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Hi all!

This week I thought I’d talk about a few of my favorite sword-related movies. Obviously I’m a movie lover, but I go to the movies to be entertained or moved, and one of the things that always gets me excited is the prospect of a good sword fight. Choreography, pacing, and witty banter are the hallmarks of a great sword fight on screen, and these are a few of my favorites.

At the top of my list has to be The Princess Bride (1987), based on a novel of the same name by William Goldman. This movie has it all. Romance, comedy, adventure, and enough witty banter to keep even the most jaded person entertained. (That doesn’t mean they’ll BE entertained, but that’s up to them, not to me.)

The duel between Inigo and the Man in Black (Westley as the Dread Pirate Roberts) has to be my favorite sword battle of all time. Nowhere else do you get that type of swagger, sarcasm, and skill all rolled into a single scene.


Watch Princess Bride Swordfight in Entertainment Videos |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

After that, I have to say that The Musketeer (2001) starring Justin Chambers, Mena Suvari, Tim Roth, and Catherine Deneuve, merged east and west to create duels and sword fights with a martial arts/wire-work influence. (Yes, this is the same Justin Chambers who is currently in Grey’s Anatomy.)

Those are definitely my two favorites at this point. After that, the list gets a little muddled.

Next we have The Three Musketeers (1993). Yes, the Disney version. I know this movie isn’t the greatest thing, but it had some big things going for it… One was the fact that all of the actors (Charlie Sheen, Kiefer Sutherland, Chris O’Donnell, and Oliver Platt) were all [gasp] young then (weren’t we all?) and attacked some of the choreography with a youthful vigor. Second, there were some HUGE sword fights in this — lots and lots of combatants, which made it easy to forget that this was a Disney flick. And third… Porthos the Pirate!!! (You can see a clip of one of the battles on YouTube here.)

Along the same vein is the earlier Three Musketeers (1973) movie starring Michael York, Oliver Reed, Frank Finlay, and Richard Chamberlain, all in their prime. This was a much grittier movie than the Disney version 20 years later and showed some of the flair of earlier generations of sword duels, dating back to the days of Erol Flynn.

Another recent movie that featured some amazing sword scenes was Kill Bill. In Volume 1, we saw The Bride (Uma Thurman) fight the Crazy 88s in one heck of a bloody mess. Not my favorite movie ever, but it deserves to be mentioned.

Though I love Highlander (1987), I have to say that its duels are less individualized than some of the other movies listed here, but it’s still a great movie with some solid sword fights.

Funny enough, the Star Wars movies (yes, even the prequels) fall into this category as well. The prequels weren’t great, but they showed us some unique styles of light saber duels, and of course the light saber battle in Star Wars between Obi Wan and Darth Vader will forever be etched in my mind.

And no list of sword fight movies would be complete without discussing Erol Flynn. He was amazing. It was the early days of Hollywood and damn if the man could act AND swing a sword.

I’ll leave you with a compilation of some of the scenes from his movies.


The Sword Fights of Errol Flynn from Russ McClay on Vimeo.

I’m sure I missed many many movies that should be mentioned here. If you have some, feel free to leave me some comments so I can go watch some great swordplay.

Until next time… Go see a movie!

–Fitz

p.s. If you want to pick up some of these films at Amazon, click below:

Hi all…

While in college I was introduced to the movie La Femme Nikita, a French film with English subtitles about a criminal forced to work for a spy agency. It starred Anne Parillaud as Nikita (Besson’s first wife) and Jean Reno even had a role, as he has had in most of Besson’s films.

La Femme Nikita’s stark world and crisp story brought Luc Besson to my attention in the early 1990s and he held it continuing to produce movies like The Professional (1994), which had Jean Reno in a starring role with Natalie Portman and Gary Oldman. In 1997 there was The Fifth Element, which blew my mind and is still one of my favorite movies. Starring Bruce Willis, Milla Jovovich (who would later become Besson’s second wife), and Gary Oldman. In 1999, there was The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc, which starred Milla Jovovich as Joan, Dustin Hoffman, Faye Dunaway, and John Malkovich.

