Ladyhawke (1985)

A pseudo-historical fantasy film set in that strangely nonspecific period of European medieval history so beloved by American filmmakers - other movies of this type include The Court Jester (1956), The Princess Bride (1987) and The 13th Warrior (1999).

At the beginning of the film it appears that Matthew "Ferris Bueller" Broderick is the star, playing thief-on-the-run Phillipe Gaston, but after he meets up with Rutger "tears in the rain" Hauer's former-captain-of-the-guard-now-on-the-run Etienne Navarre it becomes clear that Hauer is the hero and Broderick merely the sidekick. A bit like when Blake meets Avon in Space Fall.

At two hours long the film is annoyingly paced - when there's action it is good, but it could hardly be described as being tightly edited since it felt to me like nearly every scene goes on for just a bit longer than it needed to, with the result that the middle hour drags.

Leo McKern (taking time off from being Rumpole in between seasons three and four) turns up partway through as a disgraced priest/monk who knows Navarre's backstory, and McKern has hefty chunks of the purest exposition to deliver to Gaston, and via him to us viewers.

The film has by this point cleverly shown Gaston (and us) enough of what is going on to get partially ahead of the explanation - that Navarre is cursed to be a manny by day and a wolf by night, while his lover Isabeau is a hawk by day and Michelle Pfeiffer by night - so the exposition is just filling in any blank spaces (or allowing anyone having missed bits due to important cat sleeps to catch up), as well as giving the backstory of how they got cursed.

The rest of the film is just Navarre getting his revenge and lifting the curse, and the final half hour is some genuinely good '80s action. The ending sees the blonde, blue-eyed couple reunited - a proper Hollywood happy ending of the old school.

The soundtrack is a mix of vaguely period-appropriate musical cues and properly mid-80s synthesizer prog rock cheese. Somehow it succeeds in spite of that combination.

Verdict: It's better than Hawk the Slayer, but not as good as Krull.

Quo Vadis (1951)

A Roman epic that tends to get shown on BBC2 every few years, which is where I must have first encountered it. It is principally of interest for Peter Ustinov's magnificently OTT performance as Emperor Nero, prefiguring John Hurt's Caligula by 25 years.

It tells the story of Nero's burning of Rome, blaming the nascent Christian sect for it, his martyring of many Christians in the arena, and then the uprising which brings his reign of terror to an end. All seen from the point of view of a Roman general (played by Robert "I can't believe it's not Tony Curtis" Taylor) who falls in love with a Christian (Deborah Kerr) and has to choose between his conflicting loyalties.

The Christian message in the film is so heavy-pawed that it becomes quite unobjectionable, with St Paul and St Peter both making appearances, and St Peter's crucifixion forms part of the plot.

Other actors we reognised include Rosalie "Checkmate" Crutchley in a small but significant role as Acte, the manny who helps the cowardly Nero to kill himself at the end (sorry if that's a spoiler). There's also an actor called Peter Miles in it playing Peter's young assistant Nazarius, but Wikipedia says it's not the same Peter Miles as famously played a certain other character beginning with N.

The technicolour helps the film not feel as old as it is, and could easily have come from the 1960s and not the very early '50s. It doesn't contain as much outright spectacle as later epics such as Ben Hur or Cleopatra, though it does contain some massive sets and enormous crowd scenes, that would only look small if you had recently had your expectations distorted by watching the Soviet Union's War and Peace. Mew.

The burning of Rome scenes are possibly the most epic set piece, although let down somewhat by some dodgy back projection, or perhaps an early attempt at CSO, for scenes trying to convince us that the main characters are in amongst it. Only Barry Letts would have been impressed by that.

Me and my friends enjoyed the climactic scenes with lions in them, noming some of the Christians, and then our heroes are faced with a mad bull (giving them a bit more of a sporting chance than against the lions). I was also impressed by the continual ingenuity in the direction, never showing anything more than a hint of gore in these scenes while, at the same time, conveying the horror of the arena through reaction shots and sound effects, in accordance with the standards of the times.

A Prisoner for All Seasons

The second and final season of the BBC's Wolf Hall was the best thing I saw on television last year - yes, even better than the new Gladiators - and it reminded me that the novel Wolf Hall (the first book of the trilogy that the TV series was based upon) was written as a counterpoint to the play A Manny for All Seasons.

The play and the novel cover the same events, which lead up to the execution of Thomas More (all the books in the Wolf Hall trilogy end upon an execution). Where they differ is in the perspective - the play is written from More's point of view; it very much takes his side, and his main opponent Thomas Cromwell is the play's antagonist. Wolf Hall reverses this, and while it is not written as though Cromwell is speaking to the reader in the first person, it does everything short of this to show us events entirely from his point of view - this explains why, in the TV adaptation, Mark Rylance appears in virtually every scene.

