Guess who 2....

Same game as last time, only these lot are all artists of one form or another

Answers can be found in the comments

Building a giant, part 2

The giant, like most of my various modeling projects invariably do, has stood gathering dust for six months or so whilst I got side tracked. In recent days I've been doing more work on it however. I've added nearly all the muscles and skin on its torso and upper legs and am now building up the arms. The left arm will be pulled back and holding a tree trunk as a club (my giant is left handed) and the right will be slightly forward, which is why the chest is a bit lopsided. It it works, then the shoulders and collar bones should be asymmetrical.

Using the green modelling putty has been rather difficult. I've seen examples of other people using 'green stuff ' on the internet to great effect, but I have no idea how they manage to get smooth transitions. Even with its rough skin my giant still betrays the joins between the various applications of putty.

So far its been difficult but fun. Now I'm going to do a bit more on him...

- Update -

I attached the arms today and started building the shoulders up. I also added skin to the backs of his legs. He's in need of some fixes here and there, his botton is looking very dodgy for example. His right buttock is very 'button like' and looks all wrong.

Farewell Humph

My favourite radio host, Humphrey Littleton has died, aged 86. Its a sad irony that as one new person arrives into my life, another old friend leaves. I shall miss Humphrey Littleton who was one of the funniest men on radio and truly inspirational. He hosted the show 'I'm sorry I haven't a clue' which is regularly repeated on BBC radio 7 and to which I've been devoted for almost twenty years.

I'd had a feeling this was coming. Only the other day I suddenly had the notion that there wouldn't be any more shows, that Littleton was going to die, but I ignored it because I have no notion of clairvoyance or anything like that.

The world just got duller. There is no one to replace Humph.

Eva

Of Malene and Mark, a little girl is born.

Congratulations!



I will post more as soon as I know.

The Kingdom of Heaven. Definitive edition DVD

Dir: Ridley Scott

I'm torn right down the middle over this film. I first saw it in the cinema with my friends Oleg and Tracey, and I've been chewing over it ever since. Now, here finally I've bought it, in its 'definitive edition' which means it is now the film Ridley Scott intended rather than the film some Californian test audience thought might work better. Why do they always vandalise Scotts films so that several years later he ends up releasing directors cuts? Is it just a cunning way of generating more money?


So whats wrong with this film?

Well first of all, it has virtually nothing to do with history at all. Just about every character has been taken out of context in order to carefully create a post modern yarn that doesn't offend any one.

Orlando Blooms character, Balian of Ibelin was never a French blacksmith, he was the Baron of Ibelin from the get go, and an astute, and some what treacherous politician to boot. In the film Balian prudently sits out the battle of Hattin, where as in the history books Balian was taken prisoner at Hattin by Saladin and was one of the very few to be released. He did lead the defence of Jerusalem, and he did threaten to burn the city to ashes rather than surrender, but he was under parole to Saladin at the time, having been captured and released at Hattin. He wrote a letter to Saladin begging foregiveness for breaking his parole and asking mercy for Jerusalem. (Saladin refused). Balian's wife in the film has committed suicide back in France, but actually Balian was really married to the previous queen of Jeruslam Maria Comnena, and it was this little detail that got his life spared at Hattin since Saladin had a thing about killing princes (or their husbands). In the film Balian has an affair with Queen Sibylla, which I suppose is always possible, but not likely.

That brings me to Saladin, or Sala-hadin as they refer to him in the film. Saladin comes across as a righteous, fair minded fellow on screen who only commits violence when he must, certainly he is shown cutting off Reynald de Chatillon's head, but this is after Reynald has murdered hundreds of innocent Muslims, including Saladin's sister (an event which never took place). In actual fact Saladin really cut off Reynalds head because Reynald, though captured and bound was being sassy and answering back but I guess that just doesn't convey the desired image of Saladin that was required for the purposes of this film.


Saladin's contemporary's didn't seem to share the Hollywood perspective. According to Imad ed-Din, the Turk governor of Mosul, he observed the smiling Saladin in the aftermath of Hattin, as he had the heads of two hundred knights Templar and Hospitaller cut of by the mullahs and religious teachers who acompanied his army. These prisoners were murdered for they 'represented the worst of the infidels' according to Saladin. You really only see one of the mullahs in the film, dressed in black, depicted as something of a fanatic, but in fact there were a great many of them in Saladin's army and far from being the driving force behind Saladin's brutality, they were actually under Saladin's orders to cut off the heads of the surrendered knights (a job most of them botched according to Imad ed-Din). In other words Saladin was not much different to any other mujahideen, and shared the mujahideen prediliction for cutting off the heads of prisoners.

