Note: Published in the TV Guide of The Marshall Independent.

Critical reactions to “The Adventures of Tintin” seem to be either love it or hate it, I confess to mixed feelings.

I have been passingly familiar with Tintin longer than Spielberg actually, because as a boy some of my best friends were French and had the books around. But I was not a fan myself, so the character was sort of new to me, and entirely new to my 10-year-old son.

Tintin was directed by Steven Spielberg and produced by Peter Jackson, based on the long-running series of comic books by Belgian artist Georges Prosper Remi (1907 – 1983,) better known by his pen name Hergé.

You’d think a combination like that couldn’t be beat. Indiana Jones meets Lord of the Rings, via one of the most popular European comics ever.
Spielberg became a fan in 1981 when he read a review comparing “Raiders of the Lost Ark” to Tintin. Herge returned the compliment when he declared Spielberg the only man who could bring his creation to the screen.

Tragically, Herge died a few weeks before they were to meet.

The film, Spielberg’s first animated feature, was made in 3-D using motion capture, the technique where the movement is recorded and translated on to a digital model. I saw it on flat screen but didn’t feel I missed anything.

The major supporting character Captain Haddock was played by Andy Serkis, famous for his uncanny mocap performance as Gollum in Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings.”

The film follows young reporter/adventurer Tintin (Jamie Bell) who discovers a secret clue to the location of a pirates treasure in an antique model ship he buys at a flea market. A villain Ivan Ivanovitch Sakharine (Daniel “Bond, James Bond” Craig) immediately shows up and attempts to buy, then steal the ship, and then kidnaps Tintin and imprisons him on a ship bound for Algeria. There he meets Captain Haddock and through a series of non-stop action scenes discovers the history of the families of Sakharine and Haddock, the location of part of the treasure, and a map to the rest of the treasure, whereupon the movie ends on the promise of at least one sequel.

The reviewers were right, the action of Tintin is uncannily like Indiana Jones adventures. So much so that I automatically assumed this was Spielberg doing Spielberg with someone else’s character. Not so, it was evidently the meeting of kindred spirits in a match made in Hollywood heaven.

And yet, though I certainly don’t mind movies depicting newspaper reporters as action heros, there was something underwhelming about it. Something I can’t quite put my finger on.

The action was slam-bang, the plot convoluted enough to keep one mentally occupied. There are moments of maddening tension, as when the bumbling Interpol detectives Thompson and Thompson are admiring Aristides Silk’s “wallet collection” and you’re jumping up and down waiting for these two idiots to realize the fellow is confessing to being the pickpocket they’re after.

But I left the theater in a mood not much different than I went in, and my son had nothing to say about the movie from that moment to bedtime.

Steve Rose, movie critic from The Guardian said the film entered the “uncanny valley.”

That’s the hypothetical point at which a robot or 3D computer animation starts to look too human. When a character looks human-like but not too humanoid the theory goes, it inspires affection. At the point it starts to look too human, it inspires revulsion.

Not quite, I think. What I felt was not revulsion.

What I think it was, was that when you see Indiana Jones doing these wildly improbably but barely possible stunts, like doing a balancing act between two speeding vehicles or hitching a ride on a submarine by clinging to the periscope, you can suspend disbelief enough to be thrilled by the danger and excitement.

The trouble is, Tinin is neither cartoon nor human. The action does not suspend the laws of nature like a cartoon. You don’t see any character walking off a cliff and not falling until he notices he’s walking on air for instance. But when he does these Indy Jones type of stunts, I was left with a feeling of, “Big deal, he’s a cartoon.”

Maybe I’m wrong, box office has been great around the world. Maybe I’ll get used to this eventually. But for now, though I’ll probably see the sequel, it didn’t smack me right between the eyes like Raiders or Lord of the Rings.

On the other hand, what else does?

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Published in The Marshall Independent TV Guide

I really didn’t want to like this movie, so it was with some trepidation that I decided to review it, with visions of mobs of angry teenage girls besieging the Independent’s office with torches and pitchforks dancing in my head.

