Alexx&#39;s Journal

Will do.

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Lion! Lion!

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So, is that an african version of "The Boy Who Cried Wolf"? Or is it more of a Cassandra sort of thing?

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Foo.

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tpau

waah, but if you show those two now, i cna't se ethem as i will be at pennsic!

meanwhile, other movie ideas:

princess bride? ladyhawke? Pirates of the carribean? Gosford Park?

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No sympathy. After all, you'll be off having fun at Pennsic!

And you can always borrow movies. At some point I'd like to borrow the Cadavra DVD, to watch the special features.

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I will not be there, as I'll be in VA visiting in-laws. So you guys should probably see Lion in Winter then, to avoid my turning it into a history lecture :-)

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No, no! Seeing The Lion in Winter with you there to turn it into a history lecture sounds like a fun evening. I'd rather wait for that.

Alas, I can't make either of the next two weeks. (Plans for next week, Pennsic the following week.)

Last night was fun!

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I agree with

oakleaf_mirror.

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msmemory.livejournal.com

I tend to think in terms of Movies Every SCAdian Should Have Seen: Lion in Winter (Hepburn/O'Toole), Knightriders, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Henry V (Branagh).

Other things I'd like to see sometime (or again) - The Last Samurai, Master & Commander.

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Both of those were fabulous.

I haven't seen Lion (hence my vote) and I haven't even HEARD of KNightriders...

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Not heard of Knightriders? Oh my! I wouldn't go so far as to call it a good movie, but it's one of those SCA cultural literacy sorts of deals that I assume everyone has seen. Maybe I'm just dating myself, though, by that. Think the SCA with bad household politics crossed with A Knight's Tale on motorcycles.

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I'm sorry. I'm somewhat younger than a lot of people...

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Yeah, yeah. No need to rub it in. :)

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There are lots of older Scadians who haven't seen KnightRiders either. Firstly, it's obscure, even compared to the bunch Caitlin listed (relative to the mainstream). Second, it's interminable. It's really best experienced at a party when you can watch some, then chat with a friend, then watch some more. It has some interesting cameos, notably Stephen King and the woman who played Lyta on B5. It's loosely based on the schism with the SCA that created Acre.

Somewhere I heard tell of a list of those "sca should see" movies but I don't see it at waks.org -- Maybe I'm oblivious today.

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It's loosely based on the schism with the SCA that created Acre.

I have often heard this alleged, but never heard any good grounds for believing it. That crown tourney was in the fall of 1979, the bad feeling took some months to become a schism, and Knightriders came out in the spring (maybe very early summer) of 1981. Is that enough time? Maybe, the production values don't clearly bespeak a long labour of love. What's the diffusion mechanism supposed to be?

Also worth mentioning Boston/Cambridge street entertainer Brother Blue as Merlin.

Other "sca core" movies (though I may be dating myself) used to include the Errol Flynn Robin Hood, The Court Jester, and Man for All Seasons. Nowadays may include Braveheart, for all I know.

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I've heard, on rec.org.sca, people who were there at the time saying that yes, KR was loosely based on the Acre split. I can't find it in the Florilegium, though, nor on some general google searches.

Find a really old Carolingian and ask him/her, I'd say. Or start with the Historian, who is probably listening in.

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Find a really old Carolingian and ask him/her, I'd say.

Hello? Really old Carolingian here. And while I wasn't at the Crown myself, I was amazingly well (for me) tuned into the brouhaha: I was Vis' thegn at the time and living at the Buttery, but so recently living in Ostgard (where I ran in the same pack as Andreas) that I was still getting a subscription to The Seahorse.

It is with that background that I ask: what evidence do people have that the movie was based on our troubles? Evidence, not just "troubles-in-a-medievalist-club" familiar feeling? And how is George Romero supposed to have known so much about our politics? And questions like that there.