That isn't the only example of Saladin being portrayed in the film in a light so flattering he might actually be confused for being a heroic figure. When the city of Jerusalem as defended by Orlando Bloom surrenders, Saladin grants free passage to all Christian men, women and children to Christian lands.
In reality, Saladin forced the Christians to ransom themselves. Men had to pay ten pieces of gold for their freedom, women five and children; one. The city's population had forty days to find their ransom and then any one who was left was enslaved, unless they were too old to be slaves in which case they were free to go. Not quite the mercy shown in the film... but better than being massacred I suppose. After Jerusalem fell, merchants came from all over the middle east to pick up on the bargains that were going. Slave girls, furniture and real estate were flogged off cheap to pay for Saladin's victory. Just about the only Christian who came off well in the sack of Jerusalem was the Patriarch (depicted in the film as a cowardly scum bucket) who paid his ten gold pieces and then left the city laden with all the gold plate and bullion he could lay his hands on from the churches of Jerusalem. No 'Christian charity' for the poor Christians of Jerusalem who couldn't afford the ransom it seems. Good old Saladin let the Patriarch go as he was a 'holy man'.

Its not that the Crusaders were any better (they weren't) but rather the spin which has been created in the film so that both sides can be portrayed as sympathetically as possible makes Saladin look like some prince from a fairy tale. In fact there are very few villains in this film and they are virtually all Christians. The two Templar leaders, Reynald and Guy, their side kick, the Templar Grand Master (played by Danish Ulrich Thomsen) the Patriarch and the token Muslim fanatic; the black clad mullah who pesters Saladin for war. Every one else is portrayed as being thoroughly nice people, who would just be able to get along peacefully if it weren't for the few murderous fanatics who kept upsetting the holiness for every one else. They are all suitably post modern and almost secular in their attitude towards religion with only a few of them even lending the notion any credence at all. One might be forgiven for thinking that the Crusades were actually just an accident of history where good men were forced into war by a few bad apples. I think not.


The script was written by a first timer; William Monahan so its forgiveable that a few mistakes might have cropped in along the way and doubtless he was labouring under orders not to make the religious nutters look too bad, which is more or less what he's done. In the decapitated cinematic release, the story really suffers, for there is a whole lot of extra acting (especially by Bloom) and a plot line involving Queen Sybella's son that was completely cut away. All that is back now, pushing the film to just over three hours long and giving Balian some of the humanity which was previously missing. We also learn that the priest whom Balian kills in the beginning of the film, is in fact his half brother, and that Godfrey (played by Liam Neeson) is not just Balian's father, but also the younger brother of the local Baron.

There's a lot of extra footage, spread out all through the definitive edition, and also a lot of dialogue which has been changed back to the original script to accomidate the additional story. Several times I noted the emphasis in certain sentences had been completely changed as one word was now different.

Anyway, back to history. In real life Balian's dad was also called Balian. I'm not sure who this Godfrey character is meant to represent, if any one. Perhaps, like Jeremy Irons character, they just made up some guy to fill a role. Irons plays Tiberias (shown in his huge cloak in the image below), the city marshal of Jerusalem, a man who is apparently named after a famous crusader city, and who never existed in reality. That doesn't stop Irons roaring and over-acting with his usual gusto though. This is his bread and butter!

Silence!!

Queen Sibylla really did marry Guy de Lusignan after her previus husband, William Longsword of Montferrat, died, leaving her pregnant with a son, the future King Baldwin V, so all that is correct at least. Guy de Lusignan did become King of Jerusalem too and he did lead the Christians to annhilation at Hattin, but he was not a Templar and Sibylla must have cared for him for she begged Saladin for his release after Jerusalem fell and the year after, when Saladin let him go, the pair moved to the city of Tyre which remained in Christian hands (it was the only city that did at the time) but were denied entry for political reasons. Guy fought on regardless but when Sibylla died, he lost his authority. Lots of politics involving King Richard the Lionheart and King Philip II of France followed but eventually he left the holy land and settled on Cyprus (which he bought from the Templars) where he eventually died. Sibylla never left Guy, and certainly not to travel to France with a blacksmith as she does in the film. Together with her daughters (by Guy) she died in an epidemic in 1190. She never left the holy land.

