Kingdom of Heaven with Orlando Bloom

[Niirewen]

So who else is looking forward to seeing this movie? I think it looks really good.

[Hammersmith]

Remind me; when is it released? The trailer I saw for it was absolutely incredible.

[Barliman Butterbur]

So who else is looking forward to seeing this movie? I think it looks really good.

If this Bloom fellow isn't careful, he's going to get himself typecast on his way to being a multimillionaire... ;)

Barley

[e.Blackstar]

My friend is taking us to see it for her birthday party...yay!

[Corvis]

May 6th, to answer your question Hammersmith. I can't wait to see this movie and for only one reason. It was directed by the director of Gladiator.

Roma Victa!

[Barliman Butterbur]

"I need a husband"

How big is your dowry? :D

Barley

[Raithnait]

I think it looks awesome, despite having Orlando Bloom... Crusades!!! fun!!!

[Arthur_Vandelay]

If this Bloom fellow isn't careful, he's going to get himself typecast on his way to being a multimillionaire... ;)

Yeah: from the trailer I saw the other night, they even manage to re-fight the Battle of Helm's Deep in this movie.

[Barliman Butterbur]

Yeah: from the trailer I saw the other night, they even manage to re-fight the Battle of Helm's Deep in this movie.

Fortunately I've not seen anything yet. Interesting that this movie seems to be about the Crusades, considering the world situation today.

Barley

[Arthur_Vandelay]

On that point (and this will doubtless send this thread straight into the Forsaken Inn, but it was bound to end up there anyway) . . .

From the Sunday Times (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-1582399,00.html)

Christian right goes to war with Ridley’s crusaders
John Harlow, Los Angeles

CHRISTIAN conservatives in America are marshalling their forces against Sir Ridley Scott’s forthcoming crusader epic, The Kingdom of Heaven, claiming the film is insulting and unfair. Scott, 67, received death threats from Muslim fundamentalists during filming in Morocco two years ago when King Mohammed VI, who admired his earlier work, Gladiator and Black Hawk Down, lent him troops from the royal bodyguard.

Yet it is Christian hostility that may ultimately prove more damaging at the box office. A spate of hostile reviews that are due to appear in the increasingly influential religious press this week will urge America’s 80m born-again believers to avoid the £100m film.

Scott said he has tried hard to be fair to both sides in his film, which depicts the 12th-century battle between Muslims and Christians for Jerusalem. He even employed Grace Hill Media, a Los Angeles public relations agency that markets potentially “troublesome” films to increasingly influential Christian opinion-formers. It organised a private screening earlier this month for Christian journalists at which Scott spoke.

Many of the resulting reviews have been poor. Bob Waliszewski, director of Plugged In Film Review, a programme heard on 300 US radio stations, said the film depicted Christians as “mean-spirited”, while Saladin, the Muslim leader, was shown as a chivalrous knight.

“The Bishop of Jerusalem is a coward who deserts his flock, and most of the crusaders are driven by greed rather than piety,” he said. “This is not how Christians I know see each other, nor will we want to see this film.”

Christian leaders such as Jerry Falwell and Pat Buchanan are waiting to see the film before commenting. But a spokesman for Buchanan, a former presidential candidate, said early reports about the film were “truly disturbing”.

The box-office clout of born-again opinion is formidable: the fringe group that vainly protested against Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ has become a movement that turned Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ into a blockbuster.

The conservatives are looking forward to the Christmas release of CS Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, co-funded by Disney and Philip Anschutz, the American billionaire who is an evangelical Presbyterian.

“The film makers met with us recently to assure us they are maintaining the original Christian allegory of the books,” said Waliszewski.

“Now that would not have happened in Hollywood 10 years ago.”



Further reading:
Kingdom of Heaven (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0320661/) - Internet Movie Database
Tolerance Triumph in Kingdom of Heaven (http://www.telegraphindia.com/1050425/asp/foreign/story_4658028.asp) - The Telegraph (India)
Muslims Call New Fox Crusader Film 'Balanced'; CAIR Says 'Kingdom of Heaven' Avoids Negative Stereotypes (http://releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp?id=46331) - US Newswire (includes trailer)
Screen God (http://film.guardian.co.uk/features/featurepages/0,4120,1468735,00.html) - Guardian

[Barliman Butterbur]

What I'd like to know is: who made the film and why — especially at this time. What's interesting is that it evidently riles up the evangelicals, but they didn't mind when Gibson's film riled up everybody else...

Well, no wonder they're riled: the Muslims like it, so it can't be good, eh?

"A prominent national Islamic civil rights and advocacy group said today that the new 20th Century Fox epic 'Kingdom of Heaven' is a 'balanced' portrayal of the Crusades, despite earlier concerns that the film might offer stereotypical portrayals of Islam or Muslims." (quote taken from one of AV's links)

Barley

[Arthur_Vandelay]

What I'd like to know is: who made the film and why — especially at this time. What's interesting is that it evidently riles up the evangelicals, but they didn't mind when Gibson's film riled up everybody else...

Who made the film? Ridley Scott and 20th Century Fox.

Why? According to this article (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/24/movies/24ridi.html) from the New York Times, what led Scott to make this film "was his fascination with the medieval knight, awakened decades ago by the movies of Akira Kurosawa and Ingmar Bergman. 'What really interested me was something that seems to have disappeared from our vocabulary, which is the notion of grace and chivalry,' he said. 'Then, after I had finished Black Hawk Down, I met Bill Monahan to discuss another project, and I asked him if he knew anything about knights. He said the Crusades were his pet subject.' By the time the screenplay was ready, the United States had invaded Iraq, but Sir Ridley was less consumed by politics than by the movie's complexity."

[GuardianRanger]

If this Bloom fellow isn't careful, he's going to get himself typecast on his way to being a multimillionaire... ;)

Barley

It's funny you should say that. As soon as I saw the commercial, I thought: "Yet another movie where Orlando will be using a sword."

Will he become a modern day Erol Flynn (sp?) ?

[Corvis]

I don't think I'll like Orlando Bloom in this movie because he seems to young for what looks like such a leadership role. One thing though that looked famliar when I watched the trailer was one of the battle scenes where I saw towers that looked much like the ones in the Return of the King.