Plus I have met and liked one of the actors (Dimitri the vampire) and it’s kind of touchy critiquing the work of someone you know, however slightly.

But I was trained as an anthropologist with a strong background in folklore studies since childhood. This recent trend in reworking the vampire legends offends me professionally.

Let’s get this straight, a vampire is not Anne Rice’s “dark, Byronic figure.” A vampire is a corpse risen from the dead. In some legends reanimated by a demon. They could be victims of other vampires, atheists, illegitimate children, or other outcasts and undesirables come back from the dead to exact a geek’s revenge on society.

And they have bad breath.

Admittedly there have been some pretty good modern reworkings the vampire theme, discarding much or most of the supernatural elements of the legends. One is vampirism-is-a-disease, inspired by theories that vampire legends may have drawn on observations of victims suffering from pernicious anemia, porphyria, or rabies. The “Blade” series is an example.

Another is that vampires are another species that prey on humans from their position one link higher on the food chain. Good examples of this are “The Vampire Tapestry” by Suzy McGee Charnas, and “Fevre Dream” by George R.R. Martin.

The “Twilight” series falls into the vampirism-as-a-communicable-disease camp. If you can call an infection that makes you stronger, faster, and gives you psychic powers and everlasting youth a disease. There is that overwhelming desire for human blood thing, but evidently that can be controlled by strong self-discipline and animal blood, according to author Stephanie Meyers.

There is so much about this movie that grates. To begin with it drags, if you’re not in the mood to watch beautiful scenery (Oregon and Rio) while waiting for the action to start. And for those of us who have actually been present for a partner’s pregnancy and delivery, it makes one kind of queasy as Bella’s life-threatening pregnancy advances, and definitely gross when she drinks human blood and delivers by Caesarian section performed by amateurs.

And oddly, since Robert Pattinson (Edward) and Kristen Stewart (Bella) are reportedly a real-life couple, there is something missing from their on-screen romance. Edward is 80-odd years older than Bella but we don’t see a hint of the tensions, misunderstandings, and sweet poignancy couples with a marked age difference experience. It is mentioned Edward struggles between his love for Bella and his desire to murder her for the blood in her veins, but again it doesn’t show in their performances much.

(Russian-English actor George Sanders once remarked, “It is impossible to be in love with a woman without experiencing upon occasion, a desire to strangle her.” I suspect women feel a different urge than strangulation, and am quite certain it’s more than occasionally.)

But all that said, I have to say the popularity of the Twilight series among young people fascinates me.

I think all thoughtful people must realize this is a bad time for lovers in our society. We are conflicted about what the nature of real manliness is, somewhere between the extremes of wimpiness and brutality.

What I see here are young, and not so young, girls longing for manly strength, gallantry, and lustiness tempered by honor and discipline. A man who could tear apart anyone who threatens them, but who wouldn’t willingly harm a hair on their head. A man who is stirred by their femininity but can keep his hands to himself. A man in whose arms they’d feel safe jumping off a high cliff into a tropical pool.

Teenage Bella is courted by not one, but two such men. Bitter rivals who it appears will become fast friends. And it is strongly hinted, the rejected suitor will become the hero her newborn daughter will need in a dangerous world.

I see the wish-fulfillment fantasy of every girl becoming a woman, in a society unsure of what a man should be. And I wonder what it means that this is presented as a fantasy.

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Note: Printed in the Marshall Independent TV Guide

What you first see when you tune into “Knights of Mayhem,” a new reality show on of all places the National Geographic Channel, appears to be a bunch of smack-talking, foul-mouthed rednecks with egos bigger than their outsized selves. Then you see them in 130 pounds of plate armor mounted on 2,000-plus pound horses, charging at each other with 11-foot wooden poles at 30 miles per hour.

What they’re doing is called “jousting” which was what men did in the Late Middle Ages instead of football.

Jousting originated as a combat sport for mounted knights in the High Middle Ages. By the 15th and 16th centuries it had evolved pretty far from its martial origins, using specially designed jousting armor much heavier and less articulated than armor for warfare.

This by the way, is what led to the popular misconception that a knight unhorsed and lying on the ground could not get up due to the weight of his armor.

