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warrengwonka
Reviews
Anne of Green Gables: The Animated Series (2001)
Steaming pile of drivel left behind by her Jersey cow
I could only watch the first episode and half the second. The only thing this atrocity has in common with "Anne of Green Gables" is the title and the names of some of the characters. Their characters are utterly unlike the book characters, barring, perhaps Marilla. If Montgomery bitterly disliked the first 1917 movie, she'd have a fit and fall in it if she watched five minutes of this.
In the first episode, Anne and Diana have a bitter quarrel. We know from Diana's wedding scene in the books, that they claimed their friendship had lasted throughout their youth with never a harsh word between them.
The kids are playing baseball, wearing a batting helmet as an important part of the plot line, in a pickup game in a Canadian back-country hamlet in the 19th Century.
The story is interrupted by preachy politically correct gruel, directed at teaching everyone to sit together and sing Kum Bay Ah.
When Gilbert and Anne were completely playing together and cooperating in the second episode, I shut it off and returned the DVD to the library. That friendly interaction rips the heart out of the book's plot.
Fortunately, I have just found the 50 episodes of the 1979 Japanese cartoon on YouTube. Excellent. I watched the first English-dubbed episode tonight, and it, at least, is utterly true to the book.
Klondike (2014)
Too bad it didn't hold up.
I was looking at this show with great interest, as my grandfather and his brother first killed a bunch of horses on the White Pass (Dead Horse) trail. Then they hired out as packers on the Golden Staircase of the Chilkoot. Great Uncle Rudy became a popular druggist in Dawson City; Grandpa worked his way through Stanford by taking alternating years as an electrical engineer in the Yukon.
One time Uncle Rudy had a shipment of drugs wrecked coming upriver. Grandpa pushed a sled a couple of hundred miles salvaging them because he couldn't get any doge.
I liked the first two episodes pretty well, although there were so many howlers ... Bill not freezing to death; people being shot with no consequences, being that the Mounties had the lid on the town; wolves attacking people; I'm not sure that the Mounties were at the top of the Chilkoot enforcing the supply requirements at the very beginning of the Gold Rush. The winter of 97 had the city on starvation rations.
Belinda Mulrooney can be googled. She was not lovely. Looks like she could have been a programmer in Silicon Gulch 40 years ago.
Father Judge, the "Saint of the Yukon", bought two and a half acres for his St. Mary's Hospital when he came to town from where he had been assigned downriver. After his singlehanded first year, he had nuns for nurses. The show showed his grave marker with an 1898 date. He actually died of pneumonia in 1899. He can also be googled and looks much more refined in his photo than the wild-looking character.
The show jumped the shark in the third episode. The Canadians had partnered with the Indians for a hundred years in the fur trade with a lot of intermarriage; The Yukon was not the Wild West with hostiles behind every bush. All of the action was ludicrous. Shooting at an elk with the muzzle right next to a guy's ear. Armed robbery in a tent cabin by an easily identified person. The way they left town ... It would be easier and less dangerous to catch a steamer in the spring.
I would have really enjoyed seeing our heroes meeting and coping with the real Soapy Smith in Skagway. He never got to Dawson, and the show version was a buffoon.
I watch and enjoy "Reign". Completely unhistorical stories in a historic setting including non-existent hottie royal bastard half- brothers are fun to watch, if the show is actively and openly dealing in piffle. You don't expect it from a Discovery show that touts its verisimilitude.
The New World (2005)
Massively pretentious impressionist film.
You know that a film is going to be massively pretentious when it is all water and river shots from the first note of Wagner's Ring to the time you would expect the Jamesmaidens to burst into song. However, I was warned by my daughter, who had seen it a few years ago, and did not expect any rousing action. It was a dream, rather, told with the jumpiness, incoherence, and lack of explication you get in one. Most of the dialog was buried by music, except for the voice overs.
The show bragged about authenticity, but the Powhatan tribe historically mostly went about nude, according to the contemporary drawings of them. Even a Pre-Raphaelite-appearing painting of Pocahontas saving John Smith has a breast exposed by an off the shoulder outfit.
But, for authenticity, I was at the Jamestown archaeological site just last week. The movie had it nailed.
Malick did what he did exceedingly well, communicating with light, facial expressions, motion, requiring the viewer to give himself over to the atmosphere he wrought. The actors carried out his design beautifully. I let him work his will on me. Somewhat. I should like to also see a good drama of the history, perhaps the equivalent of the first season of the "Rome" series.
He who needs a plot and dialog will be bored out of his skull. This show ain't nothing' like what he was expecting, and he will have wasted the rental fee. He would be like an Academy judge dealing with the Impressionist painters' submissions in Paris a century ago.