The movie version of “The Other Boleyn Girl” is now available on DVD, and I’ve just seen it. It stars Natalie Portman as Anne Boleyn, second wife of England’s King Henry VIII; Scarlett Johansson as Anne’s sister Mary, who was Henry’s mistress before he became involved with Anne; and Eric Bana as King Henry himself.

The movie is based on a novel by Philippa Gregory. I found the book very entertaining, and I’m interested in the Tudor era, so I hoped this would be an enjoyable movie. And it is an OK costume drama, but nothing more than that, in my opinion.

The best thing about the movie is Natalie Portman’s performance as the calculating Anne. She does a good job of conveying Anne’s intelligence, cunning, and frustration. Unlike the book, which is told from Mary’s point of view, the movie focuses on Anne, but Scarlett Johansson does what she can with her underwritten part as the downtrodden Mary.

Kristin Scott Thomas is likeable as the Boleyn girls’ mother (I don’t recall her being so protective of her daughters in the book), and Ana Torrent is excellent as the strong-willed Katherine of Aragon. Eric Bana isn’t loud or florid enough to fit my image of Henry VIII, but I forgive him for that because he is so good looking.

If you know a lot about Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, you may be disappointed (as I was) by the movie’s omissions and telescoping of events. Anne’s formative years in France are reduced to a few months that somehow transform her into a super-seductress. It’s entirely Anne’s idea for Henry to divorce Katherine and split from the Roman Catholic church — after all, she says, it’s “worth it.” (I’ll bet that’s one theological argument the Pope never considered!)

The silliest part of the movie, in my view, is at the end. After Anne meets her fate, her sister marches through the royal court, seizes an unidentified child who is presumably the king’s daughter Elizabeth, and then appears to leave the court with the child in her arms, completely unchallenged. The movie’s final scene suggests that Mary gave Elizabeth an idyllic upbringing in the countryside. That would have been nice for Elizabeth, but of course it didn’t really happen that way.

Overall, not a terrible movie, but not a great one, either. Don’t expect much.

You can read other reviews of this movie at RottenTomatoes.com.

Here’s a quick look at two historical novels I’ve read recently.

The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett: It took me approximately forever to read this very long novel about the building of a cathedral in 12th century England. It has two well-motivated central characters: Philip, a humble prior who struggles against all obstacles to build the cathedral, and an evil earl’s son, William Hamleigh, who goes to great lengths to try to thwart Philip’s plans.

The historical setting in this book is well-drawn, especially the important role played by religion in the lives of most of the characters. Philip is devout, as you might expect, but the villainous William Hamleigh also shares the religious beliefs of the time, and his fear of priests and eternal damnation helps to drive the plot.

Ken Follett is famous for his suspense novels. Maybe that’s why I enjoyed the battle scenes in this book even though military details usually bore me. Overall, Pillars of the Earth is an entertaining historical novel, and I intend to read the sequel, World Without End.

Here’s Ken Follett’s official website.

Shogun by James Clavell: If you’re old enough, you might remember the 1980 TV mini-series based on this book, starring Richard Chamberlain. The story takes place in the 1600s, when an English ship’s pilot, Blackthorne, is shipwrecked in Japan and is forced to quickly adapt to a culture very different from his own. Meanwhile, he becomes a pawn in a political game played by Japanese feudal leaders on the brink of civil war.

The story held my interest. The historical details were interesting, and so was the cultural clash between the English and Japanese characters — and later, between Blackthorne and his own shipmates, who start to seem barbaric to Blackthorne as he becomes assimilated into Japanese ways.

Late in the book, the writer stops focusing on Blackthorne and switches his attention to the powerful and wily lord Toranaga, whose apparent goal (although he denies it) is to become ruler of Japan.

However, the story ends before Toranaga’s military campaign starts. The fate of many of the characters, including Toranaga, is left open. I found this disappointing, and in particular I would have preferred a better resolution to Blackthorne’s storyline.

Still, it’s a good book and I recommend it to patient readers. (I say “patient” because the book is more than one thousand pages long.) James Clavell died in 1994, so he doesn’t have an official website as far as I know, but here’s his Wikipedia entry.