Image via Wikipedia

He not only directs, but also produces and writes behind the scenes. Movies such as The Transporter, which launched Jason Statham’s career and has spawned two sequels (one of which comes out later this year), District B13, Danny the Dog (also known as Unleashed, starring Jet Li, Morgan Freeman, and Bob Hoskins…

Besson has had one heck of a career so far. And though he focuses on action films for the most part, I have to say that he’s also explored some deeper territory with movies like The Messenger and Danny the Dog. These are not your run of the mill action films. They have a heart and a message.

Luc Besson was born in Paris in 1959, son to two scuba instructors traveling and teaching around the world. As a child, he wrote early drafts of a number of stories, including The Fifth Element, while bored at school. His dreams of becoming a marine biologist focused on dolphins was shattered when, at age 17, he had a diving accident and was no longer able to dive.

It was after that he discovered television and movies and learned he could merge his various art interests together to tell stories. After a few years in America, he returned to France and started what was later named Les Films de Dauphins (The Films of Dolphins).

In 2008, Besson has two films coming to the big screen — Taken (starring Liam Neeson) and Transporter 3 (again starring Jason Statham). His career doesn’t seem to be slowing down any after that either, with thirteen more films in production for 2008 - 2011 according to IMDB.

I can only hope that as he hits age 50 in 2009 that he continues on his stride of making fun and intelligent movies!

–Fitz

p.s. If you want to pick up some of Luc Besson’s films, be sure to check out the following at Amazon:

Image via CrunchBase, source unknown

Hi all…

I had a chance to watch the Justice League: The New Frontier animated movie over Netflix’s “Watch Instantly” feature on their website and thought I’d write about it.

Amazingly enough, it worked really well. I say that as if I was shocked, because I was. I tried it a year ago and was sorely disappointed. But on Vista and using Internet Explorer (ugh), it worked remarkably well.

I’m a dedicated Firefox guy, so it was a little bizarre having to open up IE for this. I hope they can figure out how to make it work cross-browser. But ultimately it was pretty seamless.

It did have a few hiccups now and then as it streamed the movie to my desktop, but the quality was excellent on my 19″ wide-screen computer monitor. The colors were crisp and the sound quality was good.

Now that I’ve had one positive experience with it, I might have to start watching other movies online as time allows. It would certainly free up some of the backlog of movies I have in my Netflix queue.

So give it a shot if you’re a Netflix subscriber with Broadband internet access. You might like what you see.

–Fitz

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Hi all…

I have to say that I am disappointed at the moment. I was all set to go see Babylon A.D. today, got to my local (and fairly new) Hollywood Theaters location up in northern Colorado Springs… and was told that there would be no shows today due to problems with the film. Either the film didn’t get delivered correctly (via satellite probably) or the actual theater where the movie was to be shown had damaged equipment. I’m betting it was the former.

Now… I had a small window of opportunity to see the movie today and evidently it wasn’t fated to be. (Regardless of the fact that it’s received horrible press so far, I still want to see the film.)

If I had gone to a traditional theater, one where actual reels of film had been delivered physically to the location, I wouldn’t have run into this issue. But because I chose a digital theater, I ran into trouble.

I have to say that this is the first time since I’ve gone to this theater that this has occurred (it opened the weekend that Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls opened, so it’s only been open since May). So perhaps the issues are not causing them too much trouble.

But I have to wonder when I go to the Hollywood Movies website today and it shows this:

The theater seems to be to blame for my not being able to see this movie. And I have to say that the ticket seller didn’t even suggest a different movie. He just kind of blew me off, which further exacerbated my situation.

Oh well. My wife and I may end up seeing this later in the weekend, but probably not at this theater. I’d hate to be “turned away” again.

–Fitz

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Hi all…

Last weekend I was in Monterey, CA, with my wife, and we stumbled into this little store called Rip Squeak Books and Art on Cannery Row. My wife took a glance inside when we got there and I knew we’d had to stop in before we left the area. When we did, we were smitten by Rip Squeak and his friends.