The death of King Henry II of France in a joust in 1559 is generally held to mark the end of jousting as a sport. Since then there have been periodic revivals, mostly of what is called “theatrical jousting,” where the joust is carefully choreographed with a pre-determined “winner.”
This isn’t that. These guys in the Ultimate Jousting Championship engage in the real thing, breaking lances on each other’s armor and trying to knock them off their horses.

It’s worth mentioning that in 2007 a jouster in England was killed in precisely the same way as Henry II when a splinter from a lance got him right through the eye-slits of the helmet. Concussions are common, as are injuries to the hands and shoulders.

The UJC is the brainchild of Charlie Andrews, who founded the organization in 2010 with the intention of popularizing jousting as the Next Big Thing in extreme sports. Charlie was taught jousting by Patrick Lambke, aka “The Black Knight,” onetime mentor and now bitter rival.

Charlie, to put it mildly, has an ego. He’s proclaimed that it is vital for the future of the sport that he win the World Championship.

Considering the “World” in this case is no more than a dozen guys who meet at various venues around the country, that tends to grate on people’s nerves.

Charlie is a tad obsessive about jousting. He’s admitted he’s gone broke and lost his family trying to promote the sport.

Add to that a lot of typical reality-show bickering, and talk like, “If you put my grandmother up on a horse I’d knock her on her…” and you’ve got a pretty high irritation factor.

Plus, jousting is actually a very sophisticated sport requiring superior horsemanship and fine point control of a long lance that is not light while atop a bouncing horse. The uneducated eye will not see the subtleties of technique and become easily bored.

Not to mention jousting is expensive. It requires a full suit of custom-made plate armor, a carefully-trained horse only slightly smaller than an elephant which consumes massive amounts of grain, not hay, and the rig to haul it all around in. Factor in training time and that $20,000 purse for the championship doesn’t look all that big.

So who does this kind of thing?

To begin with, big guys. If jousting had weight classes, a 200 pound man would be a lightweight. Other than that, former soldiers, football players, one former MMA fighter, guys who grew up on horses, a few who learned to ride just so they could joust.

And why do they do it?

Glory. The charge that comes from mastery of something so strenuous, so dangerous, and so cool.
You see real jousting, and you don’t wonder where all that ego comes from.

Now if only they could learn to talk with the delicate courtesy of the knights of old.

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Movie review: Immortals. Starring: Henry Cavill, Mickey Rourke, Frida Pinto, John Hurt. Directed by Tarsem Singh. (Published in The Marshall Independent TV Guide.)

Years ago at a graduate school party I was having a typical grad student discussion of Deep Stuff with some Asian fellow-grads about Western Civilization.

Trying to explain what I thought was the basis for the self-identification of North Americans and Europeans as “Western” I said, “No matter where our ancestors came from, if we are Western then in some essential way we are all Hebrews and we are all Greeks.”

Once upon a time when I was young, all students were exposed to the Greek myths at least a little by the end of grade school. I am no longer sure if that’s true, which is why I welcome movies based on the Greek myths reintroducing another generation to some of the founding traditions of our civilization.

When you translate ancient myths into novels or movies, there are several options open to you.

You can use special effects to recreate the fantastical elements of the classical myths and do a fairly straightforward story based on the myth, perhaps with some modifications for modern audiences. This was done brilliantly in Ray Harryhausen’s “Jason and the Argonauts” (1963,) and pretty well in “Clash of the Titans” in 1981, and not quite as well but with the benefit of CGI in 2010.

You can euhemerize the story. Euhemeros was a Greek who lived in the 4th century BC. He theorized that myths were fantastic or allegorical accounts based on real historical events and people. Euhemerization is a kind of back formation based on a theory of what the real people and events that inspired the myths might actually have been.

This is how poet Robert Graves treated the story of the argonauts in his novel, “Hercules My Shipmate,” portraying a world of men motivated by fear of angry gods and vengeful ghosts, and banded together in fraternities with totems such as the horse (“centaurs,”) or goat (“fauns.”)
You can take a mythological character and the broad outlines of his legend and create a whole new series of adventures for him. Such as the lightweight but fun Kevin Sorbo “Hercules” TV series. One may always hope this will motivate some kids to look up the original myths.

