Stara Baśń: Kiedy Słońce Było Bogiem (2003)

After my visit with Mongolian cinema yesterday I was looking around for other foreign cinema to stir my gaming genes and I noticed that Polish cinema was particularly well-represented in this area, according to Amazon's recommendation service.

And where better to start this exploration of a new field (to me) than with one of the most highly regarded Polish films of this genre: Stara Baśń: Kiedy Słońce Było Bogiem (aka An Ancient Tale: When the Sun Was A God aka Army Of Valhalla)

Set during The Dark Ages, among the tribes that would one day form Poland, this is the story of corrupt prince regent Popiel (Bohdan Stupka), who is supposedly only holding the throne until his late brother's sons are fit to rule.

However, goaded on by his not-unattractive wife and former slave, Księżna (Małgorzata Foremniak) he kills one of the brothers and frames the other, then when the tribal elders refuse to recognise his own son as heir to the throne - because he is the sire of a slave - Popiel poisons them all!

Meanwhile unrest in brewing amongst the peasantry, aided Popiel's former right-hand-man Piastun The Guardian (Daniel Olbrychski) who is disenchanted by his former bosses' nefarious ways.

Piatsun is, himself, saved from assassination by the intervention of the heroic archer Ziemowit Piastowic (Michal Zebrowski, a Polish Brad Pitt).

Ziemowit, in turn, has fallen in love with Dziwa (Marina Aleksandrova), the stunning daughter of Wisz (Ryszard Filipski), a wealthy local merchant and rebel leader.

However, his desire to marry her is thwarted by the fact that she has already been 'promised to the Gods' to become a virgin priestess at the nearby island shrine.

A wonderfully complex tale of many plot strands, pulling the audience in all the right directions by dealing with honour, love, responsibility, greed, family etc, Stara Baśń is surprisingly brutal and frank in its depiction of Ninth Century life and conflict - heads roll, eyes are pierced, blood flows, naked bodies are exposed - but all in a very matter-of-fact way. Nothing is here simply for titillation, everything serves the story.

Under the direction of Jerzy Hoffman, from a script he co-wrote with Józef Hen and based upon Józef Ignacy Kraszewski's 1876 novel Stara Baśń, the film moves with a breathless pace - squeezing a hell of a lot of story into an hour and three quarters and only once straying into slightly bewildering Monty Python territory with the surprising disposal of a band of Viking mercenaries.

Beautiful women, bloody battles, authentic-looking costumes and sets, a dash of history, a soupçon of mysticism, an inventive use of pigeons to break a siege, what more could you ask for from a sword-fightin' flick?

Another Magnificent Birthday Celebration Under My Tightening Belt

The biggest afternoon tea Rachel and I have ever seen

Last weekend, I marked my birthday with a level of food consumption that would have made Mr Creosote proud.

In my excitement, I fear I may have gotten a bit carried away. With the constraint of my current increased state of disability, my usual "going out and doing something active for the day" was put on hold, making way for a number of magnificent food-centric activities instead.

On Saturday, Rachel's parents took us - including Alice - for a meal at my favourite, nearby pub-restaurant, where I managed to consume a three-course Christmas meal. In the evening, watching Strictly in a borderline food coma, I could only manage a bowl of ice cream (I needed something to take some of my pills with).

Then on Sunday Rachel, Alice and I went to the wonderful Pup Cup (the dog café in Tonbridge High Street), where Rachel had prebooked us afternoon tea for two.

It turned out to be the biggest (and most delicious) afternoon tea either of us had ever seen (see picture above), and we ended up having to take a few top tier cakes away in a "doggie bag" for later.

The evening was rounded off with a KFC, although I suspect that might have been a "wafer thin mint" too far 😂

My weekend of excess ended up with me not feeling particularly chipper in the middle of Sunday night and fearing I might explode. However, I got back to sleep and felt a lot better by Monday morning.

This week I've been halving my daily portions of breakfast toast, snacks etc

Haven't even started my birthday cake yet!

Family meal on Saturday

Dog-themed t-shirts for dog-themed café

Downing my favourite strawberry milkshake

Alice always loves The Pup Cup for the attention she gets 

Presents waiting for me on my birthday morning

Wonderful presents from Rachel

Rachel turned me into a Funko Pop!

Pop! me comes holding a comic book and a pizza box - seems about right!

Amazing presents from Rachel's parents

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024)

Thirty-six years after the events of the original Beetlejuice movie, Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder) is now hosting her own paranormal reality show, Ghost House, when the death of her father calls her, her daughter Astrid (Jenna Ortega), and her mother, Delia (Catherine O'Hara), back to their family home in Winter River for the funeral.

Meanwhile, in the afterlife, Beetlejuice (Michael Keaton) finds himself being stalked by his murderous ex-wife, Delores (Monica Bellucci), and he sees Lydia's return to her old home as his possible escape.

Settling in to Winter River, Astrid - a non-believer in the supernatural - is tricked by a malevolent ghost into swapping her existence for his, and ends up trapped in the afterlife.

Unable to think of any other way to rescue her daughter, Lydia calls on Beetlejuice for assistance.

I'll admit that when I sat down to watch Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, while I had high hopes for a Tim Burton movie with this incredible cast, I wasn't convinced that it would be able to recapture the lightning in a bottle brilliance of 1988's iconic original.

But this sequel turned out to be a pleasant surprise. It's chaotic and madcap, with a whirlwind of plot elements swirling around (not all of which make 100 per cent sense or achieve resolution) and sweeping up a legion of memorable characters.

Michael Keaton has lost none of his gnarly charisma as the demonic Beetlejuice, while the three female leads are perfection personified in their roles: Winona Ryder retains her ultimate goth girl crown, Jenna Ortega sidesteps Wednesday Addams to create a wholly believable sceptic in a family of eccentrics, and Catherine O'Hara is, of course, Catherine O'Hara and we can expect nothing less.

It may be occasionally nonsensical, but Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is a hell of a lot of crazy fun, with some great visual gags and a supporting cast as strong as its main cast: from a cameo by Danny DeVito as the afterlife's janitor to Willem Dafoe as Wolf Jackson, the ghost-detective who was actually a B-movie actor in life.

The joyous splattergun approach to the horror-comedy narrative includes the sudden insertion of Beetlejuice's origin story. This caught me totally by surprise, but then again as The Joker of the underworld, was this his true beginning or simply a flight of fancy?

As convincing a yarn as it was, not knowing its veracity certainly adds another layer to the character of the bio-exorcist.

Under Tim Burton's guidance, with a script from Smallville creators and Spider-Man 2 scribes, Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice manages, just about, to be simultaneously quite different from the original and very similar.

The Jeffrey Jones of the situation (the disgraced actor played Lydia's dad, Charles, in the first movie) is handled really deftly, through a range of tricks from a claymation death sequence to a headless corpse (and voice impersonator) taking his place in the afterlife.

While, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice mainly stays away from aping moments directly from the original, the climactic musical number - lip-syncing to MacArthur Park - could never reach the enduring heights of the legendary Day-O (The Banana Boat Song) sequence.

That tune does pops up earlier, at Charles funeral, posing a serious challenge to Monty Python's Always Look On The Bright Side of Life as the best tune to play at a funeral.

Given the surreal maelstrom of the denouement, I'm now wondering how long we will have to wait for Tim Burton's Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.