If you don’t know… Rip Squeak and Friends is a collection of books, puzzles, and artwork, created by Leonard Filgate (the artist) and Susan Yost-Filgate (the author). They now also have a talented group of artists and writers helping them out, including Julia Harnett Harvey, Chris Hopkins, Lee Cohen, Anthony Loschiavo, and Jim Kosvanec. (You can learn more at their website here.)

The series focuses on a group of characters in a summer cottage in the country with no human inhabitants most of the year. The stories focus on Rip Squeak and his little sister Jesse, and their adventures and friendships with an abandoned kitten (Abbey) and an actor frog (Euripides).

So far there are four main books in the series:

• Rip Squeak and His Friends
• The Treasure
• The Adventure
• Find the Magic - their latest adventure

We have read the 1st book: Rip Squeak and His Friends. And I have to say that the artwork is amazing, but beyond that, the stories are great. They’re simple enough for kids to follow along, and have good lessons for them to learn along the way.

In addition, for our youngest, we picked up one of their board books - Rip Squeak’s A to Z Book - with a block puzzle with 16 blocks that create six different Rip Squeak images from the book. There’s a lot you can do with A to Z books (we own several) and I have to say this one is very cute.

What sets these books apart from the rest in my mind is the amazing artwork. And you can purchase some of the art from their website as limited editions, posters, sketches, and so on. They’d do justice to any kid’s room (or adult who’s a kid at heart).

I love stumbling upon these unique artists and authors. It’s almost magical when it happens and these books and artwork are definitely magical.

Be sure to check out their website: Ripsqueak.com or check out their store in Monterey if you get a chance. The address for the Monterey store is on their site here. They also have galleries in Carmel by the Sea, San Diego, San Francisco, and Maui.

If you haven’t figured it out by now, I’m a big fan already and we’ve only barely begun the series. I can hardly wait to see what further adventures of Rip Squeak and Friends will bring!

Until next time… Read a good book!

–Fitz

Image via Wikipedia

Hi all…

After watching Bug, I started thinking about the various elements that make up (IMHO) a good movie. It was an interesting exercise, that I thought I’d share here.

• Plot or Story - Something needs to happen to something else in a meaningful way. This can be character vs. character, character vs. setting, character vs. himself, but CHANGE or the POSSIBILITY of change has to be the result.
• Characters - The people in the story. Characters need to be more than one-dimensional and have some aspect of truth to them. The best characters, for good or ill, have aspects we can relate to personally.
• Dialog - How do the characters interact with each other for exposition? They talk together or to themselves. Is it written fluidly like we hear every day from regular folks? Or was it written for robots to speak aloud? Does the imagery evoked by the spoken words make us feel emotion? Or do they fall flat?
• Acting - If we have characters, you have to have people (real or CGI) to become them on screen. Actors and actresses do more than recite lines - they can show raw emotion in their body language, on their faces, and in their actions. If you have a bad actor performing a role, you’ll know it. But not even a good actor can save a bad script sometimes.
• Cimetography - How well was the movie filmed? Does it use wide panoramic shots or close, shaky, claustrophobic shots to expose the mood of a scene? Too much or too little of any technique can take away from the best intended movie.
• Special effects - CGI, physical effects, and costumes are all used to show action or the effects of action or to enhance the action in a movie. This can be as simple as makeup or explosions or as complex as making the transition from physical props to digital effects look seamless.
• Music and Sound Effects - And last, but definitely not least, is the sound for a movie. This is everything from the voices you hear, to the explosions or bullets flying, and the music used to set the scenes. For me, music can make or break a movie. Sometimes it can elevate a so-so movie to greatness.(For some great examples of this, check out Soundtrack Geek, which has some of the best soundtrack reviews on the web.)

Each of these elements goes into the making of a movie. Most of them find their way into television. And quite a few of them also find their way into books. Storytelling elements are universal across mediums, which is what makes them great.

If none of these things is done well, a movie is typically a waste of time IMHO.

What do you think? Are these universal elements of storytelling? How do you apply them when you see a movie at home or on the big screen? Are there other elements that I missed?

Let me know!

–Fitz