And lately there has been a science fiction approach to the myths, where the gods are interpreted as aliens or inter-dimensional beings who inspired the myth makers.

This was the approach used in an original Star Trek episode, “Who Mourns for Adonis?” and recently in the Marvel Comics production “Thor.”

Or you can totally disregard the original story, rip off a few names from mythology, and call it ancient Greece.

That was what director Tarsem Singh did in this piece of dreck, “Immortals.”

There is no resemblance to the myths of Theseus (and by the way, the correct pronunciation is “Thee-soos,” not “Thee-see-us,”) Phaedra, or Hyperion.

There is a plot of sorts, the quest of the hero for a Weapon of Power that Unleashes Unimaginable Evil.

There are a lot of predictable developments you’ve seen before. Not necessarily a bad thing, myths are stories told again and again that we never get tired of. When the hero and the love interest, in this case a virgin prophetess (a al “The Scorpion King,”) consummate their attraction for each other this early in the movie, you know the hero is going to die in the end after fathering a son (“Terminator.”)

But mostly nothing hangs together. Plot developments are introduced, and just left hanging.

Theseus isn’t the son of a princess and either a king or the god Poseidon, His mother was raped and is the village cast-off. King Hyperion reveals he hates the gods because his family all died in a plague, and he was a peasant like Theseus who worked his way up to king and war lord. Phaedra the prophetess gives herself to Theseus because foresight is an intolerable burden, etc.

And what is done with these admittedly intriguing plot lines?

NOTHING! Zero, zip, nada.

On the other hand there are lots of good fight scenes, Henry Cavill is hunky, and Frida Pinto is definitely easy on the eyes. Treat it as eye-candy and you’ll be OK with it. But if it’s the Greek myths you want, find a DVD of “Jason and the Argonauts” for your kids.

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Note: My personal blog is on indefinite hiatus, however I am cross-posting from my newspaper blog at The Marshall Independent and the print-only TV Guide.

“If the rich could hire the poor to die for them, the poor would make a very good living.” – Jewish proverb

Imagine a world where time is money – literally.

Writer/director Andrew Niccol’s “In Time,” is set in a distant future when everyone is issued 25 years plus one at birth. At 25 people stop aging, but get one more year of life, measured on a digital clock on their forearm. They must work, gamble, or steal for time to pay their rent, bus fare, etc. Time can be bought, given, or stolen. When their clock runs down to zero, they die.

Will Salas (Justin Timberlake) lives in a “ghetto.” He and his mother (Olivia Wilde) live day to day, going to work each day to earn another day of life.

Then Will is given a century of life by a suicidal rich man slumming in the ghetto. When his mother clocks out and dies in his arms Will determines to invade the precincts of the very rich and stir things up a bit.

The notion of government regulating the length of citizens’ lives has been done before, but Niccol’s treatment is brilliantly original.

That didn’t prevent SciFi writer Harlan Ellison from suing, claiming close similarity to his 1965 short story, “’Repent Harlequin!’ Said the Ticktockman.’”

In this writer’s humble opinion, the similarity was purely that of general theme. Jack Vance would have had a marginally better case for copyright infringement for his 1956 novel, “To Live Forever.” Or for that matter “Bonnie and Clyde,” (pretty couple robs banks together,) or Patty Hearst (kidnapped heiress joins her kidnapper.)

Some of the characters are over a century old, but Niccols had to use only actors who could pass for 25.

George Orwell said, “At 50 everyone has the face they deserve.”

So how do you show age when nobody ages? When faces aren’t sculpted by their life?

Niccol created a startling effect by casting a youthful and somewhat effeminate-looking Vincent Kartheiser, 32, as the super-rich Phillipe Weis. (How rich? “Aeons,” says his daughter Sylvia (Amanda Seyfried.)) When Phillipe meets Will, he introduces him to three young beauties with smooth, unlined faces – as his wife, mother-in-law, and daughter.

