bible movie!

The disc player on my computer is busted, so I bought a little portable dvd player to watch movies on. Up first is a 1997 made for tv biopic of the life of king solo-man.

A coupla guys in leather hats are drag racing their two-horse chariots in the desert east of bakersfield, and old solo-man wins when his brother A Donija crashes.

Then there's a line of extras carrying spears marching single file in the foothills up by Garlock, CA, and a line of fellows on horses, with very horrorshow like swelling of martial music with cymbal crashes.

Solo-man, son of king david, talks with a very upper-crust Anglo accent. In fact, the old testimony sounds like shake spear in this movie. King David is totally starry, lying under a pile of blankets.

Too weird. These chellovecks are prancing around on horseback in leather jerkins and conical leather hats talking like lards and borons.

Then, a sudden shift of ambulance, and we focus in on solo-man's mom, bath sheba, and she was very stiff and proud and haughty. This is like the old testimony if Jane Austen had wrote it.

Lines of priest guys in brown hoodies carrying candles in a castle or church, and some of em don't like solo-man. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, some good-looking Latina is playing a little lap harp in Israel as David, who sounds an awful lot like the late John Huston, is getting ready to croak.

Now the children of israel are having a barbecue by those pink sandstone pillars that line the wild rose canyon road entrance to death valley. This is a really lo-budget movie where I recognize lots of the holy land locations, the only set seems to be an abandon bldg, and the director likes having people in lines.

No real skillful segues here. The music changes abruptly, and now we're getting a montage of some sort. Uh oh, trompettes! Must be a war! A Donija vs solo-man again.

Some kind of religious ceremony -- david up on his feet wearing his crownaronie, making a speech and all, and rappin down to solo-man how he's gonna build the grate temple.

king david is taking his time, and waxing philosophical. This is turning out a very slow, boring, and tedious experience cinematique. OK now it looks like the funeral, then solo-man gets topped with the brass hat as his useless and despicable brother plotzes.

this is an on-the-fly so-cal production with a bunch of professional english stage actors sitting on thrones and making speeches, and this particular one is about how A Donija will sleep with the fishes. After comes an interlude that looks like it was shot in a nevada ghost town like rhyolite. I must say, though, the mojave in late spring can be very green and pretty.

Ah, now comes the dirty business with nathan and his (coff coff) egyptian wife. I think the stories of solo-man and david are getting mixed. God, this flick is a yawner. I think i'll turn it off and go fix somethin to eat. Guess I'll miss solo-man's temple, which I understand was on the side of his head.

--30--