znew01

znew01

Originally uploaded by 2rightfeet

another image of mine

teresa

teresa

Originally uploaded by 2rightfeet

Portrait with a forties feel. Taken some time ago.

another image

zP1020295

Originally uploaded by 2rightfeet

Playing with light.

another image

zP1020295

Originally uploaded by 2rightfeet

Playing with light.

Bonekickers, or as someone on the BBC message board called it: Bonk’ers

who left the dog out?

I know many people have criticized this series, myself included and you have to respect the opinions of those people who like it, but the last episode plumbed new depths of badness. I watched it because I have an interest in Arthurian Mythology which is, for me, a rich and important aspect of this land’s mythological history. To mess with it is the same as messing with Australian Aborigine Dreamtime mythology, or the beliefs of religions. It was pretty obvious that the writers have absolutely zero knowledge of these mythologies or their origins. I accept that it is fantasy, a fictional and fun series but, in the same breath, you can not ride slipshod and alter ancient mythology just for the fun of it.

“It’s a fake!” cries our feisty (and immature) herione, she knows this because a ring pull is found under the segment of table. Any decent archeologist would have realised something was amiss when Lancelot’s name appeared next to Arthur’s on the stone. Lancelot was a late edition to the mythology, coming through the French and Breton Romances of the 13th century, so would not be on a 6th century find. At one point she spoke the immortal line “Let the experts deal with it”…what experts would that be then?

There she goes calling Vivienne an “Arthurian Witch” again, she really should read up on her mythology.

Tennyson’s work was, in the main, influenced by Malory who wrote the well known English version of the mythology some centuries after the cycles in French that marked the first written versions in the 13th-14th century, as such his was a heavily Churchified and fairly muddled account which bore little relation to the earlier romances.

Using Arthur as a Golden Age figure for a rejuvinated England is pretty insulting. If there was an historical figure he, definately, was not English: He fought the Anglo Saxons! If anything Arthur was of the people who became the Welsh, Cymry…and those in Cumbria and up into parts of Scotland. He was “Anglosized” by various monarchs trying to establish a right to rule.

So, I am being a bit picky. Yet, it is not just the meddling with mythological material, the aspect that really turns me off this series is the, quite frankly, appalling writing. The exposition is dreadful, the inter-personal relationships between characters is creaky and hard to believe. The plot lines are, wait for it, so fantastical as to be laughable….the contrived lineage of the sword just…..insulting on a number of levels. Maybe we can accept that they arranged to get the segment of stone table back to their lab, but the bad guys did a good job of taking it..must have needed at least six men…and a fork lift truck. Her mother is a resident in a nursing home but has managed to construct a nice little secret room under the floorboards, you would have thought someone might have noticed. Kind of the authorities to leave Wells Cathedral open over night too and I want to know where I can buy one of those torches that can shine like a laser through stained glass window and illuminate a lakebed.

These things do matter, unless you are happy to allow anyone whose written a pretty poor script as a under-graduate the opportunity and the tax payers money to make stuff like this. I might be doing a scriptwriting MA soon, I just want to confirm the university did not produce the people who wrote this. If they did, I think I might go elsewhere because, to be brutally honest, it was dreadful.

Who left the dog out? That dog being of course Scoobydoo. The similarity Velma, Daphne, Shaggy, etc is quite uncanny. The bad guys would have got away with it if it hadn’t been for those pesky kids, the writers, certainly, got a way with it.

my visual work

low_res07

Originally uploaded by 2rightfeet

Just thought I might add some of my own imagery to my blog from time to time via my flickr page.

Bonekickers: Valuable artifact or just rubbish?

I thought the first episode was poor writing, not to mention atrociously loose with history.

The biggest slip being representing the Templars as some sort of Muslim slaying bunch of maniacs which is incorrect and quite insulting. For a start there were never enough of them to be in a position to conduct massacre and also the small point that one of the reasons they were finally tried for heresy, apart from the fact of their wealth and influence, was that they were, probably, too friendly with the followers of Islam. Look at the flowering of architecture that took place in Europe during and after the Crusade period? This came though Islamic knowledge, as did much new medicinal wisdom. Look at the style of Templar churches: They shared knowledge with the Muslim world and learnt much, to represent the Templars as blood thirsty haters of Islam is just drama writing trying to be so politically correct it is painful.

At one point our feisty archeologist referred to Vivienne as “a witch”. Tennyson used a form of Vivienne and the character is usually called this in Breton versions of Arthurian Mythology, but more often referred to as Nimue. She was the consort of Merlin. The original archetype was, probably, a Goddess figure. Only later when Christian influence began to denegrate the tales would she be referred to as a witch. You really would have thought a feminist, feisty woman who demonstrated a dislike for Christianity would have known this.

Lastly, a small point 666 is not the number of the beast, it is a translation error that occurred at some point when the Bible underwent one of its many translations.

Always happy to give a series a second chance, but the dialogue and exposition did not improve and this week we have a forward thinking and ethnically sound Washington fighting alongside renegade African Slaves against the nasty English. Just feel that political correctness. Some of the scenes on the tidal mud must have had colleagues of Tony Robinson whincing (is it just me or does the opening titles and music of Bonekickers bear a passing resemblance to that used by TimeTeam?)

This week I believe we have Boudica falling in love with a Roman: The woman who saw her husband killed and her daughters raped and responded by going on the warpath and castrating every Roman soldier she came across; the whole of the menfolk of St Albans if my memory serves me correctly. Can’t see her getting passionate with one of them.

Only the BBC again….

At a time when the BBC has come under some criticism for the amount they pay some presenters it is astonishing that they line up the usual suspects, one presenter and three pundits to offer comments on the European Football Championship. A competitition that does not even feature any of the U.K National teams (but does, of course, feature a large percentage of Premiership players). Now I am not a big fan of soccer, so I wont be making a habit of writing posts that even mention it in passing…but maybe, just maybe the fact that most of the Premiership is there but none of the home nation national teams feature may, in some small way, be connected….

Two to three weeks of boring low scoring non-spectacle with a plethora of experts giving us the pleasure of their knowledge, nice to see the BBC catering for everyone then.

About sums it up

I used to be a photographer but I guess I have now pretty much turned away from that medium of expression. Why?

Well, because I, personally, do not think that a “Photographer” exists any more. That is not a good thing.

It is not a bad thing. It is just progress.

sums it up

Old England….

A while back now, the group The Waterboys recorded a song called Olde England is Dyin’.

Over weight schoolboy at lunchtime riding for free on the bus back to his school clutching his polystyrene box of junk food.

mmmmm….