Kingdoms and Galaxies

Ok so I watched Kingdom of Heaven last Friday. I was pretty excited to go see this movie because a) it's a Ridley Scott movie b) it's a war movie and c) it's a Ridley Scott war movie. Gladiator and Black Hawk Down are two of my favourite movies so I hoped it would be in the same calibre of those movies. In the end, I thought the movie was a good movie, but not a great movie. To me, it seemed to be just a historical reenactment and not much more, like watching one of those documentaries on the history channel. There were some really nice ideas like how the Christians and Muslims coexisted within Jerusalem and how Balian fought for the people but the movie didn't really go into depth with those ideas. I've read that Ridley Scott had to cut out an hour of the film to make it more blockbuster friendly and that the full film does go into greater detail which will probably be released on DVD. But why not release the original in the first place? Forget the box office (ok I guess that its easy to say from where I'm standing, but when you're raking in the dough I guess its a different story), I think it sucks to say "hey watch my movie, it may not be the full thing and not as good, but at least its short!"

I also caught The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy on Saturday. I thought it would be a haha funny type movie. But I found it just amusing, not that that's bad or anything but it was an alright movie when it probably could have been funnier. I never read any of the books, but I can see the potential for hilarity. Come on, a manic depressive robot, a average joe British guy in a bathrobe, and jumping around the universe on crazy adventures has to be funny. I've been told the books are really funny and there is a lot of things that you miss out in the movie if you didn't read the books, so I'm adding reading the books to my agenda of things to do. Don't panic!