Rich immortals live in a smothering cocoon. When Will buys a hot car he’s asked where he wants to display it.

“Display? I’m going to drive it,” he says.

Sylvia lives in a mansion on a beach, but has never been in the water or played in the breakers until Will shows her that life without risk is no life at all. Syvia then becomes an enthusiastic devotee of risky adventures such as robbing daddy’s banks for time to give to the poor.

A good time is had by all with car chase/smashups, shoot ‘em ups, and run-for-your-life suspense.

But there’s some food for thought here as well.

If you had all the time in the word, how would you spend it?

If you could live as long as you wanted, would you hoard your life like a miser, or embrace it with all its risks?

If others had to die so you could live forever, would you?

And it’s nice to see that question addressed outside of a vampire movie for once.

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Note: My personal blog is on indefinite hiatus, however I am cross-posting from my newspaper blog at The Marshall Independent and the print-only TV Guide.

Real Steel has an extremely unoriginal plot line. And you know what, who cares? I liked it.

Real Steel is loosely based on a 1956 short story by Richard Matheson which was first made into a Twilight Zone episode in 1964. “Loosely based” means it has about the same relationship to the short story/TZ episode as it does to the Rock’em Sock’em Robots toy, which also premiered in 1964. They’re all about robot boxers.

The movie was begat by way of The Champ, first made with Wallace Beery and Jackie Cooper in 1931, then remade with Jon Voigt and Ricky Schroder in 1979. However Real Steel delivers a happy ending begat by Rocky. Which is a relief since the ‘79 version of “The Champ” has been called “the saddest movie in the world” and is used in psychology experiments to make people cry.

Like “Steel” the movie is about a former boxer, now owner/manager of a fighting robot. Like “The Champ” he is an irresponsible lush, a gambler, and has a son.

That’s the point of departure. “The Champ” was raising a son who had never known his mother. “Real Steel’s” Charlie Kenton, played by Hugh Jackman, never knew he had a son by an old girlfriend until the message to attend a custody hearing lands on him.

“The Champ’s” son adored his irresponsible gambling lush of a dad. Charlie’s son Max, played by aspiring scene-stealer Dakota Goyo, thinks dad is a jerk. Max also thinks he’s smarter than Charlie and proves it more than once.

To further miscegenate the plot, Goyo played in the 2007 movie “Resurrecting the Champ” about a homeless man who was a former heavyweight contender. He wasn’t a robot though.

“The Champ” fought for money so he could keep his son, rather than give him to his birth mother and her rich husband.

Charlie is about to blithely sign custody of his son over to the boy’s aunt and her rich husband, when he figures out he can extort money from rich husband by offering to surrender custody only after they’ve had a European vacation.

“The Champ” redeemed himself through his love for his son. Charlie eventually straightens his act out by listening to good advice, from Max and his sometime partner and sometime girlfriend Bailey, played by Evangeline Lilly.

Lilly splendidly pulls off playing the tough chick who is nonetheless very attractive, perhaps due to being radiantly pregnant during filming.

Charlie’s luck begins to change when after loosing his last fighting robot and welshing on his bets, he takes Max on a midnight raid of a robot junkyard looking for spare parts. There Max discovers an obsolete early-model sparring robot called “Atom” which he believes, in a rare moment his common sense slips, can be rebuilt into a contender.

Here’s where the movie could have gone disastrously wrong, but didn’t. They don’t anthropomorphize the robot, and its adorability quotient is kept to a minimum, thank Heaven!

The success of the Little Robot that Could is due to Bailey’s mechanical expertise, Max’s knowledge of the fight game, and Charlie’s ability to program his own boxing skill into the robot.

Of course there is a match with the title holder. Of course Charlie bonds with Max. Of course Atom, like Rocky, loses on a split decision. And of course there will be a rematch.
Take your kids to see this one, it’s as good an excuse as any to see it yourself, and watch for “Real Steel 2” in 2014.

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Note: My personal blog is on indefinite hiatus, however I am cross-posting articles from my newspaper blot at The Marshall Independent and reviews I do for the print-only TV Guide.

