Even Charlton Heston thought this one was a stinkeroo, and he got to rub up against Sophia Loren.
How many times do you think Adolf Twitler has seen “El Cid,” anyway?
Indestructible warrior of God struck down in mid-battle springs miraculously back to life (or so it would seem) to smite the ANTIFA milling around the property.
The writers played it a bit fast and loose with the truth back in 1961, too. As Alex von Tunzelmann noted at The Guardian in 2013, before El Choad rode his golden escalator into the fray, the epic “leaves the facts wounded and strewn haphazardly across the battlefield. …”
The facts fare even worse in this remake, in which El Choad actually survives. Whether the rest of us survive El Choad remains to be seen.
Interesting notes: He made his bones with “Champion,” based on a Ring Lardner story of the same name. And his favorite movie apparently was “Lonely Are the Brave,” which was based on an Ed Abbey novel, “The Brave Cowboy.” I had no idea that was his fave; I certainly liked both stories, the way I like all Lardner and Abbey stories.
And I loved me some Kirk Douglas movies.
Today, we are all Spartacus. Except for, well, you know. That guy.
One of our family jokes is, “’Ee’s not the Messiah, ’ee’s a very naughty boy!”
That was only one of the innumerable killer lines delivered over the years by Terry Jones, who died at home Tuesday. He was 77, and had suffered from primary progressive aphasia, a cruel disease that stripped him of his marvelous powers of communication.
As a member of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, Jones generally wrote with Michael Palin, co-directed “Holy Grail” and “Meaning of Life” with Terry Gilliam, and flew solo as director for “Life of Brian,” which gave us that family gag we use so often.
Condolences, peace, and egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam; spam bacon sausage and spam; spam egg spam spam bacon and spam; spam sausage spam spam bacon spam tomato and spam, or Lobster Thermidor au Crevette with a Mornay sauce served in a Provençale manner with shallots and aubergines garnished with truffle pâté, brandy and with a fried egg on top, and spam, to Jones, his family, the surviving Pythons (“Two down*, four to go,” notes John Cleese), and their friends and fans.
* Cleese forgot to count the Seventh Python, Neil Innes. No spam for him.
When I come in cold and tired, it’s good to warm my bones by the fire.
“Dark Side of the Moon” would’ve been an excellent soundtrack for yesterday. Cold, gray, damp, gloomy, madness lurking just around the corner. You lock the door, and throw away the key; there’s someone in my head, but it’s not me.
Happily, the sun returned today, though warmth remained AWOL. So I dragged Herself out for a short trail run and it was just the ticket. A bit squishy underfoot in spots, and windy, but loads better than hanging on in quiet desperation. It’s not the Irish way.
Speaking of the Irish, we finally finished watching Martin Scorsese’s “The Irishman,” which was so bloody long that we had to make a three-part miniseries out of it. The digital de-aging is a little distracting, until you quit looking for it, but the performances are top shelf. Joe Pesci was superb, Robert De Niro was restrained, and even Al Pacino took a break from chewing on the scenery, mostly. I’d have liked more screen time for Harvey Keitel, but hey, whaddaya gonna do? It is what it is.
There’s a whole gang of familiar faces in this one: comics Ray Romano, Sebastian Maniscalco and Jim Norton; straight men Jesse Piemons, Stephen Graham, and Dominick Lombardozzi; even Little Steven Van Zandt as crooner Jerry Vale.
And you may notice a theater marquee advertising “The Shootist” in the background of one scene. It was about an aging gunman hoping for a quiet death, and John Wayne’s final film. Not long after, De Niro’s character is seen shopping for his own coffin.
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