Today I planned to post mini-reviews of three historical novels I’ve read recently. But as it turned out, I had so much to say about one of those books that it deserves its own post!

That book is Mistress of the Revolution by Catherine Delors. The main character, Gabrielle, is an aristocratic young French woman who falls into poverty and survives by becoming the mistress of a nobleman. Later, during the French Revolution, she is the mistress of a Revolutionary Tribunal judge. The story is told as a memoir written by Gabrielle when she is middle-aged.

Catherine Delors has a clean and graceful writing style that is a pleasure to read. She comes up with plausible ways to bring Gabrielle into contact with real historical figures and events, and provides a glimpse at the prejudices of the nobility and how the revolution crept up on them. The characters are complex and seem to have genuine 18th-century attitudes. Most of them seem like real people, not stereotypes.

I liked the way Delors presents the relationships between men and women. As the mistress of a wealthy and controlling man, Gabrielle leads a comfortable but dependent life, and the writer doesn’t sugar-coat the drawbacks of being a kept woman. Gabrielle’s relationship with her older brother is also complicated and interesting.

As a narrator, Gabrielle is sometimes surprisingly matter-of-fact. At times I wanted to be told more about her thoughts and feelings, especially her reaction to the revolution. We know that she supports its ideals, but she doesn’t say much about that or share how she feels about the violent collapse of the world she’s always known. However, Gabrielle’s calm approach works very well in the book’s most horrific scenes, where the plain details speak for themselves.

I felt I learned a lot about the French Revolution from this book, but the history didn’t overwhelm the story. Gabrielle is a likeable and believable narrator. I was sorry when the book ended, because I wanted to find out how Gabrielle’s son reacted to reading her memoir! That should give you an idea how engrossing this book is. I recommend it.

Here’s Catherine Delors’ official site. Her next novel, tentatively titled “For the King,” is due to be published next year. I’m looking forward to it.

TERRIBLE!

The new movie “Curse of the Golden Flower,” set in 10th century China, tells the story of an imperial family with ugly secrets:

“Curse” hits box-office gold
Gong Li relishes her latest role as an empress
“Golden Flower” is cursed by its own excesses
More reviews of the movie from RottenTomatoes.com
Curse of the Golden Flower (official website)

2008 UPDATE: This movie is now available on DVD. I have seen it and I thought it was very good. Be warned, it’s violent — and a little strange if (like me) you’re not used to movies with highly stylized martial-arts sequences — and the plot is hard to follow in places, but it’s a vivid and memorable movie, and actress Gong Li gives an excellent performance.

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl is one of my all-time favorite movies, so of course I rushed to see the sequel, “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest.”

Is it as good as the original? Well — no. It’s very fast-paced, with more focus on stunts and special effects than the characters. Still, it’s entertaining. I probably won’t buy the DVD this time, but I enjoyed the movie, and if you liked the original, you’ll probably like this one, too.

One of the best things about the second Pirates movie is the way it incorporates old sea legends like the Kraken and the Flying Dutchman.

As for Davy Jones… I had hoped to write this blog entry without consulting the ubiquitous Wikipedia, but as usual Wikipedia is too useful to ignore: Davy Jones’ Locker

Ask Yahoo! also has some interesting info:
What is the origin of the phrase “Davy Jones’ Locker”?

The movie’s subtitle, “Dead Man’s Chest,” comes from… well, you might as well just go to Wikipedia again: Dead man’s chest

Here are the lyrics to the theme song from the Disney ride that started it all: Yo Ho (a Pirate’s Life for Me)

And here’s the movies’ official website:
Pirates of the Caribbean

UPDATE: “Dead Man’s Chest” is now available on DVD.

For lack of anything else to blog about, let me tell you about a computer game I’ve been playing: Knights of Honor. It’s set in medieval Europe. You play the “guiding spirit” of a kingdom, and you can choose from a very long list of kingdoms, from Aquitaine to Zeta.

The ruler of the kingdom is always male (alas), and you have to find him a foreign princess to marry so he can start producing heirs. When your little princes and princesses grow up, you can marry them off, too, to strengthen your bonds with other kingdoms. I find it very amusing to click around the map of Europe, holding audiences with various rulers in hopes of arranging royal weddings, although it isn’t always easy. After being repeatedly turned down because my kingdom is unimportant or my king’s children are “too ugly,” I can’t help feeling more sympathetic toward the rulers who had to do this in real life!

