h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Just had a foot operation, first holiday in ages too. Yipee, i suppose. Haven't been online much. How's the Great Old One?
Watched The Brotherhood of the Wolf last night. Absolutely wonderful, colourful, fanciful and general outrageous. Lots of blood! Did you see that one?

Saw it and loved it...even considered nicking the plot for my D&D game.

Nothing with Mark Dacascos is in it can be bad far as i'm concerned...Great plot, even though the African angle was underplayed, which shouldn't have happened in a movie 2 h long.

The African angle was something that seemed to come out of leftfield towards the end of the film and was never fully explained. The chap wanders of to the darkest parts of the continent and comes back with a manky arm and a taste for incest! He also needed a good manacure. It was a shame that they kept it a minor plot element as the Amerindian background was handled well with Mani.

yes that was my impression too, the African explanation came so late that it would have been better not to explain at all, leave it that there was that monster, controlled by some black magician, and that was that. Or it could have made for a really fascinating chilling subplot early on. Oh what a villain one could have made of that nobleman! And the church angle was kind of squeezed in too.
The thing is in fact badly written, and brilliantly photographed, well it's not the first time that happens, and i liked it all the same. Search me.

The fight scenes were magnificent...I never thought kung-fu would work in that setting.

In my opinion it didn't work at all, given the proposed story line. But it was fun to watch all the same.

I thought that the far-fetched plot and characters made the kung-fu fade into the background.

I think really that the film wouldn't have worked without it as well!

i personally would have preferred a less stylised fighting style than an eastern one, like like, well Iroquis style of fighting, whatever that may mean. But i guess if one wanted Mark in it, who otherwise seemed made for that role, one had to have kung fu, but it felt bizarre to me.

Iriquois martial arts would be an interesting theme for a film in themselves...do they exist, I wonder?

i have now idea, how they fought, but as they had a formidable reputation for it, it would be interesting to find out. Viva Magua! (i always liked him better than die out Uncas)

Magua? Uncas? what is this strange parlance?

I wonder how much of the reputation for ferocity came from the "civilized" eyes that first saw them in colonial times. I think the the Vangian Guard could have taught them a thing or two in a tavern brawl.

Fenimore Cooper, The last of the Mohicans. What's the Vangian guard?

Well yes, about the "ferocity", but firstly i don't subscribe to the soppy modern myth how it was the Europeans who brought war to the Americas, where before Columbus the lion and the lamb...
And secondly i LIKE the idea of the formidable Iroquois warriors .... blame rasslin for that, i got all those blunt instincts

I think that the Amerindians were probably nice and hard when it came to a fight, I just think that they were not that far out of the ordinary when it comes to the ferocious "primitive" stakes.

Quick history lesson: The Vangian Guard were an elite group of Viking mercenaries that were employed by the Byzantian Emperor Constantine as his personal bodyguard. Their reputation for skill at arms and ferocity in combat ensured that the reputation of the Norseman spread throughout the Asian continent...they kicked big time ass!

Oh them Vangians sound my kind of guys! Thanks for the detail, i didn't know that!

Oh them Vangians sound my kind of guys! Thanks for the detail, i didn't know that!

oh dammit, google turns up nothing in my search on Vangians, why could that be, any idea?

Varangian, ha! gottit, gottit, gottit!

I may have the spelling wrong there, but there was definitly a corps of Viking guards there in Byzantium...my speline vury beede!