees the remains of the Statue of Liberty, does he realize that he is back on Earth!

Remember what I posted a while ago, about support for statehood being based entirely on a greedy desire to pick the pockets of Uncle Sam?

DEMOLITION MAN: Simon Phoenix to Dr. Cocteau: You know what you remind me of? An evil Mr. Rogers.

Theater patrons in PR only need sugar and caffeine to get good and loud and rowdy.

A base of rice powder, a touch of rouge, one or two mouches: that was it. Eye makeup and lip coloring was the mark of streetwalkers, as can be seen in Gillray, Hogarth and Rowlandson.

Such a constantly repeated anachronism counts as a plot hole because anybody who has lived a number of decades should be aware, for example, that the hair and clothing fashions of his teen years are no longer the hair and clothing fashions of his fifties. It's something so OBVIOUS, it defies explanation that someone as careful as Kubrick, who made BL look like an animated 18th century painting, would commit a mistake that could have been avoided if he had looked carefully at the women portrayed by Gainsborough, Ramsay, Reynolds, Romney and Zoffany.

As someone who is still majorly perplexed by the fact that movies with the star power of BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES and TOWN AND COUNTRY turned out to be ABORTOS DEL INFIERNO=HELLISH MISBEGOTTEN CRITTERS, I would like a few evenings dedicated to the exhibition of notorious turkeys, accompanied with a discussion about how such ambitious projects degenerated into the stinkiest of bombs.

THE HUGEST PLOT HOLE EVER, WHICH HAPPENS IN PRACTICALLY EVERY MOVIE SET IN THE PAST!: the women, and to a lesser extent, the men, have their hair and makeup--facial hair in the case of the men--done in the fashion of when the movie was made, instead of in the manner appropriate for the period of the story. Marisa Berenson in BARRY LYNDON wears makeup so garish that she looks more like a 1975 disco queen than like a high born lady of the 18th century; Errol Flynn wears his pencil line moustache even in movies set in times where that style of moustache did not exist, or, in the case of THE MASTER OF BALLANTRAE, facial hair was almost totally out of fashion.