(no subject)

[darkluna]

Kingdom of Heaven arrived from Netflix. I enjoyed it a lot. I'm in the middle of rewatching with the "historical commentary," which is like Pop-Up Video without the bubble sound effects.

I was very interested at the start of the film by the focus on Balian's personal connection to God, and it seemed as though they were setting the story up to have that as its backbone, and that the story would be over when Balian once more felt that God was with him, but then it kind of petered out.

I hadn't realized from the previews that Balian's love interest was Sibylla, Baldwin's sister. The romance was entirely fictional, but as far as I can tell, aside from a little bit of date-juggling, the rest was pretty accurate. Guy de Lusignan was much as the film showed him, a rather vain and not-too-bright man who, finding himself King of Jerusalem by virtue of his marriage, really did lead the Templars and Hospitalers and other troops out into war in the desert without adequately providing for their water, leaving Jerusalem basically undefended. It's tempting to blame much of the unrest in the region on him and men like him who used the holy land of three religions as a staging ground for attempts to seize personal power. True, the situation is so complicated and the land so emotionally charged for so many people that unrest is pretty much inevitable, but I have to think that if the peace of the late 1100s had been of longer duration, a better precedent might have been set. Had Baldwin IV lived out a normal lifespan, the Middle East might well look very different even today. He and Salah al-Din both understood the need for Christians and Muslims to live side-by-side there.

I got a lot of giggles out of my own internal commentary, such as "Even Salah al-Din should know better than to fight someone who survived Helm's Deep and the seige of Minas Tirith!" :-)

All in all, though I am spoiled for battle scenes by Lord of the Rings, to which this did not even come close, it was quite a good movie.

***

Mona was just up on the bookcase needing help, and when I got up on the chair to reach her, she very delicately stepped down onto my shoulder. :-)

I have officially gotten to three days without smoking, which means I'm not physically addicted to nicotine anymore, which means that any future cravings are just me being a brat.

It's actually been shockingly easy, though. After the first day, I stopped dwelling on not smoking. Granted, I planned to quit after my second job ended, so I wouldn't have that stress or a daily commute; and I haven't gone out anywhere where lots of other people are smoking, but now that I've gotten through the hard part, and I know that I would probably not be blessed with such an easy "hard part" if there were a next time I quit, I'm sure to be much less tempted if I am around other smokers. And being able to smell better (I spent a long time in the coffee aisle the other day smelling different blends!) means I might not be tempted anyway. Geez, my car reeked before I took the ashtray out. :-P

Comments

[abinormal.livejournal.com]

I didn't see KOH, but I'm here to pump you up for doing so well at quitting smoking. Awesome!

[darkluna.livejournal.com]

Thank you!