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I finally got around to seeing Kingdom of Heaven. (The director’s cut, for those keeping score.)

And, well, what is there to say? It wasn’t awful by any means, although it suffered greatly from the usual Hollywood tropes.

Balain of Ibalin, played by quiet, distinctly not-medieval Orlando Bloom, is a blacksmith in France. His previously unknown father shows up to take him on a crusader adventure to Jersusalem around the era of the 2nd Crusade. At first he declines, but his brother prods him about his dead wife. After throwing the priest into the fire he finds Liam Neeson and begins his hero quest into the bowls of crusader Europe.

Liam Neeson kept the beginning from being too boring and he hass had enough practice being the mentor (Cough, Batman, Cough) that it carried admirably. The whole ‘Ibalin needs forgiveness’ theme got old quick and tends to fall apart as soon as you have a knight hacking people apart, but trying to protect the muslims. Either he’s a crusader killing for glory and heaven or he’s not. Only in Hollywood is the perfect knight a butcher and a race-blind saint.

Jeremy Irons, always a pleasure to watch, didn’t get a lot of face time, but he had the honor of introducing the political and social issues, which they managed to depict more astutely than expected. Baldwin the King of Jerusalem has leprosy, there’s a tenuous peace between the Christians and the Muslims, the knights templars led by Guy of Lusignan (Marton Csokas) and Raynald of Chatillon (Brendan Gleeson) are causing problems. The doubtful and adolescent heir of Princess Sibylla (the ever gorgeous Eva Green), puts the whole kingdom in a precarious state of near chaos.

Enter Orlando Bloom, now as a crusader champion. He takes command of his father’s estate (Liam Neeson), managsto miraculously turn it into a thriving barony complete with small children playing in the newly dug irrigation ditches. Apparently everyone else who lived there for thousands of years forgot how to dig a well.

The ending is held together by the historical politics, which make for a rousing tale of crusader glory, Saladin’s respectful and pious heroics, and the turbulance of the household. Unfortunately, instead of letting the story tell itself, good ol Balin has to make everyone a knight and save Jerusalem. He negotiates a safe end to the crusader kingdom and finds inner peace, but only after slaying twice the population of Antioch in a final siege that stands as an admirable battle scene, but a rather silly note in Ibalin’s story.

The whole things wraps together with Balain going back home to france with Eva Green (apparently, he’s not wanted for murder anymore?) and shrugging off King Richard the Lionhearted who gets a cameo.

Overall I enjoyed the movie. I’m well aware that it is getting on four years old now, but it hadn’t passed by me yet. Seeing Jerusalem in its crusader glory was worth the wait and it is certainly a very pretty movie. They even managed to court the political nuances of the age without dropping too much.

My only complaint is the main character. If they’d stayed true to the time, Ibalin would have been a heroic knight and soldier, and even courteous with the muslim factions, but not nearly as tolerant and ‘modern’ as they made him. His return home would have been as an exhausted crusader warrior, not as a newly absolved lover ready to start a new life. The speeches about finding forgiveness in the holy land fell pretty flat and were entirely unnecessary. The drama of the age and of the personalities was more than enough to tell a good story. Throwing in the usual Hollywood niceties of the hero getting the girl, learning a lesson, and living happily ever after just dumbs down the whole affair.

Still, it’s a good flick. The director’s cut was three hours, so a bit long, but it has an intermission. Worth watching on DVD if you’re bored and want to see the crusaders on film.

Servusamanu has received a ton of visitors lately. I’m not really sure where they’re coming from, but here’s a list of recent searches that brought people here.

decline and fall of the roman empire
historical views on decline of roman empire
thrones hbo
kirk and spock friendship
empire total war no writing

Hmm? Something tells me a half-hearted review of Rome didn’t get me 1400 page views in two days. I’ve now got an idea of what I should be writing about though. Whoever was and is showing up here…thanks!

I’ve been tweaking the website all day. Right now I’m using Yslow to optimize the site.

I got a C grade overall.

Time to use gzip and add expires headers.

This article ‘Five Ways to Speed Up Page Response Times‘ has been very helpful.

Cheers!

I’m trying out two wordpress plugins.

Twitter Widget

and

Wp to Twitter

Twitter Widget gives me that nice little Twitter box on the side. It should update whenever I make a new tweet, which is actually fairly often. I usually hit up a few times every day, usually with a writing update of some kind.

Wp to Twitter will update my twitter whenever I have a wordpress post. The hope is to integrate twitter with facebook, one giant happy social networking family.

I’m over two thirds done. I’ve got around ten chapters left.

The end is always the worst. Starting out the ideas are fresh. If it doesn’t work, so what, it was fun to play around with. A hundred thousand words later the doubts are a little more poignant. It’d be a shame if the last few months were really just ‘practice’. Is each chapter effective? Is the story effective? Is it entertaining? I keep saying that’s a job for editing, but there’s only so much that can be salvaged. Is the story any good? We’ll see…after I finish it.

