Postscript note on "Kingdom of Heaven"...

[fajrdrako]

Something I forgot to mention about the movie last night.

The hero Balian made me think of Dorothy Dunnett's hero Nicholas de Fleury. Not in looks, but in character and ability. He was a bastard, a blacksmith/apprentice by trade who, after hardship and foreign travels by ship, rises in the world through cleverness and talent and good choices. He shows great skill in engineering and in managing an estate, makes himself rich and respected, commands a city during a siege by Turks but fails to turn the tide of war. He sleeps with a Princess and earns the love of a King - though not a Lusignan king in this case - it's a Plantagenet king who loves him and the Lusignan king hates him. Small difference! In the end, he retires to provincial obscurity and peacefulness with the woman he loves.

Seems a lot like the career of Nicholas to me. No dimples, though.

Comments

[monsieureden.livejournal.com]

I might enjoy the movie just for the comparison... though I could do with some dimples! And caterpillar lips.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure Orlando Bloom has catepillar lips. The analogy doesn't go that far. We could pretend!

[monsieureden.livejournal.com]

Orlando is definitely not Niccolo, but one can at least fantasize.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Ah yes - dreams of the movie that might have been, or might be.

[widget-alley.livejournal.com]

Utterly unrelated, but I thought it would amuse you:




(http://www.mutedfaith.com/quiz/vq.htm)

What Type of Villain are You? (http://www.mutedfaith.com/quiz/vq.htm)

mutedfaith.com (http://www.mutedfaith.com).

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Love it! I got this one:




(http://www.mutedfaith.com/quiz/vq.htm)

What Type of Villain are You? (http://www.mutedfaith.com/quiz/vq.htm)

mutedfaith.com (http://www.mutedfaith.com).

[widget-alley.livejournal.com]

fajrdrako! Console my in my time of need! Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples, etc.! The Smallville pilot is on a channel which I get, in blurry b&w, with no sound, and I'm trying to be manful and resist temptation and/or spoilers. But aaaah!

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Blurry b&w with no sound? Beshrew it, it isn't worth it. You need to get the fill impact of Lex's lavender satin shirts and his shiny black cars. Trust me.

[widget-alley.livejournal.com]

Lavender satin?

Excuse me, I seem to have died snickering. It's not that I don't think a man can't wear satin and be manly (or else I would have never made it through the Lymond Chronicles), it's just that... lavender satin? HA.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Lavender satin. Really, it's a treat.

[widget-alley.livejournal.com]

You know, it's kind of sad, but I'm still laughing over that. And it's, like, two and a half hours later.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Never underestimate the power of lavender satin.

[widget-alley.livejournal.com]

Duly noted! Lavender, and purples in general, interestingly, are considered, according to my reference book of such things, colors that signify a search for truth, a slightly melancholy state of mind, unusual talents, raw power and is the color of martyrs, in addition to royalty. I know I've read somewhere that light purple is also the color to wear if you want to appear haughty and inapproachable (which might explain why I keep hanging on to that lavender velvet turtleneck).....

Probably not intentional symbolism on the writers' part, but interesting nonetheless.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

That is all so apropos of Lex that I wonder if the Smallville writers have the same book you do. They do very careful, specific things with colours, as you'll see - Clark wears jeans and primary colours, often in mimicry of the famous Superman costume - blue T-shirts, red T-shirts, that kind of thing. Often wears plaid flannel. Sometimes gets wrapped in a red blanket.

Lex, on the other hand, wears non-primary colours, lavenders, dusty blues and greys, burgundy - when he doesn't wear a business suit.

Clark's home is rustic country style, lots of gingham and chintz and polished wood. (Except the barn, which is... barnish.) Lex's home has a lot of glass, chrome and leather, and dramatic red and yellow stained glass windows; lots of jewel-like colours in his place, and he drinks Ty Nant, a water that comes in blue glass bottles. When he isn't drinking brandy, which of course is light-catching amber tones.

I love the use of colour in the show.

[widget-alley.livejournal.com]

Oh man. That palette sounds gorgeous. Color is one of my favorite things in the entire universe and I simply adore television/movies that make use of color, intentionally (Firefly and LOTR being two prime examples...)

Lex, it seems, shares my taste in clothes-- although I have yet to be seen in a business suit. It's all about the winter and wine colors, with plenty of blue and a jewel tone thrown in here and there.

Gingham. Chintz. ::winces:: I.... really, really hate that look. I don't know why, I don't carry bad associations with it or anything, it just... offends my artistic sensibilities. Lex's home, on the other hand, sounds fantastic... (Let's just say it's my life's ambition to own walls with built-in bookshelves, and multiple chess sets that I can leave out all the time. ::faints:: Luxury!) Does he own a leather couch? Leather couches are a virtual fetish of mine. They make me feel all swanky and catlike. And I think I should get extra points for the use of the word "swanky", because it really is highly entertaining. "Swanky". Hmm. If I say it aloud, it tastes like mangoes and ice.