In 1966 the play A Manny for All Seasons was turned into a film starring Phillip Paul Scofield as Thomas More and Robert "red wine with fish" Shaw as king Henry viii, and it featured Orson "Unicron" Welles as Cardinal Wolsey in a couple of scenes, and was a very early role for John "Caligula" Hurt as Richard Rich.

But the actor who most interests me in this is Leo McKern as Thomas Cromwell, particularly given that a certain TV series was also in production in 1966, although it would not be broadcast until the following year - by which time the film would have become immensely successful in both the UK and USA, winning six Oscars* at the awards in early 1967.

Now I'm not suggesting that McKern was cast as a Number Two on the basis of his portrayal of Cromwell in the film, since he would presumably have already been cast and may even have filmed some or even all of his scenes for The Chimes of Big Ben by the time of the film's release. However he had previosuly played the same part in the play, as early as 1961, so the makers of The Prisoner could easily have seen his interpretation of Cromwell on stage.

The Thomas Cromwell of A Manny for All Seasons is not at all like the Thomas Cromwell of Wolf Hall. As the antagonist we are not privy to his private moments and motivations, and we view him only through his interactions with Thomas More. Scenes in which we see Cromwell without More are scenes in which he plots against More with other characters, such as Richard Rich or the Duke of Norfolk.

McKern plays Cromwell as cloaking his deviousness behind a facade of friendliness and superficial joviality, right up until the moment comes to strike at his opponent. I don't think it is a coincidence that McKern's Number Two possessed these traits as well - particularly in his first appearance, but there are moments of it in Once Upon A Time and Fall Out as well (though in the latter his opponent is not Number Six). One could even detect shades of his lawyerly manner from the trial scenes in the way McKern would later play Rumpole - at least in the early years before he became cuddly Rumpole, when the character was still ruthless in his cross-examinations.

From the casting of McKern as the most memorable of the Number Twos and the parallel we can draw between how he played him and how he played Cromwell, we can perhaps infer that Patrick McGoohan saw something of Thomas More in Number Six. Both mannys firm for what they believed in, and stood alone, against the pressure from authority to confirm. And both expressed their defiance by keeping silent: More by refusing to take an oath of loyalty to Henry viii; the Prisoner by refusing to explain why he resigned.

* I know that Oscar success is not a guarantee of quality - for instance, Braveheart won five Oscars in 1996, including Best Picture, and is shit - but it does indicate a certain level of popularity and cultural penetration at a moment in time.

Five More Ridiculous or Ridiculously Awesome moments from Mahabharat (1988)

1. Drona makes Eklavya cut off his own thumb [Episode 23]

We rejoin the story as Sage Drona is teaching the young Pandavas (the five sons of the late King Pandu) and Kauravas (the 100 sons of King Dhritirashtra, not that we ever see anything like all 100 of them) the art of war.

Drona favours Arjun, the third son of Pandu, and swears to make him the greatest archer in the world. Almost immediately this turns out to be yet another unwise oath, for they meet the young manny Eklavya who claims to have learned from Drona without Drona's knowing about it. And Eklavya's skill at archery is, if anything, even more impressive than Arjun's.

To avoid an oathbreaking - even an unintentional one - Drona insists that he be paid for having taught Eklavya, which Eklavya agrees to before knowing what the price will be. Drona asks for Eklavya's thumb, which he uses in archery, and so will forever prevent him from competing with Arjun, as well as interfering with his ability to open doors for cats.

2. Krishna forgives 100 insults [Episodes 27-28 and 41-43]

The marriage of Prince Shishupal of Chedi and Princess Rukmini of Vidarbha was arranged by their fathers as part of their political alliance, overriding what should have been Rukmini's right to choose her husband. So before the formal betrothal took place, Rukmini arranged for her true love Krishna to "kidnap" (rescue) her.

13 episodes later, Shishupal returns and we learn his backstory - that he was born with four arms and three eyes until the extra arms and eyes over and above the amount mannys normally have disappeared the first time Krishna touched him, signifying that Krishna would be the one to cause his death. Knowing of this prophecy, Krishna promised Shishupal's mother that he would forgive Shishupal 100 crimes.

Many years later, they met again at the court of the newly crowned Emperor Yudhishthir, the eldest of the Pandavas. When Yudhishthir and his brothers offered their first respect to Krishna, Shishupal interrupted them and denounced Krishna as unworthy. He then let loose a stream of invective against Krishna, and over the objections of the Pandavas and Krishna's own brother Balram, Krishna just stood there, smiling. When Shishupal widened the targets of his insults to include Bhishma and everyone else there present who respected Krishna, Krishna calmed them and insisted that they were not the targets, only he himself was being insulted. Balram asked him why he was smiling, to which Krishna replied

Warning Shishupal that he had only three insults left, Shishupal kept going. After the 100th insult Krishna again tried to warn him, saying that the limit had been reached. Then, after the 101st insult, Krishna summoned his divine weapon and, without another word, in front of the whole court, cut off Shishupal's head. Shishupal had just enough time to realise he'd made a big mistaik and make an "oh noes!" face, but too late to do anything about it.

