THE NORTHMAN

Tags

Alexander Skarsgard, film, legend, movie review, myth, Nicole Kidman, The Northman, Viking

If you are into Norse myth/legends or marauding Vikings, this is the film for you. If you’re into unfettered views of a ripped torso, this is very much the film for you. If you like mystical, magical settings and glorious vistas, you will get all that and a bag of chips. Gorgeous, scenic cinematography with gloom, mist, creepy witches and blood and guts fighting—it’s all that and more chips. It’s safe to say this film will transport you back into the first Millenia, back when hygiene was on nobody’s mind.

It’s no secret that Shakespeare got a lot of his plots from other countries and their legends. This is the legend of Amleth (Hamlet) and done to a turn. So, I knew what was going to happen. That didn’t slow it down for me. Even with the sparse dialogue, the story held my attention. The acting was wonderful with standout performances by Alexander Skarsgard (Amleth) and Nicole Kidman (Queen Gudrun). The music is perfect, haunting, weird and unsettling. To take the viewer into Amleth’s time and to experience it in his point of view, Robert Eggers incorporated Nordic spirituality and beliefs into the story. The soothsayers are believable as occultists. And because Amleth believes, so do we.

Prior to seeing the film, I listened to a Terry Gross interview on NPR with Skarsgard, who was in his hometown of Stockholm. Many juicy tidbits were revealed, such as the unusual filming technique of running an entire, long battle scene in one take. While and after seeing it, I was amazed. Skarsgard joked that it had to be redone due to chickens flying around when they shouldn’t. Repeatedly screaming and growling in bestial frenzy, cranking up in preparation for a berserker attack, left him temporarily without a voice.

This is a movie for the strong of stomach, romantic of heart, and lover of epic storytelling. I attended with a friend who knows the gods of the time. Her explanations cleared up a lot. It might help to look up a list of them. Sorry, Thor is never mentioned. Odin gets all the attention. And the Valkyries. So cool. The only missteps that took me out of the story was seeing one rider with stirrups, which came into use when knights jousted or carried heavy metal into battle, and Alexander’s clean, pretty teeth. Forgave him everything after seeing him without his shirt. Worth the price of admission.

M.L Rigdon (aka Julia Donner)

Follow on Twitter @RigdonML

Blog: https://historyfanforever.wordpress.com/

Website http://www.MLRigdon.com

https://www.bookbub.com/authors/julia-donner

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Wonder Women

Tags

Amazon, battle, film, legend, movies, myth, review, war

 

Confession time. I told a friend I would go with her to see Wonder Woman, fixed a time to go five days after its release, then couldn’t wait. That freaky theme music from Batman v Superman kept screaming inside my head. I love that wild electric cello sound, and anyway, when I like a film, I go see it twice. This one was just as fun the second time around—not an easy feat to keep me impressed twice the second time. The glaring problem of what happened to the German ship unloading soldiers to chase Steve in his downed plane continued to perplex, (probably edited out to save time), but everything else was so much fun, I blew it off. Or as some say, gave it the hand wave. For me, I was more interested in what was done differently.

At Cannes, Jessica Chastain made headlines when she censured the film industry for its treatment of women, consistently presenting women as secondary characters. I’ve always viewed it as keeping women in their place to act as the obligatory adjunct requisite for masculine enhancement. Not so in this flick, boys and girls. The men quickly learned how to follow the female leader, and what I loved was how it made them more, well, manly. Nothing turns any intelligent female off faster than male posturing. Men who have ego issues may get off on it, but women yawn. My favorite bit was when Steve (Chris Pine) hollers out in the middle of a skirmish where a desperate act is needed, “Shield, Diana!” Oye, my heart went pitty-pat, and you’ll have to see the movie to find out what that was all about. And perhaps I’m biased or ga-ga, but I’ve had such high hopes for Pine ever since The Finest Hours. I like the new Star Trek stuff, but he was so splendid as the self-effacing, courageous, and resolutely honorable Coast Guard hero.

Next difference—use of women over forty. Hollywood mogul types may need to sprinkle films (or cram them down our throats) with females meant for male menopause relief, but demographics have changed. When I look around in theaters today, there are often more silver-haired heads than younger generation types. When the Amazon warriors come charging on to the beach, the general in the lead is enough to make hardened soldiers think about a new strategy.

Robin Wright is superb. Nuf said.

Next comes the music portion. Many filmmakers think battering-ram music scores will cover up the fact that they’ve invested in a piece of schlock. I avoid films with rap music and not just because I’m not a fan. If a film requires that kind of loud, in-your-face score to help the pacing and lack of storyline, stay home and buy the music from the film. The only one I recall seeing where that enhanced the action was in the first Terminator. Its pulse-pounding, clanking metal score worked. In this version of Wonder Woman, I was surprised by the symphonic style, which enhanced the film and never distracted. Very clever but my favorite is still that electric cello and crazy drums theme introduced in Batman v Superman, which, to be sensible, could not have been used throughout.

The film is getting tons of good reviews and breaking records. You don’t need another content review. It’s the differences that made Wonder Woman more delightful for me. Maybe somebody in the LA portion of the industry will move beyond their tiny ego-centric mindsets to notice what the public already knows.

THERE BE DRAGONS

Tags

Cayce, dragons, fantasy, legend, myth, research

Just finishing up the last chapter of a regency historical, the fifth in the Friendship series, and need a break from the confinement of historical fiction. The titles and outlines for the next two books are inside my bean, but I need something—a break, a spoonful of lemon sorbet to cleanse the palette. Don’t get me wrong. I love regency with a capitol L, but after a while, I worry about the staleness that can creep in from writing too much of the same thing. So, it’s back to fantasy for a while.