Ty Nant is, quite definitely, the drink of the Gods. We have a friend who makes an annual sojourn to Wales, and stocks up while she's there, and she always brings home an extra bottle or three, which, if we're lucky and ration it carefully, might last almost two days. It's fabulous stuff, totally irresistable, and by comparison makes our triple reverse-osmosis crazy-extra-filtered water at home taste like a swimming pool.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Use of colour. Yes. It's one of the things that attract me to Smallville. They do amazing things with hair. Lex, of course, doesn't have any, due to something that happens in the pilot episode. Clark has moppy teenage-boy hair that changes subtly when he is affected by red Kryptonite. Lana Lang has long, smooth, dark hair. Chloe Sullivan has perky blonde hair. Lionel Luthor has amazing hair, hair that's almost a character in itself - and to say too much about what is done to it would amount to spoilers.

But I digress. We were talking about colours. Firefly and LOTR are artistically brilliant in many ways. Smallville's colour-iconography, if I can use it that ways, is more basic and for that reason, absurdly charming.

Lex has not only built-in bookshelves, he also has a whole built-in library off his main office (the room we most often see), accessible by a spiral staircase. He also has recessed shelves protected by glass, with lights inside for displays of art.

His home is made of old stone, often referred to (with Luthorlike pretension) as the Caslte. Ivy grows on it. The ivy is often burgundy, too. There are ornamental gardens but we seldom see them in the show.

Of course he has a leather sofa in his study, nicely padded, much used (or misused?) in slash stories. Used rather well in the show itself, too, for those more discreet or indiscreet conversations.

[widget-alley.livejournal.com]

...Library? Built-in library? Spiral staircase? Leather couch? Discreet conversation? You. Are. Such. A. TEASE. And I love it.

We're cultivating our own ivy at the moment-- not burgundy, tragically, but it's still coming along rather well (the proper, dark-green, broadleafed English stuff, not the little waxy chartreuse ones that grow wild around here), and I love it. It's one of my favorite plants in the entire world-- so gorgeous and twisty and maddeningly clever, and virtually impossible to kill (thank God. I do not have a green thumb.) I could crack a "I like my plants how I like my men" joke here, but it might come off as hackneyed, so I won't.

Basic can be.... good or bad. I usually prefer complex things but sometimes things which bypass your brain and hit you directly in the child-like, fairy-tale centers are good too. In my homeschooling career, I have found that there is absolutely nothing as relaxing as a good Grimm after thirty pages of chemistry. Alleviates "my head is about to explode" feeling quite well.

Lionel Luthor has amazing hair, hair that's almost a character in itself - and to say too much about what is done to it would amount to spoilers.

I get the concept of what you're saying, it makes sense and is entirely justified, but at the same time, this statement cracked me up. Oh, the imagery, the imagery! Is it anything like this (http://www.garnierbeautybar.co.uk/manga/)? (That site makes me deeply ashamed that I use that product... on the other hand, it's basically hair cement and it does a fine job of keeping it out of my eyes and/or out of other people's mouths during jiu jitsu and kickboxing.)

Which begs another question. I know Lex Luthor is supposed to be hairless.... did they shave his eyebrows and pluck his eyelashes (OUCH! Just thinking about that hurts....) for the role? Because if so, brave man.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Teasing? My specialty. Or... one of them.

I love ivy too. I'm not growing it outdoors, but I do have a pot of hanging in my window and looking very pretty.

Lionel's hair is... um. Well, it changes according to season, and to what mode he is in. It has many aspects. (I like your pic, which seems now to have disappeared.) He never adopts a bishonen style of long and straight, though... not yet, anyway. Pity. But maybe that isn't scary enough.

No, they did not pluck Lex's eyebrows and lashes, which you can see in all episodes. (I think they used dye to make his eyelashes and eyebrows less prominent.) Sometimes they shave his chest hair but occasionally you can see that, too - it's probably why Lex so often wears high-necked shirts. The presence or absence of other body hair is a matter of fannish speculation.

[widget-alley.livejournal.com]

Also, (I seem to be double commenting today, eh?) the fact you just said "beshrew" fills me with unholy glee.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

So happy to have made you gleestricken.

[widget-alley.livejournal.com]

Gleestricken is my new favoritest word that doesn't actually exist (kind of like "favoritest".) Something about the way it looks is just so.... German, actually.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Perhaps I should have put in a hyphen. But that isn't nearly as much fun.

[widget-alley.livejournal.com]

I get the feeling that there should be an umlaut in there somewhere, as well.

[widget-alley.livejournal.com]

I should probably clarify that it's not so much that I'm expecting a fantastic amount out of the show, but it's a "curiousity killed the cat" sort of thing, and I am so very, very curious. Distraction. Distraction is key. I'm going to go bury my woes in Television Without Pity Firefly recaps now.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Televison Without Pity recaps... You know, I don't think I've read their Firefly section. Or Lost either. I should rectify that.

[widget-alley.livejournal.com]

Their Fireflys are a treat, I do recommend them.