The last character worth mentioning is the Hospitaller played by David Thewlis. Never actually named, he goes through the film as a sort of guiding light for Balian, explaining both for Balians benefit and for the audience, just what is wrong with the whole idea of crusading. As such he is a veritable font of 21st century wisdom who seems utterly reasonable and thus utterly out of context for 1187. Thewlis plays brilliantly. I think its the best character he's ever played, certainly the most sympathetic and I was truly sad when his charater dies at Hattin (his decapitated head is bizarrely shown with a smile).


So, whats good about the film?

I particularly enjoyed the cavalry scene with the Norman style knights and retainers meetinng the Saracen vanguard at Kerak (see the first two images of this post). This is a short scene but its full of movement, looks historically accurate and has all the drama and excitement you could ask for. You know Balian and his men are heading for defeat but you feel the power of the horses and the blazing sun. Glorious death awaits the brave chevalier! No one in the Christian world really believes that shit any more, even if they want to, but we can still empathise with it (why else would we make so many films about combat?). Balian and his fifty retainers are in that one scene the epitome of the war gamers desire. The escapist fantasy that once upon a time, life was about more than just working in the machine.

Basically, its all about the ambience. It is a Ridley Scott film after all so the visuals are stunning. The attention to detail is also really well done for the most part, though as usual medieval artillery is shown to be about ten times as powerful as it really was with the trebuchets firing as though they were machine guns... in reality Saladin lost all his artillery because the Christians ran out the city and destroyed them when Saladin was stupid enough to put them on a hill top and leave them unguarded.

The invasion of the Kingdom of Jerusalem is cooked down to just a few days (as opposed to the decade it really took) but since we're treated to some truly grandiose scenes of medieval seige tech I can forgive this over sight after so many other glaring historical inaccuracies. Ridley Scott goes all the way once the army of Saladin reaches the walls of Jerusalem and has multiple seige towers, ballistae and about fifty trebuchet going hell for leather. Bloom gives a rallying speech as the enemy draws near, but its really thin stuff, perhaps the weakest moment in the film and thankfully it doesn't last long.

Orlando Bloom is actually given much more space in the definitive edition and it helps the film as a whole. He comes across as being a weaker actor in the cinematic version, and so much is left unexplained that I was irritated by him. Now one see's why the Balian character is the way he is and one empathises with him and understands why he makes the decisions he does. I really can't understand why they cut so much of Blooms performance from the cinematic release because they only made their film suffer for it.

There are two DVD's with additional material but I haven't looked at the yet. I'll keep them for another day.

Snap, crackle and pop

Today I went to see a chiropractor for the first time ever. It was kind of fun, but also a bit painful when he cracked my spine. I've had x rays taken to find out what is causing me to have so many pains in my neck, but they showed nothing out of the ordinary (its becoming depressing at how little results I get from medical examinations). After a few minutes of moving my arms through their orbits, and being prodded and pawed, I was finally led to a device which looked like a hi tech torture instrument and asked to lie down. The chiropractor then did the famous neck cracking thing, telling me I might hear a noise...

CRACK!

...I got such a shock that I started to laugh (moif standard nervous reaction) but when he proceded to crack my spine, I was about ready to start crying. The rest of the day has been unusual, for the pain in my neck is gone, but now my spine hurts. *sigh*
The pain in my arm pit continues unabated. The Chiropractor had nothing to say about that though he did press the painful spot for almost a minute to see if it would go away. The result was ambiguous at best and the process was exceedingly painful.


Meanwhile, back home, Freja decided to investigate a tube of mascara and is now in the bath being scrubbed by her mother.

And in other news... Malene just went into labour...

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moif world update

Its been a while since I wrote about the Snoos, mostly because the long dull winter and an extended period of illness has kept her some what unphotogenic... there's only so many pictures of a snotty child sitting watching Tom and Jerry a blog can bear. Things are beginning to clear up again though (thankfully) with the sun shining and the various infections finally being pushed into oblivion.