3. Arjun wins a wife [Episodes 34-35]

The contest arranged by her father to win Princess Draupadi's paw in marriage involves lifting a sacred bow and then using it to shoot a revolving fish's eye that you can only see from its reflection in a pool - and that assuming a cat hasn't nomed the fish first! Most of the princes who enter the competition can't even lift the bow - leading to a lot of komedy gurning as they act it being too difficult for them - never mind do the rest of it. After evil Duryodhan and various other minor baddys have had their turn and blown it, it is Arjun who finally succeeds - not really very surprising, since this was a contest designed so that only Arjun could win it.

What is more surprising is what happens when Arjun takes Draupadi to meet his mother and tells her what has happened. He and Bhim decide to tell Kunti that they have "brought back alms" for the lols.

Without looking, Kunti says "share it amongst yourselves." While she is horrified at the implication when she realises what this would mean (because the hypocrisy of their society permits husbands to marry multiple wives, but not normally the reverse), for some reason Kunti is unable to take back her words. It takes Krishna to turn up and explain that this was karmically preordained by the actions of Draupadi in her previous life. As he puts it:

"She asked for a husband who was an epitome of truth, had the strength of Hanuman, who was an ace archer, exceptionally beautiful and very patient. Did you not ask for all this? Did not Lord Shiva say one person cannot have all these qualities. Before asking you should have thought about whether your request was reasonable. You asked for a boon and the Lord has granted it. Yudhishthir is the epitome of truth. That's the first boon. None is stronger than Bhim. That's the second boon. Arjun is today's ace archer. That's the third boon. Nakul is the most handsome man alive. The fourth boon. Sahadev is the most patient. The fifth boon."

4. Bhim duels evil king Jarasandh to the deaths [Episodes 41-42]

Evil king Jarasandh wants to sacrifice 100 kings to the god Shiva to obtain immortality, and has so far captured 86 kings. In order to stop this, Krishna challenges Jarasandh to choose one of him, Arjun or Bhim to duel to the death, and Jarasandh picks Bhim thinking he would be the only one capable of posing him any kind of challenge.

Only when Bhim defeats him does he discover that Jarasandh already has a form of immortality, since when Bhim kills him - by ripping him in two - the two halves rejoin, and Jarasandh comes back to life and does an evil lol.

When the duel resumes Bhim tears Jarasandh in half again, and the same thing happens. Then Krishna shows Bhim the solution, so that when he rips Jarasandh in half for the third time, he throws the two parts in opposite directions (the right half to the left and the left half to the right), and this is enough to confuse the magic and prevent his reforming once more.

5. Yuddhishthir gambles everything away [Episodes 46-49]

This turning point in the story is so central to the narrative that it occupies four whole episodes at the midpoint of the series. Duryodhan, by now heir to the throne of Hastinapur, challenges his cousin Emperor Yudhishthir to play "the game of dice" (which may or may not have been Chaupar or Pachisi, both ancient variations of the same game, the ancestors of present-day Ludo), although it is his evil uncle Shakuni who rolls the loaded dice on Duryodhan's behalf, ensuring that they always win.

Oblivious to Shakuni's cheating and convinced his bad luck must change at some time, Yudhishthir gambles away his fortune, his lands, all his possessions, and eventually his brothers, himself, and their wife Draupadi, who are all to become slaves to the Kauravas. Duryodhan's victory seems complete, but then he makes a mistaik when he tries to humiliate his defeated enemies still further.

Draupadi is dragged in by her hair to meet her new owners, and then Duryodhan orders his brother Dushasan to strip Draupadi in front of her husbands and the entire court of Hastinapur. Dushasan cannot do it because, though he tries, Krishna appears at Draupadi's prayer and he intercedes by making her gown endlessly long, so Dushasan can never reach the end of it. Long dress is long!

Realising the outrage that has only been averted by a divine miracle, the Hastinapur elders come to their senses and King Dhritirashtra tries to make amends by returning to them all that the Pandavas have lost. But there is no going back to the way things were before the game - the Pandavas could forgive all of Shakuni's earlier plots, which were merely attempts to kill one or more of them, but  they cannot forgive the humiliation of Draupadi. Oaths of vengeance are sworn by Bhim that will hang over him until the end of the story.

Even after all that has happened the game is not over yet. You would think that Yudhisthir would have learned his lesson by now, but no... gambling is his one weakness, and Duryodhan inists they play once more, though for different stakes. Obviously Yudhisthir loses yet again, and this sets them on course for the next stage of the story: the Pandavas must spend 13 years in exile...

Happy new year 2025

Here is the winner of the 2024 Calendar Doggy of the Year competition to wish you all a happy new year for 2025.

And a happy new year to you from all of us cats and doggys at home. Here is my new friend Kitkat joining in too.