I admit to a fixation on dragons. I doubt they ever existed, certainly not the way I think of them, but in my head, they live. My first published works were epic fantasy. Winged creatures called fflorin were in each installment of the trilogy, dragons with a strong affinity to humans, which they considered a lower life from. Fflorin believed it their duty—like angels with crosses to bear—to assist feeble humans, while humans were in equal parts fascinated and terrified of the clever creatures.

Fantasy allows imagination to fly. For me, a much needed sense of freedom from the confines of creating inside the box of historical facts. So…up next on the writing docket, Canticle of Destruction, the third book of the YA fantasy series Songs of Atlantis, stories about a girl who can manipulate nature, kidnapped from her homeland, and sold on the auction block in Atlantis. The Vital, first in the series, is the discovery of her talents. The second, Masters of the Dark, its uses, and the third is about her ability to change the world. This time, there be dragons in it. Not the usual dragon either. Mine are always a bit edgier, a bit different from the run of the mill sort that spew fire.

To spark ideas about Atlantis world building, I read Cayce. Then, like a nimnoo (Holy shades of Mork from Ork), I started to research—a habit and a mistake on more than one level. Don’t know how bright it was to delve into dragon mythology when my original intent was to stay away from research. Regency requires trotting off to the bookshelf every other paragraph to verify a fact or detail.

While sifting through dragon legend, I come upon an interesting historical note and off I go on an entirely different thread. I am habitually stuck in research mode, and it must stop. There are pages and websites and endless kinds of dragons. I merely wanted to check out a few things and got lured into bottomless wells of information.

Scads of countries are awash with varied legendary dragons—serpent-like, winged, wormy, sea-going and cave-dwelling. The variety is endless. I kept reading and reading, sucked into the lore and myths, the hoaxes and possibilities. What was I thinking? Too much research in this case is a very bad thing. I know what my dragon is going to look like, its purpose, and its part in the story arc. My problem is letting go of the research addiction and allowing imagination take the controls.

My dragon awaits. Scratch that. My dragon lurks. Now it’s time to fly.

M.L Rigdon (aka Julia Donner for regency)

Follow on Twitter @RigdonML

Website http://www.MLRigdon.com

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History Mystery

Tags

Brown Lady, England, ghost, Lady Dorothy Townshend, legend, murder, mystery, photograph, rake, Raynham Hall, scandal, scoundrel, spirits, Walpole, Wharton

The speculation regarding the death of Dorothy, Viscountess Townshend, in 1726 has been hashed over for almost three-hundred years. I’ll lay out some of what’s been written to allow you to make up your own mind. Whether or not the famous photograph of the Brown Lady descending the staircase is real is not the point. What really happened to Lady Dorothy is the mystery. That she haunted Raynham Hall is pretty much a given with or without the photograph. She’s been “seen” by too many people, too many times over the centuries, wearing a brown brocade dress and looking like her painting. George IV, when he was Prince Regent, visited Raynham Hall, saw her and nearly did the “run screaming into the night” shtick. Another idiot tried to shoot her, maybe not the best authority, but it happened while he was with two others. The list goes on. And on. Let’s get to the clues. Some at least, because there are tons.

It’s written that Dorothy, thirteenth child of the Walpole’s, fell in love with Townshend but her father, who was also guardian to Townshend, would not allow them to marry. Walpole feared public suspicion that he would be perceived as throwing the youths together for personal and social gain. Townshend ended up marrying the daughter of Baron Pelham. His wife died in 1711, and not long after that, Dorothy and Townshend married. From then on, Dorothy was perpetually pregnant. She bore seven children to add to the five Townshend had with his first wife. There is no mention, of course, of the lost pregnancies that could have happened between births. The point is, the two of them kept busy. Then came trouble.

While Townshend was married to his first wife, Dorothy wasn’t idle. Whether she was seduced or forced, she had an involvement with Lord Wharton, a “profligate” sort, who later fled the country to avoid debts. This guy was so bad he was declared an outlaw and stripped of his titles in 1729. Somewhere along the way Townshend found out about the old affair, and from that point on, Dorothy was “locked up” in her apartments, separated from her children.

It’s been written that Dorothy died of mysterious circumstances that include everything from small pox, a fall or a push down stairs, or a broken heart. It was also suggested that she never died in 1726, at the age of forty, but that Townshend continued to keep her locked up for years.

When it comes to the truth about being locked up, or cruelly treated, I have to wonder about her family. Dorothy’s brother, the famous PM, Sir Robert Walpole, was also a business partner of Townshend’s. Seems odd that Sir Robert would allow anything too grim to happen to his sister. Husbands held complete legal power over their spouses, there was no interfering with that, but families had been known to intervene. Then again, Sir Robert could have been ticked at his sister for letting it get about that she had a thing with a guy as slimy as Wharton. Townshend and Walpole were prominent politicians. Reputations must be maintained.

Then there’s small pox. I didn’t find mention that anyone else in the household had it, but a servant outbreak might never be noted. It is contagious, which could be a reason why she was set apart, or maybe it wasn’t really small pox, but the other “pox” kind, venereal disease. If she were the type to “get around” during the safe times of perpetual pregnancy, she could have picked it up.

It’s often agreed that ghosts linger due to traumatic deaths or embittered life experiences. Why is Dorothy hanging around? Give it your best guess. Here are a few links.

http://www.hauntedhovel.com/raynhamhall.html

http://www.castleofspirits.com/brownlady.html

And sorry about no personal post last week. I had a new ebook release, The Duchess and the Duelist, written as Julia Donner. 

http://amzn.to/13GGbmO

The attendant work involved and the holiday activity fried me down to the socket. See you next week. Happy New Year and ghost hunting!