JANE GOT A GUN

Tags

film, horses, New Mexico, review, western, WIP

JANE GOT A GUN

If you’re not into westerns, you might want to stop right here. But if you LUV the genre as I do, this might trip your trigger. The film did for me because of its authenticity. There wasn’t much to find wrong about its level of production. It’s a story of human behavior at its best and worst, and how the life choices we make are the best ones we can make at the time.

The story is about Jane Hammond (Natalie Portman), whose husband, Ham (Noah Emmerich), barely makes it home, shot in the back many times by the Bishop Gang, the baddies. After patching up hubby, Jane hides their daughter with a friend and heads out to find help, knowing that Bishop (Ewan McGregor), eerily evil and ruthless, is determined to kill her and her husband. The only man she trusts is Dan Frost (Joel Edgerton), former fiancé prior to the Civil War. The overt theme is survival. The subplots are Dan’s ongoing love/hate thing for Jane, and why Jane married a criminal and gives him relentless, unbending devotion. To paraphrase Jane’s explanation to Dan, not everything in life is all about Dan. Nor is it what appears on the surface. Everybody has a sunshine tale to tell but hers doesn’t/didn’t have much sunshine. For women in the West, there was very little “sunshine” to be had. And that’s one of the two nitpicks I have with the film.

Look at the photos of women of that time period. This film takes place in 1871 New Mexico Territory, hardscrabble indeed. Natalie looks too dang good in the face. She’s lived through every kind of hell and yet looks young. Women in their twenties looked thirty years older. But there were some nice touches, like the blue canning jars and sturdy looking clothes.

My other gripe, and it’s a tiny one, is the condition of the horses after being loped for miles. Their coats would have been wet, perhaps not lathered, but definitely some sign of distance carrying weight. I can’t nag about this much, because it shows that the film had a caring wrangler. The horses were beautifully trained, and like animals used in film, knowledgeable of the terminology from action to cut, unflinching if a clapper is used. When I lived in LA, many of my neighbors were stunt riders. Their horses were in a different class from riding mounts with a calm yet alert demeanor. I digressed.

So I got a little oyfgehaytert when I saw the trailers for this flick. Had to see it before it left the theaters and it didn’t disappoint. It’s made me yearn to haul out the western romance I started to convert to digital length. But I’ve got four WIPs to finish. Mind you, I’m not griping. This film reminded me that I don’t have to start a fire every morning, pump water for the house, livestock and garden, clean clothes with Fels Naptha on a scrub board, wring the neck, pluck and singe the chicken before roasting it in a range that needs the right amount and kind of wood to create the proper temperature. Yeah, I’ve got nothing to whine about. Certainly not this movie. I’ll be buying it when it’s released.

Writing bud, Judi Lynn has a new release, Cooking Up Trouble, now available on Amazon for presale:

Check it out: http://www.amazon.com/Cooking-Up-Trouble-Mill-Pond-ebook/dp/B013NI5G68/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1454985355&sr=1-1&keywords=judi+lynn

M.L Rigdon (aka Julia Donner)

Follow on Twitter @RigdonML

Website http://www.MLRigdon.com

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Julia-Donner

 

 

 

 

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OK, So I Lied

Tags

creativity, fantasy, horses, regency, Rob Roy, Scotland, Trossachs, Victorian, YA

I know, I know. The last blog post had me saying that I was going to return to fantasy. See me with my pants on fire. Can’t help it. Another story crowded its way into my head, hogged all the space, and now intends to rule until it has had its say. Another regency installment rules, not a cleansing of the creative palate with a YA fantasy, which are so much easier to construct. With fantasy, I can plug into whatever storyline weirdness comes into my bean. It’s the ultimate creative freebasing—the imagination on a bungee jump into a strangely familiar, alien world of our own making. (Insert a shiver here.)

With historical works, there are parameters and pesky restrictions, like actual historical sites and events. So why do I do it? Mostly because I’m addicted to history and can mentally immerse myself into any time period with an eighteen-hundred in it. Blame it on Aunt Marie, who had me working in her museum. She called it a “Step Into the Past” and being there was really like being there.

Yes, I’m an anglophile, but when it comes to GB, I’m a real nut about Scotland. Fell head over heels with the place the one time I visited for research. This is why the setting for the next regency is in an area bordering Rob Roy country and the Trossachs. Photographs can’t capture what the landscape is like, in my opinion. Haunted, wild and lovely all at once.