The ScyFy series Warehouse 13 has just ended its third successful season with a cliffhanger.

Stay tuned for season 4 which premiers in 2012. Arrrrrrrrrrrrrgh!

For those of you who don’t know the Secret History of the U.S. and the world in general, Warehouse 13 is a secret installation in South Dakota where the government stores supernatural artifacts which are too dangerous to leave lying around. Warehouse 1 was Alexander the Great’s, Warehouse 2 was the Great Library of Alexandria, Warehouse 12 was in Great Britain at the height of the empire… you get the picture. The Warehouse is always located in the dominant world power, and it is always eventually destroyed in a disaster as Warehouse 13 appears to have been in the cliffhanger ending.

The trope of the secret government warehouse is not new, but it’s done brilliantly here. (Remember where the Ark of the Covenant wound up in “Indiana Jones”?) Also brilliant is an ensemble cast of warehouse agents, a pretty boardinghouse landlady who is more than she seems, the powerful and mysterious Mrs. Frederic who is older than she appears, and in the background the Council of Regents.

Field agents Pete and Myka were recruited from the Secret Service after saving the life of the president. Here they use the trope of the guy who’s intuitive and kind of flighty, and the lady agent who’s tough as nails by-the-book, but soft and emotional at the core. Not to mention drop dead gorgeous. It’s been done many times, badly. But it works here.

Backing them up in the warehouse is Artie, who knows everything there is to know about artifacts, objects which are imbued with magical qualities, sometimes harmless, more often dangerous, and occasionally actively malign.

Aiding Artie is new agent Allison, a sassy, irreverent post-teen who’s a genius computer hacker.

Together they hunt down artifacts and store them in the warehouse.

Opposing them are a cast of villains, including some ex-warehouse agents who want certain artifacts for their own nefarious purposes. Behind the light-hearted entertainment is a sometimes serious meditation on the fact that power corrupts, and the watchmen must themselves be watched carefully.

And what are artifacts?

Artifacts are objects imbued with certain powers, and sometimes personalities. Run Marilyn Monroe’s hairbrush through your hair and it turns platinum blonde. Harmless enough. But look into Lizzie Borden’s compact mirror and you could become possessed of an overwhelming desire to murder the ones you love.

The series was put together from a bunch of ideas we’ve all seen before, but never seem to get tired of: the secret history, the government warehouse of legendary artifacts, the ancient conspiracies for good – and evil.

What it gives us for an hour each week is the delicious thrill of being in on a secret few other know, of knowing there are good guys behind the scenes keeping us safe from unimaginable danger, and of course the tension of wanting to shout at the screen, “Pete, just kiss her!”

Will Pete finally kiss Myka? Is the warehouse finally destroyed for good? Will the series return as Warehouse 14?

We’ll have to wait until 2012 to find out. Arrrrrrrgh!

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Note: My personal blog is on indefinite hiatus, but I am cross-posting from my newspaper blog at the Marshall Independent.

I took my kids to see “Conan the Barbarian” a few weeks ago. Well actually I took my son, I paid them to let my daughter curl up on my lap and sleep through it. Works for us.

Aw heck, I wanted to like it. Jason Momoa looked credible as Conan the Cimmerian, the sets were great, the scenery beautiful. And rather than follow the 1983 version with Ahnuld the Governator they just rebooted it.

Somehow the magic just wasn’t there.

They probably can’t be blamed, the original version was followed by a sequel that didn’t recapture it either. Those of us hoping for a long series were disappointed.

Better luck next time.

I sometimes wonder what makes a great movie adaptation of a book, and why some just misfire? “The Lord of the Rings” waited a long time for Peter Jackson to come along but it was worth the wait.

But while I enjoyed the Johnny Weismuller Tarzan movies in my youth, nobody has yet done a credible job at faithfully adapting “Tarzan of the Apes” for the big screen.

And though the short novels of Robert A. Heinlein would seem good movie fodder, so far “The Puppet Masters” just didn’t work and “Starship Troopers” was made into an abomination by a director who seems to hate Heinlein and deliberately set out to misrepresent what he stood for.