On Wednesday Uncle Christian came by (thats him in the above image looking like Ming the Merciless) on his way back to London (where he is currently lying in bed with the latest Snoos virus, keep the faith dude!). I'm sympathetic, having just been through two weeks of it.



Today my Dad came by, mostly to see Freja, and have dinner. Freja was really shy at first but after an hour she'd thawed out. She's going through a phase of extreme shyness which I'm told is normal for kids her age (she's now 2½) and the only people she currently seems to accept without an hour of bashfulness first are my friends Oleg, his two sons and our old friend Malene who was due to give birth four days hence and who I am almost convinced will give birth tonight since I dreamt she was giving birth this morning. Scans reveal she is due to have a daughter and I believe her namemay be Claudia. I'm really looking forward to seeing her, and as always when this time comes around, I am as nervous as all hell that something horrible will happen. If I were religious I'd be praying to Gaia!

In the meanwhile life grinds ever on. Freja is reluctantly beginning her toilet training but its slow going as yet (she'll love me if she ever reads that I posted that on the www) and Mette is working hard in her 'new' job. I'm looking forwards to seeing the first collection of kids clothes from her company (I'll post the company link once they get their site up and running).

In other moif news, my old friend Andreas from Norway, started his own blog (added to the friends list) and its been fun reading that, even though I am crap at reading Norwegian, I can actually understand about 90% of it. Andreas and I went to art school in Kent where we studied for two years and he is the only person I met there whom I've kept contact with. Its good to have a renewed virtual contact. I love the internet!

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Guess who...

How good is your knowledge of historical figures? Can you guess who these people are?
They are all well known scientists or explorers...

Click to expand

You can find the answers in the comments

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Master and Commander: The far side of the world. Definitive Edition DVD

HMS Surprise forever!

Dir Peter Weir.

So whats wrong with Peter Weirs adaptation of Patrick O'Brian's 'Master and Commander'?

The most obvious flaw is the casting of Paul Bettany as the character of Stephen Maturin. He is too tall, too fair, too 'post modern' and not nearly eccentric enough. He complains and argues (in a Brit accent) with Jack Aubrey throughout the film and worst of all he is Paul Bettany. At no point in Bettanys portrayel did I feel I was close to the orignal character from the books. Now I know that any one who read the book first will have their own notions of who a character is, but this isn't just a simple case of my eye as the beholder being biased. Paul Bettany simply isn't Stephen Maturin. He doesn't look like him, act like him or sound like him. Granted Stephen Maturin was always going to be a hard part to fill, but its as if Weir and his script writer simply decided to do away with the original character and just make up a whole new one with the same name. Where are the crippled hands? Where is the eccentric dress sense? Where is Diana? where is the addiction to laudanum? where is the espionage? where is the overwhelming sense of a man out of his element?


I don't dislike Paul Bettany, and I quite like this film, as a film. I'll be honest, if I hadn't read the books (all twenty of them, five times in a row) I'd be well impressed. But I have read the books and because I've read them, I care greatly about the two main characters for it is they who make the story's work. Replace Stephen Maturin with Paul Bettany and you get a cross grained, ill bred concoction that just won't float!

Apart from that the story is simple to the point of pure pleasure. I do so love a film that replaces plot with ambience, especially when the ambience is historical. The attention to historical detail is excellent, though the Archeron is a bit 'over the top'. I'm not sure how credible a 44 gun American heavy frigate privateer flying the French flag is. Your either an American privateer or you are a French man of war, you can't be both. I also think its a bit dubious for the Americans in 1805 to be sending one of their 44 gun heavy frigates out as a privateer. Those ships were state of the art in those days and not the sort of asset one lent to privateers. Here is a quote from Wikipedia to illustrate my point:

In 1797, the US Navy's first major ships were 44-gun frigates (or "super-frigates"), which actually carried fifty-six to sixty 24-pounder long guns and 36-pounder or 48-pounder carronades on two decks, and were exceptionally powerful and tough. These ships were so well-respected that they were often seen as equal to 4th-rate ships of the line and, after a series of losses at the outbreak of the War of 1812, British Royal Navy fighting instructions ordered British frigates (usually of 38-guns or less) to never engage American frigates at any less than a 2:1 advantage. The USS Constitution, better known as "Old Ironsides", the oldest commissioned ship afloat, is the last remaining example of an American 44.