Add to the mix that I’m a horse freak. Loved riding and playing with my two mares, now happy in knee-deep grass in heaven. The Arabian proverb says that the horse is God’s gift to man. In the past, Englishmen felt the same. A gentleman was either riding, driving or betting on them. It wasn’t unusual to put a child in a saddle at the age of two. Many women were competent riders because it was the only respectable sport in which they could participate.

My WIP, The Dandy and the Flirt, won’t have horses as an integral aspect of the storyline, as in the last work. This work has two mischievous boys, a sloppy mutt, a forceful, enigmatic prig and a woman who is open about her enjoyment of sex. Remember, this book is set in the time period before Victoria ruined everybody’s fun because her Albert passed on without her. In other words, if she wasn’t getting any, the rest of the nation could do without. Not so forty years earlier when country parties were an excuse to bed-hop up and down the hallways, wife-swapping in comic overdrive. There must have been more door slamming than a French farce.

Let the games begin. I’ve got some feisty characters waiting to let loose.

M.L Rigdon (aka Julia Donner)

Follow on Twitter @RigdonML

Website http://www.MLRigdon.com

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Julia-Donner

EXODUS, SCHMECH-XODUS

Tags

ancient history, Bible, Brunner, chariot, Commandments, Egypt, Exodus, Goshen, Hatshepsut, Hebrews, Heston, horses, Isrealites, Moses, movies, Old Testament, Passover, pharoah, Plagues, Ramesses, Red Sea, Torah

Oy vey, yet another mixed-up rendition, but nice.

When I was in second grade, the nuns rented the local movie house, cleared out the school, and walked us seven blocks to see The Ten Commandments. Special effects in 1956 were nothing like they are today, and yet the film influenced me more than any other. There was Egypt, in all its jaw-dropping splendor, with the ferociously yummy Yul Brunner as Ramesses. He looked just like Ramesses the Great but with muscles. Made my heart go platz.

There’s a lot of squabbling about who was pharaoh at the time of the exodus. Given the records of Ramesses’s history—even taking away some of the hyperbole loved by Egyptian historians—this does not sound like the right guy. But back to some blatant film errors with Exodus: Gods and Kings, which still has Moses doing all the talking, and not Aaron, as was also done in the 1956 version. Doesn’t anybody in Hollywood read the Old Testament or Torah?

One thing I did love about this new version, whether accurate or not, was the production work involving Egypt, the city and palace settings, the gorgeous costuming. Luscious and reminiscent of how it was reported to look by historians of the day. (The HBO Rome series had Egypt horribly depicted, dry and dull. One of Caesar’s soldiers wrote about gold everywhere and walls embedded with real jewels.)

Then there was the ill-conceived background shot of Moses fleeing Egypt. The Sphinx, with her crumbling face looks as it does today, not as it would have thousands of years ago. Doesn’t anybody bother to do historical research? Sketches done by Frederic Louis Norden in 1737 and Vivant-Denon’s depictions of Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt, show a less damaged face.

The equine mess-ups are silly. In this new version, Moses rides and drives Friesian horses, a breed not developed until the Middles Ages. Egyptians didn’t ride a lot, and when they did, they are depicted bare-back, no stirrups. Stirrups as we know them were not widely used until the Middle Ages, although there is some argument about that. It’s said the present day stirrups were devised to steady the knights carrying all that metal and for support with the lance.

Then we have the Biblical issues and omissions, too many to count. The one that got me in this recent version was how the Red Sea parted, sort of drizzling away. It’s stated more than once that when the sea waters parted, they crossed on “dry” land. No mud flats or rushing streams as in this latest film. They walked between walls of water, on dry ground, like the 1956 film.

Back to using Ramesses II as the bad guy. It’s now thought that Thutmose III is the dummy who kept ignoring God and prophecy, and that it might have been the marvelous Hatshepsut who pulled Moses from the river. Whoever hauled him out had to be very high up on the chain. Hatshepsut was pharaoh’s daughter, married to Thutmose II (half-brother), and later became regent for her step-son, the not-so-nice Thutmose III. Much of her personal history was expunged, which might have contained remarks about Moses. I’ve included some sites about the controversy.

In the end, I enjoyed the movie when I stopped obsessing about the errors and just enjoyed the scenery. Christian Bale, whose accent had Variations-on-an-English-Theme throughout, is nice to look at, but the Old Testament (don’t remember reading this bit in the Torah) says Moses was beautiful in God’s eyes. Maybe Heston should have played pharaoh and Brunner, Moses. Oy.

http://www.bible.ca/archeology/bible-archeology-exodus-date-1440bc.htm

http://www.thechurchesofgod.com/WHO%20WAS%20THE%20PHAROAH%20OF%20THE%20EXODUS.html