Essay #1 for ship manifesto done.

[elspethdixon]

I swear, tomorrow I'll post an entire entry full of Alexander squee (They included the banquet scene with Bagoas! They actually left it in! And Hephaestion and Alexander were definately a couple! And there were belly dancers! Yay for Persian belly dancers!). Tonight, I'm just posting a link to my Gambit/Rogue essay at ship_manifesto, because writing that and revising (as in, added eleven pages to) my history these rough draft Friday have worn me out.

And I still have a creative writing submission and an English thesis chapter to write before tomorrow evening.

Next manifesto essay: Sharpe & Harper.

And then probably I'll do a Tombstone one, just because my cold/bronchitis is making my chest hurt, and that always makes me think of my favourite Southern gambler and his badge-wearing love interest.

Comments

[bbathory.livejournal.com]

So you liked Alexander? Seems like every review I've read--critical and campus newspaper reviews--completely slams the movie.

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

I think you have to be both a history geek and a slash fan in order to like it. There are an aweful lot of long stretches full of important speeches and not much action, but I was so busy oggling the pretty men and squeeing over tiny little details (like the fact that the statues of the gods were painted, or that they had the winged bull statues--now in the Met and the London Museum--guarding the gates of Babylon, or that the Persian archers had the right sort of recurved bow) that I didn't care. Plus, I'd happily listen to Collin Farrell's Irish accent reading the phone book.

In terms of dramatic tension and plot arc, it wasn't quite as good as Troy, (and, of course, there was no Sean Bean) but it did give the audience all of the homoerotic vibes that Troy so carefully tried to avoid (and every time someone brought up Achilles, they mentioned that he and Patroclus were lovers--personally, I think Oliver Stone was taking digs at Wolfgang Peterson for wussing out). However, it also wasn't nearly as bad as some of the critics have been saying. I wonder if some of them might not be put off as much by the obvious Alexander/Hephaestion relationship as by the script/cinematography/&c.

But then, I'm an easy sell. I would have forgiven the movie just about anything after seeing them run the opening credits in Greek and Babyloniac cuniform as well as English.