Subject:
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Master and Commander
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.pirates
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Date:
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Mon, 17 Nov 2003 19:32:48 GMT
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Viewed:
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2829 times
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For all you fans of Napoleonic era sailing ships, you should not miss Master and
Commander: The Far Side of the World. Patrick O'Brian fans will be pleased by
the anal-retentive accuracy that the movie tried for - the movie, like the
books, is more about the rhythem and life of the ship than about the conflicts.
The story is mostly from the 10th book of the series, The Far Side of the World,
with a bit of the Cacafuego fight from the 1st book, though some names and
nationalities have been transposed: the Acheron is no longer American though an
American built 44; it is a privateer like the Cacafuego was; it's owned by the
French.
None of this is particularly upsetting except to the purest - I suppose adding
the title "Master and Commander" is silly because Jack Aubrey (Russell Crowe) is
clearly a two-epaulette post captain in charge of a frigate, the Surprise. The
ship is simply beautiful, claustrophobically cramped and crowded. The literary
Jack Aubrey would probably worry that it was constantly over-pressed with too
much sail for show, but the stay-sails looked good from the side, and the
studding-sails were impressive in the chase sequences. Which I suppose brings
to mind that I can't recall seeing a Lego model depicting the latter.
As you can no doubt figure out by the ad campaign, this is more about Jack
Aubrey than Dr. Stephen Maturin, the co-lead in the books. Neither Crowe nor
Paul Bettany (Maturin) are precisely right for the roles but they at least play
them within shooting distance. But the details from the series is there in
virtually every shot, from the names of the cannons, the food, the servents
standing behind the officers at dinner, the surly Killeck, the unexplained scar
on Pullings, and Jack Aubrey's damaged ear (I gotta say I didn't see this - my
son asked what happened to the Captain's ear after the movie).
-->Bruce<--
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