The number of films I can’t be doing with and walk out on grows nightly. This one was called “The New World” and seemed to consist mainly of Colin Farrell giving long brooding looks at a Native American princess while she makes Native American gestures towards the sky or over a smoky fire. Before they get together however so that their romance can blossom, how’s this for a sequence of events? Firstly our hero and about eight or more men in a fairly large boat are rowing up the river (this is Virginia). Cut to: a sort of dugout containing four men rowing up the river, one of whom is Mr Farrell alias John Smith. Cut to: John Smith, now in full armour including helm, is all on his own standing knee deep in a swamp looking around in rather vague fashion, for what, may one ask? And how did he get there may one ask? And where were the rest of his men may one ask? Actually the reason he is there is so he can be attacked and, after putting up some resistance, taken prisoner and presumably the writer/director thought he could get some amazing action in a swamp. There was some beautiful photography but a film needs more than beautiful photography, this kind of adventure flick needs a rollicking good story and here, up until the moment I left, there was practically nothing, hence the long brooding looks and the gestures towards the sky. Also I was not taken by the music. I am a Wagner fan and Mozart piano concertos are lovely but somehow they don’t seem to go with seventeenth century Virginia.
Here we are nearly into March and Spring and it would seem the winter has kept the worst of the weather until the last couple of weeks. I have the distinct impression it hasn’t stopped raining for days, sometimes a mere drizzle, sometimes very heavy, and the night before last, my god did we not have one helluva hailstorm! It thundered down in deafening fashion on the breakfast room roof and I hate to think, even though the pellets were small, what it has done to some of the garden plants. Parts of Kalyves, Xania, Souda and other low lying areas of the island are bound to be flooded as usual when we have this amount of rain. Roll on summer.
Yes, John Lewis, I had a sort of memory that I had nicked the nature saying from Goethe. The other one of his I am particularly taken with is “How can you call anything in nature unnatural?” and only religious beliefs (here I go again) stop you from being that wise.