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What? Skeleton of the most famous Musketeer, D'Artagnan, possibly discovered in Dutch church closet.
Dumas picked four names of real musketeers out of a history book, D'Artagnan, Athos, Aramis, and Porthos. So there was an actual D'Artagnan, though he made most of the story up. (Or, you know, all of it.)*
Charles de Batz de Castelmore, known as d'Artagnan, the famous musketeer of Kings Louis XIII and Louis XIV, spent his life in the service of the French crown.
The Gascon nobleman inspired Alexandre Dumas's hero in "The Three Musketeers" in the 19th century, a character now known worldwide thanks to the novel and numerous film adaptations.
D'Artagnan was killed during the siege of Maastricht in 1673, and there is a statue honoring the musketeer in the city. His final resting place has remained a mystery ever since.

A lot of Dumas's stories are based on bits of real history. The plot of the >Three Musketeers, about trying to recover lost diamonds from the queen's necklace, was cribbed from the then-almost-contemporaneous Affair of the Queen's Necklace. And the Man in the Iron Mask is based on real accounts of a prisoner forced to wear a mask (though I think it was a velvet mask).
* Oh, I should mention, Dumas says all this, about finding the names in an old book, in the prologue to his novel. But authors lie a lot. They frequently present fictions as based on historic fact. The twist is, he was actually telling the truth here. At least about these four musketeers having actually existed and served under Louis XIV.
Fun fact: You know the beginning of A Fistful of Dollars where the local gunslingers make fun of Clint Eastwood's donkey and Eastwood demands they apologize to the donkey? That's lifted from The Three Musketeers. Rochefort mocks D'Artagnan's old, brokedown farm horse and D'Artagnan is incensed.
A commenter asked which should be read first, The Hobbit of LOTR?
Easy, no question -- read The Hobbit first. It's actually the start of the story and comes first chronologically. It sets up some major characters and major pieces in play in LOTR.
Also, the Hobbit is Beginner-Friendly, which LOTR isn't. The Hobbit really is a delightful book, and a fast read. It's chatty, it's casual, it's exciting, and it's funny. In that dry cheeky British humor way. I love that the narrator is constantly making little asides and commentary, like he's just sitting next to you telling you this story as it occurs to him.
LOTR is a very long story. Fifteen hundred pages or so. The Hobbit is relatively short and very punchy and easy to read. If you don't like The Hobbit, you can skip out on LOTR. If you do like it, you'll be primed to read LOTR.
Oh, I should say: The Hobbit is written as if it's for children, but one of those smart children's stories that are also for adults. Don't worry, there's also real fighting and violence and horror in it, too.
LOTR is written for adults. (It's said that Tolkien wrote both for his children, but LOTR was written 17 years later, when his children were adults.) Some might not like The Hobbit due to its sometimes frivolous tone. Me, I love it. I find it constantly amusing. Both are really good but there is a starkly different tone to both. LOTR is epic, grand, and serious, about a world war, The Hobbit is light and breezy, and about a heist. Though a heist that culminates in a war for the spoils.
The Hobbit Challenge: Read two more chapters. I didn't have much time. Bilbo got the ring.
I noticed a continuity problem. Maybe. Now, as of the time of The Hobbit, it was unknown that this magic ring was in fact a Ring of Power, and it was doubly unknown that it was the Ring of Power, the Master Ring that controlled the others.
But the narrator -- who we will learn in LOTR was none of than Bilbo himself, who wrote the book as "There and Back Again" -- says this about Gollum's ring:
"But who knows how Gollum had come by that present [the Ring], ages ago in the old days when such rings were still at large in the world? Perhaps even the Master who ruled them could not have said."
In another passage, the ring is identified as a "ring of power."
I don't know, I always thought there was a distinction between mere magic rings and the Rings of Power created by Sauron. But this suggests that Bilbo knew this was a ring of power created by Sauron.
Now I don't remember when Bilbo wrote the Hobbit. In the movie, he shows Frodo the book in Rivendell, and I guess he wrote it after he left the Shire. I guess he might have added in the part about the ring being a ring of power created by "the Master" after Gandalf appraised him of his research into the ring.
I never noticed this before. I know Tolkien re-wrote this chapter while he was writing LOTR to make the ring important from the start. And also to make Gollum more sinister and evil, and also to remove the part where Gollum actually offers Bilbo the ring as a "present" -- Bilbo had already found it on his own, but Gollum was wiling to give it away, which obviously is not something the rewritten Gollum would ever do.
But I had no memory of the ring being suggested to be The Ring so early in the tale.
Finish the job, Mr. President!
Melanie Phillips lays out the case for the total destruction of the Iranian government and armed forces. [CBD]
CJN podcast 1400 copy.jpg
Podcast: Sefton and CBD talk about how would a peace treaty with Iran work, Democrats defending murderers and rapists, The GOP vs. Dem bench for 2028, composting bodies? And more!
Oh, I forgot to mention this quote from Pete Hegseth, reported by Roger Kimball: "We are sharing the ocean with the Iranian Navy. We're giving them the bottom half."
Forgotten 80s Mystery Click: Red Leather Suit and Sweatband Edition
And I was here to please
I'm even on knees
Makin' love to whoever I please
I gotta do it my way
Or no way at all
Tomorrow is March 25th, "Tolkien Reading Day," because March 25th is the day when the Ring is destroyed in the book. I think I'm going to start the Hobbit tomorrow and read all four books this time.
The only bad part of the trilogy are the Frodo/Sam chapters in The Two Towers. They're repetitive, slow, and mostly about the weather and terrain. But most everything else is good. Weirdly, the Frodo-Sam chapters in Return of the King are exciting and action-packed and among the best in the trilogy. (Though the chapters with everyone else in Return of the King get pretty slow again. Mostly people talking about marching towards war, and then marching towards war.)
Forgotten 80s Mystery Click
One day I'm gonna write a poem in a letter
One day I'm gonna get that faculty together
Remember that everybody has to wait in line
Oh, [Song Title], look out world, oh, you know I've got mine
US decimation of Iran's ICBM forces is due to Space Force's instant detection of launches -- and the launchers' hiding places -- and rapid counter-attack via missiles
AI is doing a lot of the work in analyzing images to find the exact hiding place of the launchers. Counter-strikes are now coming in four hours after a launch, whereas previously it might have taken days for humans to go over the imagery and data.
Robert Mueller, Former Special Counsel Who Probed Trump, Dies
“robert mueller just died,” trump wrote in a truth social post on march 21. “good, i’m glad he’s dead. he can no longer hurt innocent people! president donald j. trump.”
Canadian School Designates Cafeteria And Lunchroom As "No Food Zones" For Ramadan
Canada and the UK are neck and neck in the race to become the first western country to fall to Islam [CBD]
CJN podcast 1400 copy.jpg
Podcast: Sefton and CBD have a short chat about Iran, the disgusting SAVE Act theater, Mamdani's politicizing of St. Patrick's Day, and more!
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« Nick Denton's New Blog: The Sassy, Jew-Hatin' Jihadette | Main | The Passion of the Oliver Stone »
July 01, 2004