It’s also necessary to hire knights for your court. You assign each knight a profession: marshal, spy, merchant, cleric, landlord, or builder.

Marshals are the most important because they lead your armies. Spies are also useful — they can infiltrate rival royal courts to carry out various dirty tricks, such as inciting an enemy’s armies to revolt or assassinating a member of a foreign royal family. (One of my spies even managed to get himself elected monarch of another kingdom, then promptly turned his crown over to me.)

Merchants trade with other kingdoms to earn extra money for your royal treasury, and clerics can convert conquered provinces to your kingdom’s religion. So far I haven’t bothered with landlords and builders, but landlords can increase a province’s population and builders can speed up construction in a town.

You can hire up to nine knights. One nice touch is that you can use your king or his adult sons as knights, if you wish. Unlike other knights, royal knights don’t have to be paid. However, knights can be killed in the line of duty, so it is risky to use your king or his heir as a marshal or spy.

When your king dies, the crown passes to one of his sons. If the king dies without heirs, one of the knights of his court will seize the throne, but this may cause the other knights to rebel against him.

If you have married your princesses to foreign royals, it is possible that those kingdoms will try to lay claim to your provinces when your king dies, forcing you to lose territory or go to war. However, at times you too can claim foreign provinces through your princesses, making it worthwhile to arrange these royal marriages.

You win the game by conquering all of Europe or becoming powerful enough to be elected “Ultimate Emperor of Europe.” I haven’t managed this yet, but I did win a minor victory by amassing enough trade goods to claim all of the “Kingdom Advantages” (such as Crop Rotation, Silk Route, and Urbanization).

Right now I’m playing as East Anglia, and I’m involved in an epic war against Lotharingia (that’ll teach them to turn down my offer of royal marriage).

It takes a while to learn all the ins and outs of this game, but it’s not difficult to understand or play. It’s a bit slow at times; sometimes there’s not much to do except sit and wait for gold to pile up in your treasury, or watch as one of your armies makes its way slowly across the map. But these are minor complaints. The game run smoothly, is nice to look at, has great music, and is, quite simply, an awful lot of fun to play. If you like strategy games, I recommend this one!

This game at Amazon.com: Knights of Honor

The game patch (install it before you play): Knights of Honor

I love to play computer games. And I recently bought a new game: Civilization IV.

For those who aren’t familiar with the Civilization series: They are turn-based games, which means they are basically like board games. You take your turn, then your opponents (whether real people or computer-controlled) take their turns. These games aren’t shooters; you don’t need good reflexes or steady nerves to play, just time and strategy.

Why am I mentioning this in a royalty blog? Because in Civilization, you get to play as a real historical leader. You can be Saladin, Montezuma, Qin Shi Huang, Hatshepsut, Elizabeth I, Queen Victoria, Louis XIV, Napoleon, Alexander the Great, Asoka, Mansa Musa, Genghis Khan, Kublai Khan, Cyrus, Julius Caesar, Catherine the Great, Peter the Great, or Queen Isabella of Spain, among others.

The game assigns two traits to each leader, and each trait has certain advantages. For example, Queen Victoria is expansive (which means she gets +2 health per city) and financial (she can construct banks at half cost). Napoleon is aggressive and industrious; the Indian emperor Asoka is spiritual and organized; Peter the Great is philosophical and expansive; and so forth.

So far I’ve only had time to play twice. In the first game, I played against a friend. I was Egyptian pharaoh Hatshepsut. My friend was Peter the Great. He was the first leader to build a spaceship, so he won.

In the second game, I was Napoleon. I played against several computer-controlled leaders (seven, I think), and this time the winner was determined by the player with the highest score at the end. That was Asoka. I came in third.

There are several other ways to win. You can win by destroying all other civilizations, or by controlling most of the world’s land and population, or by building three cities with a very high level of culture (determined by the number of cultural institutions such as libraries, theaters, universities, etc.) You can also win a diplomatic victory by building the United Nations and persuading other nations to elect you as the diplomatic victor.

If this sounds like fun to you — it is! In fact, I think I’ll stop typing and go play.