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Whoa, just re-read my comment and realized it sounds like I'm challenging

cvirtue, personally, almost. Sorry, I don't mean that at all. I've been challenging, well, questioning the assertion ("Knightriders based on the Acre split") for so long over the last 20 or so years that I sometimes shoot from the hip. My bad. I apologize.

Until you came out with "ask an old Carolingian."

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See, I don't know how far you go back. I've only been around since 1983, and I know you were there, then, but I don't know more. So my choices were to call you an old Carolingian to your virtual face (which would be rude), or not.

Now, my *recollection* is that I heard it from Vis, but everyone knows that Vis is implicated in nearly all the apocrapha, so that's not a reliable memory. I've bugged Vis once already this year about a legend, and I don't know him well enough to pester him again for a while. Not to mention it makes me feel stupid when he says, gently, that I'm mistaken.

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Okay, Old Carolingian (and I'm replying to Kali, but this also is directed at Alexx), for those of us who are Rather Younger and don't know the history of the East like we know this history of Some Other Kingdoms, what *did* happen at THAT Crown Tourney? Reply privately if you like, aureliarufinia @ yahooDOTcom (you both are very smart and know how to make that work. ::Grins::)

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The bare bones seem to be that there was a dispute about who won the final round, or perhaps the means of the winning, which became so disputatious that it created a schism.

The whys and wherefores should be left to someone that was there, although I wouldn't be surprised if they weary of explaining it, 20+ years later.

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Short form, from memory, so may be inaccurate:
Vissevald's first Crown Tourney (that is, the Crown Tourney he supervised when he was King the first time). One of the contestants (call him A) was throwing *extremely* hard blows, calibrated far above the standards of the time, leaving severe bruises on many opponents. At some point (and this is the vaguest part of the memory), Vis stepped in and declared that one of the 'victories' gotten in that fashion was declared invalid, and that the tourney would be re-fought from the point of the quarter-finals. It was an unprecedented maneuver, to deal with a highly unusual problem. 'A' did not win the re-fought tourney. If memory serves, the person who did win had been knocked out of the running in (or before?) the original quarter-finals. 'A' took offense, loudly and publically. Much of A's home group (Ostgardr) took his side, possibly due to ancient political friction between them and Carolingia (now long-buried, but still in living memory then). In the end, A declared himself King by forming an entirely new splinter-group, now known as Acre. Eventually, as tempers cooled, and different rulers came into power, diplomatic relationships were established between Acre and the SCA, but they remain distinct political entities.

I should point out that this isn't remotely a first-hand account. It's my recollection of conversations and documents. I'm not quite as Old a Carolingian as that :-)

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What's the diffusion mechanism supposed to be?

George Romero (writer/director) was allegedly present at That Crown Tourney. Hypothesis: He was there with SCA friends, who gave him at least their interpretation of the events, and possibly mentioned the later fallout to him, well, later. Certainly some of what happened at TCT was *extremely* public and visible, and anyone who was there would naturally have inquired into "what the heck is going on here?"

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jducoeur

Yes, this hypothesis pretty much matches the way I've always heard the story -- which doesn't necessarily make it true, just plausible and consistent.

Of course, things clearly mutated dramatically afterwards (allegedly in part due to studio demands), but I still find the theory plausible. (And culturally satisfying...)

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jducoeur

Actually, I *do* think Knightriders is a good movie. Not elegant and refined, perhaps, but it tells a good story, and nails its characters perfectly. There's pretty much no one in that movie that I can't say "I know people just like that" about.

It's the absolute top of my "movies every SCAdian must see" list. While the group shown is different from the SCA in almost every factual way, I find that it captures the spirit (and the contradictory nature of that spirit) better than anything else I've ever seen...

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For meta-on-sca, I like _Don Juan DeMarco._

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Hmm, I don't remember any meta-on-sca aspects of this one, other than adopting a historical mindset. Though that might be enough to qualify. The movie has other redeeming qualities, though, for fans of Johnny Depp in suave mode. I think I must see this again, purely in the interests of research, you see.

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I see it as an examination of "what is real?" and "what matters?"

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