Nothing New Under the Sun

What do Alfred Hitchcock and my first time acting in a play have in common? I shall attempt to explain.

Thisbe listening to Pyramus through the wall

Last night, we watched 'The Man Who Knew Too Much', which is a rather classic Alfred Hitchcock thriller. Unfortunately for me, it wasn't the one I wanted to see. Alfred Hitchcock remade just about every movie he ever made, so I got to see his first version of 'The Man Who Knew Too Much' rather than his last version (which is the one I really wanted to see).

Remakes are certainly not new things. Ecclesiastes 1:9 says quite eloquently, "What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun." which has been paraphrased so many times many of us have probably forgotten where it came from. Nothing new, eh? Shakespeare loved to write about things that had already happened; in fact, Romeo and Juliet is a remake of a much earlier play, Pyramus and Thisbe, which the Romans like to observe and has the same old theme of forbidden love and two people who accidentally kill themselves because they think the other is already dead...

Whatever it is, Humankind seems doomed to repeat things. There’s this philosophy that if it’s not broken, don’t fix it, but most times there’s a repetition of actions with an expectation of different results…which sounds like madness to me. I don’t know how many people have tried to take over the world, but there have been many, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Napoleon Bonaparte, Adolph Hitler and sometimes things get just weirdly repetitious like both Napoleon and Hitler meeting destruction in the Russian winter.

But I haven’t mentioned my first time acting in a play, so consider it mentioned. I was eight years old and scared to death and Rose was even scareder. I remember getting out onto the stage and seeing everyone grinning in the audience below. With a terrible and wonderful mix of fear and exhilaration I began to speak. We were doing a scene from A Midsummer’s Night Dream and I was playing Flute who was playing Thisbe. I can only remember one of my lines.

“I’ll meet thee Pyramus at Ninnies tomb…”

~Psyche

Urban Legends

Ichabod Crane fleeing the Headless Horseman

An urban legend is a tale told through the years by many different people; normally the author is unknown and no one is really quite sure whether to believe it or not. The Old English epic poem ‘Beowulf’ is a good example; during the time parts of England were under the control of Denmark, the story became familiar. Even today some people in northern Yorkshire still believe in ‘Grindylows’ or water spirits living in their streams and swamps.

 The story of the Headless Horseman is one American urban legend I’ve always liked. The story went that a dead Hessian soldier left over from the American Revolution rode around with his head under his arm; Washington Irving turned it into a practical joke when he wrote ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow’. Even ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’ by Sir Arthur Conon Doyle was based on the ‘Yeth Hound’, an urban legend that still runs wild in Devon, England today.

Like the ‘Canterbury Tales’ by Geoffrey Chaucer, ‘The Decameron’ is a set of short, moral stories that were half-way to becoming urban legends even in their day. Boccaccio began creating ‘The Decameron’ in 1350, but probably even before he was through people half believed his tales had really happened. They would have been passed from person to person like an old version of a ‘chain email’. The Decameron contains everything from tragedies to practical jokes. The themes that occur in The Decameron are old ones and have been used since by as diverse writers as Edgar Allen Poe and Longfellow in his ‘Tales of a Wayside Inn’.

Urban legends come in all shapes and sizes, from the Loch Ness Monster to the Mermaids Columbus swore he saw; even if we don’t quite believe they’re real, they make our world just a little more interesting. Anyone seen the Half Moon sailing up the Hudson, or The Flying Dutchman racing over the seven seas? No? Maybe you still will.

~Psyche

PS: I wrote this for a humanities assignment, so if it seems unorganized and strange, that's why. Enjoy!

A Very Unexpected Adventure

Yes, I dropped into Middle Earth and took this picture myself

Yes, I've finally gotten around to watching 'An Unexpected Adventure' and liked it so much, I'd like to watch the next one in a theater.

Curiously enough, the trilogy The Lord of the Rings seemed to me like Tolkien's second attempt at The Hobbit; now The Hobbit is Peter Jackson's second attempt at The Lord of the Rings.

At first glance the thing that hit me immediately was the incredible attention to detail at every turn. I'm sure The Lord of the Rings had a similar attention to detail, but perhaps seeing The Hobbit on a better screen made me more aware. The filmmakers left nothing to chance like they did with The Lord of the Rings; I had the distinct impression that they knew what they were doing this time. The script was thoughtful and the visual effects were honestly stunning; light years ahead of the somewhat cumbersome work in its predecessors. I'll probably never tire of watching the wind ripple through the CGI feathers of the eagles in the final scenes.

The casting is excellent. Through the movie's nearly three hour run time I didn't notice a spot of bad acting. I'll never forgive Viggo Mortensen's horrific acting, or Liv Tyler's; Even Elijah Wood with his iridescent eyes was bland. In contrast, Martin Freeman as Bilbo was a streak of genus and I don't wonder at Jackson's persistence in getting him to accept the part. The thirteen dwarfs (oh wait, that's 'dwarves' isn't it?) are in a category of their own. Peter Jackson put off making the Hobbit for so long because of the dwarves; it was going to be a little like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, only worse. I was frankly lost in the novel what with Filis and Kilis, Gloins and Oins running about in an unordered mass. Fortunately, the wait paid off; each of the dwarves has a distinct personality and appearance, breaking into little pieces the rule that all dwarves must be fat, dumpy and ugly. The fan girls must be pleased.

When I first read The Hobbit back when I was twelve, I was disappointed. The plot seemed a little pointless; it appeared that it was just a pack of greedy dwarves off to take back a treasure that wasn't entirely theirs (killing the dragon wasn't even in the mix). In the film (actually, I shouldn't call it that) a new meaning has been infused; there's more at stake than the gold, and adding the subplots from the appendices (which I have not read) is extremely intriguing.

Of course with all its strong points, there are weak points as well. Like The Lord of the Rings the thing moves slowly in places and the battle scenes are often excessive and less than believable. I don't mind a few dead enemies, but our heroes plow through hundreds of them in a death defying manner and come out without a scratch at the other end (their swords are still shiny, too). I understand they have to leave the blood out in order to keep it PG-13, but wouldn't a few high quality sword fights have been better?

I watched the movie a second time (which is unusual for me), doing my own editing and ended up enjoying it even more than the first time around. There are a few scenes from The Lord of the Rings that I'll always remember; the Charge of Rohirrim, with the very earth shaking under my feet and the frankly heart rending death of Boromir, but now, I'll also be remembering the hauntingly beautiful Over the Misty Mountains Cold sung in the rumbling voices of the actors themselves.

To put it in a nutshell, I enjoyed it and I'm awaiting the next installment eagerly.

~Psyche

PS: You've probably all seen this, but I couldn't help putting it in...