| Submitted by: Mark R. LeeperUnited States |
| Submission Date: 15 February 2005 |
|
 |
|
Suddenly Kull is a king with new enemies trying to steal his kingdom. And his enemies are willing to make bonds with the forces of evil including an old sorceress, Akivasha (Tia Carrere) who is revived from the dead to be an ally of the vengeful brothers.
The film is written by Charles Pogue who gave us DRAGONHEART last summer. While it is not a highly ambitious goal to capture Robert E. Howard's style in a script, he does a reasonable job. The villains could have had a little more depth. Of course, one of Kull's better villains, Thulsa Doom, was borrowed for CONAN THE BARBARIAN. Conan lived well after Doom in Howard's pseudo-history. Here the problem was the script had times when it was a little hard to follow and there was perhaps a little too many 'Shall I undress now, your highness?' scenes for a film essentially intended for adolescent audiences.
Director John Nicoletta makes unfortunately makes little effort to preserve the period feel and it is here that the film falls down the most. The horses are shoed and have bridals that would look too modern in a Civil War film. But Nicoletta's biggest mistake is in allowing Joel Goldsmith's totally misplaced main theme. It is difficult to evoke so ancient a period with electric guitars and Joel's attempt is merely jarring and obnoxious. The visual effects are not always convincing, including some bad mattes, but for me that is a small fault.
Sorbo is not the most exciting actor in the world. Charleton Heston claimed he was cast in a lot of historical films because people thought he had a historical sort of face. I am told by one of the women with whom I saw the film that his great virtue are his pectorals. But Sorbo does not really evoke a historical period. Part of it may be that he never dresses for the period. As with the Conan films, there is an odd mix of cultures and races in the primeval world. Most of the sets are Egyptian-looking. Sorbo's sidekicks include a priest of an unknown cult played by Litefoot, who played the title role of Indian in the Cupboard. Tia Carrere is of Chinese descent, I believe. Then there is Harvey Fierstein as a pirate captain. I cannot honestly say he was badly cast since had I never seen him before he might have not seemed all that strange in this role. For once his gravelly voice might have made him seem tough.
Tone down the sex and this might have made a decent matinee film. As it is there is a lot of sex but no nudity and a lot of violence with virtually no blood. I rate this one a high 0 on the -4 to +4 scale.
After the film we went to Tony Roma's for barbecued ribs. The service was very slow and the beef ribs were kind of low on meat, but we were with friends. Afterwards we went to the room to pack.
|
09/02/97--Houston, Texas:
|
We were on the road about 8:30 AM. We had planned to stick around and go with Dale and Jo and Bill Higgins to see Mission to Mir at the local IMAX theater. Then we discovered that the IMAX show at the Houston Space Center includes a free viewing of two IMAX films, one of which is Mission to Mir. We did not really have breakfast. We had a cup of coffee in the room. After that we moved the stuff to the car. We dropped the keys at the desk. I would say that the service at the hotel was not very good. Witness the fact we never got the light fixed in the pole lamp. But every time you deal with a human they are friendly and seem to be as helpful as they can be. This is the L. L. Bean revolution. It may not have originated with them, but for a long time they were noted for this kind of service. Just being friendly and pleasant to people is a small thing, but it makes both sides happier. Marriot has apparently sent their employees to smile school and that goes a long way.
Lunch was at Amalia's, a Mexican place on the outskirts of Houston. The slogan is 'Taste the difference.' I did and was unimpressed. The difference was not for the better. They fry their own taco chips and several were soft and pliable with too much oil, the beans were pureed rather than mashed, the lemonade was served as a bar drink with a small glass filled with ice and no refills. There was too much sauce on each dish. It took quite a long while to get the check. However, in just a few minutes they really filled up. No accounting for taste.
ABC TV seems to have an ad campaign telling people to be stupid and watch TV. We pass a billboard that says 'Scientists say we use 10% of our brains. This is way too much. ABC' Another one says 'Hobbies Shmobbies. ABC.' Then there is 'All we ask is eight hours a day. ABC.' Hard to believe they would be so honest, but perhaps they don't want to make the mistakes the cigarette companies did. This way they can say that they told you all along that TV would rot your brain.
We checked in at the Grant Motel. Cheap but it seems well run. It has a sort of well-preserved 1950s feel. Then off to San Jacinto. Driving around Houston is hot, humid, and there are lots of smelly refineries. It's like being back in parts of New Jersey in the summer. My first impression is it is not a pretty city like Dallas. However, I found three different classical stations on the radio in under a minute. That's not too bad. Of course, that doesn't mean they will still be there when I go to try and find them again.
Over the refineries we see the fifty-story San Jacinto Monument, the tallest stone monument in the world, so they say. I can't tell that by looking at it, but it clearly is a big sucker. That is about thirty-three feet per minute of the San Jacinto battle. This was the battle that was fought forty-six days after the Alamo and for which time was bought with the lives of the defenders of the Alamo. Do you know what I am saying? In the film The Alamo when Richard Boone as Sam Houston says the people at the Alamo are buying time. This forty-six days is the time they bought.