Now I’m waiting for 2012 when a movie version of Tarzan’s creator Edgar Rice Burroughs’ character “John Carter of Mars” is to be released.

They’ve cast Lynn Collins who played Kayla Silverfox in “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” as Dejah Thoris, which works for me. But somebody named Taylor Kitsch is going to be John Carter, and I’m sorry but I just don’t like his looks.

Capt. John Carter late of the Confederate States Cavalry is supposed to be aged but ageless. He doesn’t recall his childhood and has no idea how old he is, just that he’s very old. This guy looks like a kid.

There was also a version made with a prominent porn star playing Dejah Thoris, Princess of Helium, but the less said about that the better.

We live in hope.

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It’s been a while since I’ve posted, and for that my apologies to my hypothetical fan base. (I don’t have a hit counter so you readers are kind of like ghosts or angels to me. I might speculate about you, but am not really sure of your existence…)

At any rate, I’m settling in to my wonderful house and getting together regularly and guest teaching with a local martial arts group. Between that and my new newsroom gig, including blogging duties, I’ve been away for a while.

So about Della Bolton. I’m watching the Robert Redford flick “Jeremiah Johnson.” And by the way, Redford never mentioned the historical Johnson’s other monikers, “Crow killer,” and “liver-eatin’ Johnson.”

The notion this guy killed somewhere around 200 Crow wariors in single combat is considered unbelievable these days. White men of the present quite logically ask, why didn’t the Crow warriors just band together in a large enough group, hunt the mountain man down and kill him? Isn’t it nonsensical to suppose the Crow Killer could prevail against those odds?

Not to me.

To a man who understands warriors it’s obvious how this could happen. Once Johnson had a established his reputation, no Crow brave would want to share the glory of killing and taking the scalp of the Crow Killer. They’d have come at him one at a time until some older and wiser head said “Enough!” and made their peace with him.

The actress who played the Flathead Indian woman her tribe gave to Johnson, and whose killing he avenged on the Crows, was played by someone named Delle Bolton.

She actually looks Indian (though I’ve been fooled about this before,) and she’s very beautiful in that cheekbones-to-die-for Indian way. One could believe a man would go apeshit crazy homicidal if she was murdered.

So what happened to her? This is her only film credit I can find on the Internet Movie Database or Wikipedia.

Anyone know anything about her?

Please tell me she got a sample of the Hollywood bullshit, blew it off, got married to a good man and raised a family.

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I’m rattling around in a big house alone while my wife and kids finish out the school year in North Dakota before joining me. So on lonely weekends I’m sure glad there’s a six screen movie theater in town.

Last weekend I saw Thor in spite of some bad reviews. For one, I was a Marvel comics fan in my youth. For another – I find it hard to believe that Kenneth Branagh could make a bad movie. It’s one of my minor life ambitions to own every one of his Shakespeare movies. (I’ve seen “Henry V” in three different countries – and it’s interesting to watch how an audience in Eastern Europe reacts to the line, “I love France so much I will not part with a village of it.”)

So I went, not expecting any more than a rolicking good time, like the “Iron Man” movies.

It was great! They found the perfect actor to play the God of Thunder in the Marvel mode. (In Norse myth, Thor was called “the Redbeard,” not “The Hunk with flowing gold locks.”)

Natalie Portman made up for playing in the no-class vulgar piece of crap “Your Highness.” Jane Foster is much better as a strong-willed scientist than a wimpy nurse. The former secret identity “Dr. Donald Blake” was thankfully done away with.

The CGI Asgaard and Bifrost Bridge are great, and the euhemerization of the myths is well done. The character development proceeds a little to rapidly to be realistic, but hey it’s a movie.

So why the bad reviews?

Well, for one mainstream reviewers just don’t understand genre pics. For another, this is the Age of the Wimp, which makes artsy-fartsy reviewers of movies about strong, lusty, heroic archtypical characters uneasy.

And why did Kenneth Branagh, the world’s greatest interpreter of Shakespeare make a movie based on a comic book?

Well, maybe that’s where you find the spirit of Shakespeare in this day and age.

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