May 13, 1999
Dear Everyone:
It’s been a quiet week, since I’ve been home,
taking vacation. Nothing
special, just watching TV, going to movies and reading a book that
“Frankie” sent me for my birthday,
The Wars of the Roses by
Alison Weir.
She also wrote
The Six Wives of Henry VIII, which was the basis for a
Masterpiece Theatre series some years ago.
So far, I’m about one-fourth of the way into the book and the
actual war
won’t start for another 12 years.
This is because, in order to understand the Wars of
the Roses (and eight of
Shakespeare’s
historical plays), you have to go all the way back to
Richard II,
where it all started.
Richard’s incompetence led, ultimately, to
Henry
Bolingbroke forcing Richard to abdicate.
This split the
Plantagenet
dynasty into two opposing factions, the
House of
Lancaster and the
House of York.
A couple of generations down the road, open warfare will break
out between the two houses.
Film at 11:00.
As for Shakespeare’s historical plays (Richard
II; Henry VI, parts
One and
Two;
Henry V; Henry
VI, parts One,
Two and
Three; and
Richard III)
you only have to remember two cardinal rules where Shakespeare is
concerned:
Rule Number One:
Shakespeare never allowed the facts to get in the way of a good
story line.
Rule Number Two:
Shakespeare was writing for a
Tudor audience.
This is completely different from writing for a four-door
audience, or a hatchback audience.
The Tudors were in power in Will’s day, and the Tudors descended
from the House of Lancaster.
This meant that, in Shakespeare’s plays, anyone who opposed the
Lancasters could reasonably expect to get the fuzzy end of the lollipop.
As for Rule Number One, consider the comedy,
Much Ado
About Nothing. The
Spanish prince, Don Pedro of Aragon, has just put down an insurrection
led by his illegitimate half-brother, Don John.
When you consider the fact that insurrections usually take place
in the general vicinity of the principality in question, it seems
logical that this action took place somewhere in
Spain.
But, on his way home from the battle, Don Pedro
decides to stop off and visit his dear old friend, Leonato, in Messina.
Messina is on the eastern tip of the island of
Sicily, a good 600
miles or so away. Geography
was never Will’s strong suit.
Nor was ticking off his wealthy benefactors.
So it’s nice to get the facts from a history book, even if they
won’t help you keep track of which
Duke of
Gloucester is which.
As for the movies…
The Mummy
was always a staple of Saturday afternoon TV when we were growing up.
There was Kharis,
the mummy, kept alive by an essence of tanna leaves (a precursor to
Starbucks coffee)
forever trying to rescue his love, the Princess Ananka.
He was all wrapped up in bandages, and usually had a frightful
limp; yet, no matter how fast you ran, he was always right behind you.
The first movie was a hit.
And so, there was a string of sequels:
The
Mummy’s Curse;
The
Mummy’s Hand; The
Mummy’s Ghost; The Ghost
of the Mummy’s Hand.
They all followed the same set routine.
But you can forget that in this latest installment.
This
Mummy
doesn’t subsist on essence of tanna leaves.
This Mummy could
swallow a Big Mac
whole…and the town it came from.
Rachel Weisz
(Chain
Reaction) and
John Hannah
(Four
Weddings and a Funeral) are Evelyn and Jonathan, a sister and
brother living in Egypt
and eager to discover the Lost City of…Whatever.
She wants to prove she’s as good an Egyptologist as any man and
he’d just like to find a really big pile of gold.
They join forces with a brash American played by
Brendan Fraser
(George
of the Jungle) because:
A) he knows where the Lost City of Whatever is; and B) he can
shoot with both hands at once.
The movie starts with a kind of prologue to explain
how the Mummy came to be in
the first place. The High
Priest,
Imhotep, gets caught making out with the
Pharaoh’s favorite
mistress. (Factoid:
Pharaohs didn’t have mistresses.
They had wives, as many as they wanted, of varying degrees; and
concubines, as many as they wanted, of varying degrees.
They also frequently married their own sisters and/or daughters.
With all that female companionship, who needed mistresses?)
For this, and sundry other infractions, Imhotep is
sentenced to be
mummified alive, ignoring for the moment the fact that the first
step of mummification is removal of the brain.
In addition, they lay a curse on him.
However, there is a whopping big loophole in the curse:
If ever revived, the Mummy will have unlimited powers and be totally undefeatable and
who’s great idea was that, anyway?
Evelyn, Jonathan and the Brash American soon locate
the Lost City of Whatever, and, before you can say
Boris Karloff,
they’ve kicked off the curse and discover that Being a Mummy Means Never
Having to Obey the Laws of Physics.
Lots of action scenes and wonderfully choreographed duels with
blue screens, the monsters to be added in later by the computer whizzes
at
Industrial Light and Magic.
Which means, however the new
Star Wars movie
makes out, George
Lucas has already made money on this one.
As for the acting, in
Chain Reaction, Rachel Weisz
was billed as a physicist, but her real job was to hold hands with
Keanu Reeves,
look scared and run like hell.
In this film, she’s billed as a librarian/Egyptologist, but her
real job is to hold hands with Brendan Fraser, look scared, and run like
hell. Quite a stretch.
John Hannah is great in anything he does.
And Brendan Fraser is quite likeable as a kind of poor-man’s
Indiana Jones.
A thoroughly enjoyable couple of hours and a
must-see for all librarians.
Love, as always,
Pete
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