Then Sam Houston was planning an orderly sort of battle. Santa Anna was prepared for that but had deployed his troops in a line where they could not fall back and still fight. There was marsh and a lake behind him. Houston also failed to gauge how much anger there was in his men over massacres at the Alamo and at Goliad. Luckily it didn't matter. Secretary of War T J. Rusk was present and after the first shots issued his own orders that the men charge. The yelling began: 'Remember the Alamo' and 'Remember Goliad.' The Mexicans fought for about eighteen minutes until retreating into the marshes. It seems Santa Anna thought he had been really smart putting his troops where they had no place to retreat. He thought they would fight harder if there was no place they could back up. There was just a marsh there. When the Americans charged the Mexicans backed up into the marsh. After eighteen minutes there was no more resistance possible.
630 Mexican soldiers were killed and 730 were taken prisoner. The brutal slaughter was nothing to be proud of for the new republic. In most cases it was vicious murder including several scalpings. Helpless men and boys were shot to death in pointless executions.
Nine Texans were killed or at least mortally wounded. Santa Anna was captured. But he knew that the better part of his army was under Vincente Filisola and Houston knew he would not have so easy a victory against Filisola. Filisola had the men he needed to cause the revolutionaries a lot of trouble. What he lacked was Santa Anna to control him and what he lacked was fighting spirit. When the weather went bad, so did his will to stay. He retreated below the Rio Grande to uncontested territory. On his way he abandoned Texas to the rebels.
Mexico and the Republic of Texas agreed to disagree about the status of Texas and to whom it belonged. Ten years later Texas agreed to annexation by the United States. This was an unexpected move and Mexico was not happy. It is one thing for the residents to claim they own some territory; it is another to give it away to the United States. The United States offered to pay for the land. Mexico said it was not for sale. The United States assured Mexico it was. Mexico declared war on the United States. The Mexican-American War lasted from 1846 to 1848. It did not work out well for Mexico. The United States obtained about 25% of the current United States. The war added to the United States lands that included Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, California, Utah, and pieces of Colorado, Wyoming, Kansas, and Oklahoma. The United States did pay and Mexico had to accept.
There is at the monument a museum, a slide show, and you can go up in the monument.
We chose just the museum only for reasons of time and-let's face it-cheapness. It does not go into any real detail about San Jacinto. It has some artifacts of the major players, a little about the battle. We saw some swords, some guns, uniforms, there was a case of artifacts of the Texas navy. We were going to go out and take a look at the battlefield but it was warmish outside. Well, it was 103 degrees, but nice and humid. Walking around outside was not entirely pleasant. It might have been interesting to see the battlefield, but as soon as you step outside your first thought is to run for cover to some place air conditioned.
I pass a billboard and it starts me thinking. Okay, so what is the deal? Why does somebody put up a billboard that says Jesus loves you? The deal is not that the person believes it. You don't see many billboards that say 'Tuesday follows Monday.' Presumably the person who put up the billboard feels he has already been saved. Does he feel there are levels of heaven and people who put up billboards get a better seat? He can't believe that if everybody was his religion it would end religious strife. Look at all the strife of Jews not getting along with Jews, Christians disagreeing with Christians, Suni Moslems hating Shiite Moslems. If you could magically snap your fingers and make everybody Episcopalian in weeks you would have so many variants on Episcopalian theology that all the old religious hatred would be back. I am Jewish and I am not looking to make a whole lot more Jews in the world. I don't want a whole lot less either. I certainly don't want the whole world agreeing with me about religion or anything else. At least not from faith. Part of the fun of writing a log is to express a wide range of opinions. I am not saying I am right about all of them. I am just expressing some ideas for the reader to have fun playing with. Ideas should be toys, not dogma.
We decided to go on to the Menil Collection. Presumably we will talk about this museum tomorrow, but it was closed Tuesdays. Ouch. Well, a few blocks away was a characteristically Texan sort of weirdness. There was a former movie theater converted to be a bookstore. It wasn't a bad bookstore either. We found a fair amount to interest us. We ended up getting a bag of books including a couple of books on quantum theory, a lighter survey of interesting science articles (I think I will read one a day at work like reading pages of a daily calendar), and a couple of books on cinema.
By the time we got out they sky had turned dark gray and we were getting some nice lightning strikes. This is probably my favorite sort of weather. Toward the end of a hot, humid uncomfortable day the sky turns to an angry black and starts to give us an electric light show with flashes of lightning and bashes of thunder. After twenty minutes or so start the cold drops of rain. In just a few minutes of rain the temperature drops to a much more comfortable level. Of course, there is nothing to guarantee it will be cooler after the storm, but it is likely.
Well, not much more of excitement for today. We went back to the room. We work on logs. I put on First Knight, what would have been a decent Arthurian film but for a few truly silly scenes. There is the really absurd mechanical gauntlet. |
|
| Copyright © - "Mark R. Leeper" |
|
 |
| Other travelogues by the same author: |
|
|
|