It is a cool feeling though to almost have a manuscript done. A hundred thousand words printed feels hefty no matter what font you use. There’s a sense of accomplishment in holding a brick of paper that has your own words on it.

The next few weeks will be interesting. Once I actually get the whole thing done I’m taking a few weeks off. I’ll be reading the last couple of years worth of Nebula and Hugo award winners as well as The Secret Atlas trilogy by Michael A. Stackpole. I might also pick up some more research books on future technologies for my story. Once I’ve, hopefully, mostly forgotten what I’ve written it’ll be editing time. And well, that’ll be the summer. Cheers!

Did I ever post about the drunk gorilla? I don’t think I did.

(Sorry…slow day)

This morning I was all about social networking. I threw a couple of status messages at facebook. Over the course of the day I probably assaulted twitter two or three dozen times with assorted minutae. This blog got a post. I was reading other people’s blogs, twitters, and facebook. Basically, I spent the day enjoying the sights and sounds of our mirror, digitized, society. I should probably be writing, but, hey, my story is set in the future. I have to have a healthy grasp of the current…

Anyway, via twitter, I was informed of Audioboo. (Specially via StephenFry. (Yep, of Jeeves and Wooster fame, among other things.))

AudioBoo is an application for the iphone that lets you record short messages and post them to audioboo. It’s a form of audioblogging, similar to twitter for recorded voice. It seems to be a happy medium between the lillipution delivery of twitter, increasingly commercialized facebook, and vain absurdly of videoblogging.

Already, audioblogging seems to be a positive direction for authors and people in general to communicate. StephenFry has his AudioBoo. Michael Stackpole has The Secrets Podcast and some other things.

Web 2.0 has been the catch all cliche for new technology, but…it’s exciting. I’m all about democratizing media. The days of New York Times and the Evening News have ended and a new world of open communication is taking place. The worst critics of social media deplore the overall quality of the writing. A valid criticism, one I fall under, but social media also solves its own problem. There are pieces of quality out there to be found. Compare: the number of tv channels with uninteresting content vs. the number of websites with uninteresting content. By percentage tv might win (5 channels out of 50, 10%, 100 websites: billions <1%), but by sheer number the internet wins handily. It’s not the medium, internet carries video just fine, but the openess. WordPress, twitter, myspace, facebook, xanga, now audioboo are all opening up the available mediums that can be utilized. The popularity of forums and newsgroups, even in the early days of the internet, show the general desire for open communication, regardless of ‘quality,’ and these new technologies are only giving greater means to an already present market.

Sadly, I don’t have an iphone, but Servusamanu might dabble with audioblogging in the future. I’ll be on the look out for other interesting programs that might pop up.

How did I miss this? Gothic 4 is coming out.

That’s a computer game for anyone not in the know.

Why is this relevant on a blog about writing? Well, it probably isn’t, however the Gothic Series has been, by and large, and exceptionally well done take on a fantasy world. The story begins with a nameless hero who gets dumped into a prison colony surrounded by magical barriers. There are three groups within this prison colony and the player gets to choose who to trust and help. Did I mention that the mages that created the prison barrier are trapped inside? Did I also mention the prison colony has runes of ancient magic scattered about, a legendary dark mage lives within the area, orcs infest the land intent on the destruction of all humans, and, amogst all this, the layer character is hounded by the various monsters, gangs, and beasts of the area. Well, glad I did then.

I’ll save the rest of the plot for the dedicated player, but the nameless hero manages to free the mages and prisoners from the colony. His adventure in the next game follows his attempt to leave the island of the prison colony. This involves a number of other adventures, but more importantly, begins to dabble with the story of the dark wizard whose initial support of the nameless hero becomes questionable.

The third adventure, within the main kingdom, has the nameless hero finally resolve the orc human conflict, one way or another. All of the characters met along the way show up for the grand finale and peace or war falls on the world.

Fairly standard fare, by and large, by the world is realized with a great deal of creativity and originality. The low magic world of studious mages, varied cultures, and consequence is done with a great deal of artistry. The prison camp is oppressive and gloomy. The jungle followers have combined the best aztec mysticism with a ‘Kurtzian’ creepiness. The war between the prison camps is as petty and violent as any prison brawl. As the story expands it manages to preserve the details. The second installment has the trianing camp for the red wizards. They perform chores in the morning, growing herbs, and listening to readings. The minutae was impressive, the sort of details that fleshed out the visually, the same way a side comment or colour text does so in a written world. More than once I’ve used computer worlds as inspiration.

Needtheless to say, I’m pleased that a fourth installment is coming, alhtough it’s from a different developer and the third installment ended fairly conclusively. For anyone curious, a trailer can be found here.

I downloaded and played The Pitt this weekend. It’s the second downloadable expansion for Fallout 3, following the short but ambitious Operation Anchorage.