HMS Surprise, a sixth rate, 28 gun frigate would be utterly annhiliated by a 44 gun heavy frigate. There is no contest. I know Jack Aubrey is a hero blessed by great fortune, but there are bounderies to credulity and I do not recall any ship in the books called Archeron. I'm not convinced O'Brian would have made up such a ship for he was extremelly well informed on the fighting ships of the Napoleonic wars. I do know which book the bulk of the film is based upon, and of the two enemy ships in 'The wine-dark sea' neither is a 44 gun American heavy frigate. The ship I take the Archeron to be based on is the Franklin, 22 guns, a far inferior American privateer, owned by an errant French man named Dutourd. I guess that a ship inferior to HMS Surprise just wasn't considered interesting enough for the cinematic audience.

As for the DVD. I don't know what makes it so 'definitive'. There's nothing extra added to the film as far as I can see, though they do include a few cut scenes in the special features.

Wombling free!

This is the world I lived in when I was seven...

Artist of the month: Lucian Freud

On the verge of becoming the most the most expensive painting by a living artist ever sold, the above work catapults Lucien Freud into moif's artist of the month. It can't be any other way. I love the painting, and I am an admirer of Freud's work which I first saw 'in the flesh' in the Tate Gallery in London in the late 90's (I think it was 1998). It was one of the few art exhibitions I ever travelled to see by myself and for my own viewing pleasure. I like to place Freud in the same catagory as Paula Rego, as a genius in the field of figurative iconography and I find it pleasing in the extreme that Freud is considered the foremost artist alive in the UK today. he probably isn't, but nonetheless, its good to see the nude is still so popular a motif.

edited to add: The painting eventually sold for £17.2 million
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He 51 B2

I bought a Classic airframes 1/48 scale Heinkel He 51 biplane fighter for the next Rocketman campaign and I'm building it at the moment. Its been almost twenty years since I built a model aeroplane so I'm feeling a kind of nostalgia in the process, especially when I smell the polystyrene cement which has a pleasant scent of pears. The idea in the game is, the bad guy (Baron von Schöenberg) has a secret island base some where in the Indian Ocean and this island is guarded by a pair of these aircraft fitted with pontoons.

Heinkel made a sea plane variant of the He 51, designated B2 (sometimes labelled He 51W), but alas, this variant is not available in 1/48 scale . In order to make it, I had to acquire a pair of floats from another source, so I also bought a 1/48 scale Arado Ar 196 A/B. This aircraft was a dedicated seaplane and so it comes with two pontoon variations allowing me to convert my He 51 by adding the double pontoon set up from the Ar 196 A. If it works, I'll not only have a 1/48 scale He 51 B2 for my next Rocketman campaign, but I'll also have the parts to build an Ar 196 B, though I have no use for it. Instead I shall build the Ar 196 B as a 'downed aircraft' terrain feature. I'll add images when I build it.

Due to the nature of a table top skirmish game however, the model is only a terrain feature. The range and speed of an aircraft means as an element in the game, the aircraft would always be off table, unless it just happens to be passing directly over the table after a strafing run.


The Heinkel He 51 is an interesting aeroplane in that it was a German front line fighter in the mid 1930's, and used to train up luftwaffe pilots prior to the introduction of the more sophisticated Messerschmidt BF 109 (first introduced in 1937, the year after the next Rocketman game takes place). 700 Heinkel He 51's were eventually built, in a number of variations and some of the first saw action in the Spanish civil war in 1936 with the Legion Kondor where they saw initial success against older biplanes but were soon outclassed by contemporary Soviet built Polikarpov I-15's and I-16's. The technological development curve in those days was immense. Where as our modern war planes are expected to be replaced by a new generation within a few decades, inthe late 1930's, the next generation of war plane was only six months down the line and the He 51 was already obsolete the day it entered service.

This makes the He 51 perfect for Rocketman, or rather for the Baron, since von Schöenberg operates in a shadowy counter world where weapons and resources are skimmed off the top of existing national resources and old stockpiles. No one in authority has noticed two He 51's ear marked for Spain's civil war, have never actually arrived. Instead they were loaded onto a ship for the Indian ocean where they were immedietely fitted with pontoons and pressed into service guarding the secret island base of the Shwartzerkreutz bruderschaft (Brotherhood of the Black Cross) by machine gunning nosy local fishing boats into oblivion, so the diabolical mad scientist Herr Doktor Metzger can carry out more of his insane, unnatural experiements, recklessly tampering with forces beyond human comprehension in the urgent desire to find and perfect the secrets of nature and enhance them in the pursuit of creating, the Ubermenneshe (the perfect human being).

