Reviews: Seaon of the Witch; Vikings

A couple of Quick Reviews:

Season of the Witch (movie, Nicolas Cage, 2011): Generally speaking it deserved the 1 1/2 stars it got.   However, I found myself not hating it, even though it was bad.   I was a little irritated that it had the main characters as crusaders, and it seemed like they were formally "enlisted" in the church "army" and then "deserted"  all of which is completely ridiculous, people could join and quit any of the crusades at will and wouldn't have to worry about being "tried for desertion"--totally bogus.  Also, they were wearing 12th century style gear, were fighting in the Middle East, and always on foot.   However, the screen says it takes place in the mid-fourteenth century (because it has to match the time of the Black Death).  There weren't any crusaders in the Middle East during the mid-fourteenth century, the crusades were lost by then, and if there had been they would have been using different gear and would have been on horseback. 

Okay, that stuff is really pretty minor.   The real bad stuff was in the clunky plot, bad dialogue and poor acting.  Nevertheless, there were two good things that made me not hate the movie after all.  Number one was pacing, the moving really moved right along.  There are times when I've watched 10 minutes of a movie or TV show and it seems like forever, this was not one of those times.  It just moved right along and kept me, if not interested at least distracted.  Number two, it proved once again that there's nothing that can't be solved by violence and Latin.

Vikings (TV series, 2013, season 1):  The first season of Vikings just finished up on the History Channel.  I wasn't really in to the first 1-2 episodes, but the more I watched it the more I liked it.   I was particularly impressed by its use of real-world source material.  It tells the fictionalized story of a half-real, half-legendary Viking named Ragnar Lothbrok.   I recognized the real events from historical chronicles it used, and the elements from the "Saga of Ragnar Lothbrok" a medieval legendary version of the real viking's life.  It also used a lot of authentic description of viking religious practice.  For a drama, it was incredibly respectful and mindful of its historical and literary source material, and I was quite taken with it.