Let me say, I am disappointed. The Pitt follows a slave rebellion in the burned out husk of Pittsburgh. That’s a vague but promising start. Three hours later I was master of the pit and the slave rebellion was over.

I’m a more aesthetic gamer than most. I can appreciate the game that burns bright and fast, but I expect the game to meet a certain level. Sadly, this expansion was infinitely forgottable. The story, as I’ve already aluded, was over quickly. It was a standard ‘free the slaves or help the slavers’ vignette, similar to a number of missions in the original Fallout 3. The download promised a morally vague world, but the macguffin thrown in and only realized at the very end, held far too little impact. Granted, as an experienced player with a maximimum level adventurer I didn’t expect a massive amount of challenge, I also didn’t expect it to be so thoroughly easy as well. Two or three quick jaunts through the burned out husk of Pittsburgh was not enough to inspire in me any particular morale confusion.

Visually, Fallout 3 has always been gorgeous. Pittsburgh, however, was somewhat of a disappointment. The bridge was well realized and there was some new artwork in the city, but most of it was the same burnt out remains as always, with some added rust and the firey skeleton of a steel mill. The art work, while interesting, was less impressive that Operation Anchorage or the original Fallout.

Without much of a story, or visuals, the download just fell flat. The characters were only vaguelly memorable, but again, there was so little back story, so little time spent with them, that none of the characters came particularly to life. It is a complaint that could go to Fallout 3 in general, but it had enough other merits to recommend it. I wanted to like The Pitt, I really did, but aside from a few cool weapons and a rather exciting gladiator contest there just was enough to interest me.

I hope the third download adventure, coming soon, will be much more exciting!

Over the last few months the articles have descended in length in quality with only the rare exception. It’s my intent to get back into more substantial articles. It’s a never-ending process of measuring time and other projects against a desire to make this website at least moderately worth maintaing and, hopefully, reading.

My tastes in reading tend to take me in obscure directions. Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell was a modern fantasy novel of its own peculiar, pedantic bent. George RR Martin furfills my historical fantasy wishes. Neuromancer and Snowcrash would likely fall under science-fiction, cyberpunk, things like that. In fiction, I rotate between histories, cookbooks, biographies, a never ending line of words and stories.

My most recent labor has been The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, by Edward Gibbon. This epic tome (6 volumes, each many hundreds of thousands of words) from the 18th century remains a respected general history of Rome and the template from which most modern histories are derived. As a work of writing it maintains an intimate, though sarcastic, tone that reveals the author more than one would expect. It dabbles with personal narratives, often finding fault and merit in the various personages that drove the history of Rome, and explors the curiosities of history with an eye for their greater affect and analysis. The story is pushed along even more fully by a rigorous exploration of the religious, military, and economics circumstances affecting the most important provinces and people of the realm. It is, quite simply, a very complete history of Rome from its pinnacle age under the early Emperors to its ignominious collapse and then, in the second half, through the crusades and beyond.

It is an incredibly impressive achievement. It remains a respected work in the field, which attests to the scholarship, the prodigious footnotes validate the years of research that went into the book, and the scope, the life of an empire, is unmatched. Nevertheless, I would have hard time recommending this great achievement. The prose is outdated and simply tough to read. It is a literary and academic masterpiece, but its length and obtuseness to the modern tongue makes more modern histories of Rome far more accessible.

In lieu of a recommendation, I would prefer to say that, for me, it has been an immensely beneficial book to read. My own story is, in a way, a sort of general history. A fictional futuristic history, but a history nonetheless. I find, quite often, that many stories lack a world. They have a dramatic scenario and characters to furfill to the obligations of the plot, but there is no anchor and no setting. The events transcend any particular culture and thus lose so much of their effect. The best stories work within and win a greater historical narrative. The Sharpe and Flashman Series provide easy examples, but historical fiction is hardly the only field this is true. Lord of the Rings created a world history almost as epic as that of Gibbon. Don Quixote only makes sense in a world where chivalry is on the cusp of irrelevancy. Jurassic Park requires a world that is freely dabbling with the consequences of genetic manipulation. Tom Clancy’s works are predicated on the tensions of a post cold-war world. Every story requires a history to provide context and verisimilitude to the drama.

Reading Gibbon has provided a great deal of inspiration to flesh out the world in my own, hopefully nearing completion, novel. I need to touch more fully on the political establishment, the mindset of the people, the economics, the military, the religious and spiritual inclinations. My futuristic world needs a setting that expands beyond the immediate locale to a world that is, like all worlds and all settings, twisting with a number of idealistic conflicts. Gibbon provides an example of a real empire suffering an extended drama that would make for the greatest fiction work of all, if it wasn’t so true, so tragic, and so complete.

As an update, I am proceeding along with my work. I’m quite a bit behind where I should like to be, but that is always the case with schedules. I’ll have more to say as soon as I have more done!