Note that the Shwartzerkreutz bruderschaft are not Nazi's but are in fact an ancient splinter faction of the old, and now largely defunct Teutonic Order of Knights (in other words, they're mad old school Christian fundies) with their fingers deep in German industry and international banking. They have however had previous connections with the Nazi's which is why they show similarities in equipment and uniforms but as Hitlers madness became ever more apparent during the early 1930's, they've quit Germany to become a truly international bunch of Mad Scientists TM.

This way I can set my games in 1936 yet avoid glorifying the Nazi's.
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Flags of our fathers & Letters from Iwo Jima

Dir: Clint Eastwood

Its easy to watch a war film about dog fighting in the first world war and ignore the implications of what I'm seeing. The farsical nature of air combat in canvas aircraft and the whole aura of jingoism surrounding the first world war (Lord Kitcheners big finger and the fat old Kaiser in his pointy helmet) make for an almost comical ninety minutes film experience. Then there are war films which don't bother to even pretend to be anything but onscreen violence for the war horny nerds, 'Apocolypse Now', and 'Black Hawk Down' for example. As often as not we're supposed to believe these films are 'anti-war', but I've never been able to see just how. Watching these types of films always gets my blood racing.


I don't know what it is about Clint Eastwood, but he seems to have the ability to actually make the sort of film that shows the violence and grand scale of warfare without turning it into a spectacle. Both films had the same sense of historical perspective, the same battle hardened camera work and the same sense of imminent danger as, for example 'Saving Private Ryan', but laid off the overly neat story line and the Ambrosian sense that this is all about Americans at war. Eastwood ignores national sentiments and cuts straight to the humanity of the men struggling to survive amidst the horror. Neither the Japanese nor the Americans are shown in any flattering national sense, but individuals are described with compassion and empathy.


A lot of people will dismiss these films simply because they are about war, and I suppose others will dismiss them because they were made now. I find these films have a lot to say about that 'nature of war' which isn't about any actual fighting, but rather the reasons why people do fight and why we all project our own reasons on to war in order to make sense of what is essentially madness.

Cinema is art and when you boil it down, art is really all about humanity. Clint Eastwood has demonstrated more humanity in these two films than in all the previous war films I have ever seen (with the possible exception of 'Das Boot').

Der Rote Baron

The latest World War One dogfight movie featuring the famous von Richthofen, and this one is from Germany itself. Sounds promising until one understands its made for international consumption and is said to focus on the Red Baron's humanity and compassionate nature...

Well, okay, he was human after all. Hopefully there'll be a few dogfight scenes along the way for those of us who still find biplane combat to be fascinating, strange and slightly romantic (nothing quite so exotic as airborne combat without a parachute). If these trailers are anything to go by, then I think I'll get what I want though. They seem to be as boisterous with CGI biplanes as the dog fight scenes in 'Fly Boys'.



Peter Jackson (he of dubious Lord of the Rings fame) has also made a World War One/biplane combat film. Apparently its all of fifteen minutes long and was made as an advertisment for the new camera he used to make it. See the trailer here.

Tinfoil time

Over a hundred rioters battled the police for four hours last night after a policeman, defending himself against a pit bull owned by a drug dealing Christianit, shot the animal dead. Any one puzzled as to why a hundred people would riot over a dead dog need not feel confused. The logic is simple. Christiania is a left wing extremist bastion (originally founded by hippies in the 1960's) which likes to think of itself as liberated from the rest of Denmark by virtue of a self declared autonomy. When the Danish police arrest people in Christiania for pedding drugs (aka breaking the real laws) the left wing moonbats living in Christiania, known as Christianiter feel justified in kicking off some good old fashioned revolutionary behaviour, thus we get four hours of molotov cocktails thrown at the police by the Autonome on behalf of a dog used as a weapon.

The image below shows a canine unit police car being destroyed by peace loving citizens of the 'free state'.