Hollywood Finally Starts Cranking Out the Morale-Boosting Propaganda Pics... On Behalf of the Islamist Terrorists

This makes me physically angry. I don't know what other response could possibly be appropriate.

Can there be any doubt at this point whose side the left is on?:

Buried inside a July 1 New York Times story about Hollywood's boyish new sex symbols (Toby Maguire, Jake Gyllenhaal, et al.) is the revelation of something much more interesting. Hollywood is suddenly making big-budget epics about the subjugation of the Middle East and the Persian Gulf by the white-skinned peoples of the West. Is this, um, really a good idea?

...

A new Hollywood genre struggles to be born: the 9/11 Apology Flick.

Prerelease buzz has it that the Crusader movie (whose original title, The Crusades, has now been changed to Kingdom of Heaven) casts Bloom not as a Crusader but as a plucky young peasant who fights to repel the Christian infidels from Jerusalem.

[details on the other pictures omitted, but worth reading]

...

It's quite possible that one or all of these movies will portray the West more favorably than Chatterbox presumes, or (in the case of Alexander's homosexuality) in a way that Egyptian and Iranian moviegoers might conceivably accept sympathetically. But that would only make these projects more provocative to Islamist terrorists, and therefore even less advisable. Why make these movies at all? ...

Where's Hollywood's customary timidity on the rare occasion when we need it? Can't it take a rain check?

"But wait," stout defenders of liberty may say. "If Hollywood stops making big-budget movies about the Crusades and Alexander the Great, the terrorists will have won." The obvious logical flaw here is that Hollywood had no interest in making such movies before the World Trade Center fell. The urge to make them now seems not only reckless, but perverse.

Tim Noah is generally a useless hyperpartisan dickweed, but he strikes gold here. I deleted big sections of his piece to comply with fair use, but seriously, read the whole damn thing.

This is absolutely disgusting. I can only repeat Noah's conclusion: Hollywood had no interest in these subjects before 9-11. But after 9-11, it suddenly has three major films in production giving succor to the terrorist cause.

Michelle Malkin previously castigated Hollywood for its perverse "Let's take a wait and see attitude" regarding making patriotic, pro-American films in a time of war.

But it seems that wasn't perverse nor transgressive enough for our brave artists.

They're now manufacturing pro-Islamist entertainments. They not only refuse to show the America/Western Civilization in a favorable light, they are determined to actively inflame anti-American/anti-Western passions.

Major Hat-Tip to Ken J for pointing this article out to me. Lord knows that I wouldn't have read Tim Noah without his link.

Does Anyone Remember... the plot and villains of numerous films being changed in order to spare Muslims' sensitivities?

The Sum of All Fears had its villains changed from Muslim extremists to conveniently-white-and-Western neo-Nazis.

The Arnold Schwarzenegger film Collateral Damage was changed in the pre-production-phase, due to Muslim complaints, so that the villains weren't Islamic terrorists but were, rather, Columbian drug-dealers. (Don't fucking Columbian drug-dealers or Neo-Nazis have any lobbyists in LA???!!!)

If Hollywood can manage to deftly avoid inflaming American passions against Muslim extremists, why do they seem incapable -- or unwilling -- to similarly avoid inflaming the passions of Muslim extremists against Americans?

Seems they can't have it both ways. They can't freely change the plots and characters in some films in order to avoid taking a position on the current war while simultaneously claiming "We must follow our artistic muses with no thought of outside considerations whatsoever" when they're making films which will almost certainly incite Muslim extremists' passions against America.

Hey, Hollywood: An Irish-descended friend of mine tells me he feels like punching Britons in the face whenever he watches In the Name of the Father or Braveheart. And he's not kidding. He may be half-kidding, but he means it just the same.

What do you think the response will be in Islamabad to your Crusader film, praytell?


posted by Ace at 04:48 PM