New Yorker reporter on the > $1 billion settlement NYC has to shell out because of the racist exams to liscence NYC teachers. Like most articles, it doesn’t mention Asian scores on the teacher exams. Unlike most articles it does mention that the discrepancy between white and black is basically the same on every test and that whites and Asians tend to score better on the SAT/ACT. Progress?

https://archive.ph/2023.11.02-125742/https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-education/the-teachers-who-oppose-tests

South American Krieg coming?

The Brazilian Armed Forces have reportedly been placed into a Heightened State of Readiness due to a Significant Movement of Military Equipment and Personnel in Eastern Venezuela on the Border of Guyana which has recently been Detected, with Officials believing that Venezuela may… pic.twitter.com/NLgITfXaEA

— OSINTdefender (@sentdefender) November 29, 2023

And in news that will surprise no-one:

Surprise! The Only American Hostage Released by Hamas Just Happens to be… the Niece of a Big Democrat Donor Who Bought Hunter Biden’s “Art”

https://ace.mu.nu/archives/407224.php

Last Duel>>Joker>Alexander>Gladiator>Barry Lyndon

All are worth watching.

Relatedly, I remembered liking Rob Roy from HBO as a kid. It was a bit of a snooze when I tried to rewatch it this year: several perfect iconic scenes with boring interludes between them.

Elderly Nappy is utterly devoted to his pretty young Josephine, but her eye wanders.

Josephine was 6 years older, much more experienced than the young innocent soldier she married.

Guyana has a tiny population (800k) that just went rags to riches from oil. It was England’s only colony in South America and is 1/3 dot Indian and 1/3 black and mostly Anglophone.

It would be logical for Venezuela with its oversized military it can’t continue to fund to invade as Biden won’t stop them. No better time!

1. Blowing up the pyramid was cool, (should Egypt get reparations from France?).

2. River Phoenix was a believable old Napoleon.

3. The Bridgerton-ization of history kind of backfired as the average Joe people I saw it with assumed the Dumas character wasn’t historical.

4. Josephine’s fresh from prison Joan Jett look was très cool.

P.s.
O/T

Cup Foods owners sue Minneapolis over lost business at George Floyd Square.

Ally Peters, a spokeswoman for Frey, gave the following statement: “We did everything possible to open the street safely amid very tenuous circumstances. When we finally did open the street, the City did so in a planned way where no one was hurt and the area remained safe for residents.”

The city’s approach to the intersection, which organically became a hub for racial justice demonstrations and a much-visited destination, has varied since Floyd’s murder in May 2020. The suit alleges the city allowed a “No Go Zone” for police officers in the area immediately around the intersection, allowing crime to thrive.

The city removed a number of concrete barriers in June 2021, but Michael Healey, an attorney representing the businesses, said the financial losses continued through this year.

“Instead of helping Plaintiffs achieve racial equity and economic prosperity, the City consciously decided to allow concrete barricades to surround Cup Foods for over one year, which economically devastated a minority-owned business in a minority-dominant neighborhood,” the suit says. “The City actively hindered Plaintiffs’ economic success and jeopardized the safety within and surrounding Plaintiffs’ businesses.”

https://www.startribune.com/cup-foods-owners-sue-minneapolis-over-lost-business-at-george-floyd-square/600322966/

One wrinkle. Probably not that uncommon really.

Peter Wilds-Bethea never intended to become a teacher. He started going to school in his home town of Darlington, South Carolina, around the time of the Brown v. Board of Education decision. Segregation, he said, was “in your face.” His dad was white and his mom was Black; he had ancestors who served in the Confederate Army and who were enslaved before the Civil War.

So should he receive or pay reparations?

The New Yorker at least gives a nod to the non-Narrative interpretation.

The lawsuit raised a difficult question that never really got resolved: Were these tests racist? Coverage of the case, especially in conservative outlets, has focussed on this matter. One New York Post article noted tartly that Herman Grim, a Queens resident who will get a payout of more than two million dollars from the city after failing the last in the nineties, could not give any examples of why the test was racially biased. The clearly intended takeaway is that teachers who weren’t smart enough to pass a basic-knowledge exam cried racism and will get to collect millions of dollars as a result.

Surprise! The Only American Hostage Released by Hamas Just Happens to be… the Niece of a Big Democrat Donor Who Bought Hunter Biden’s “Art”

The girl and her uncle are Americans on paper only.

If it wasn’t for war, there wouldn’t have been a Napoleon. He was made by war. Just like Ulysses Grant would’ve been a failed store owner without war and Eisenhower a little remembered marionette. Bonaparte was a military genius, but who knows what kind of carpenter he’d have been if his life had worked out differently?

“a suave Adam Driver ”

Driver is anything but suave. He is a goofy looking, horse faced guy.

“(Sir Ridley turns 86 this week.)”

Continually referring to Ridley Scott as “Sir Ridley” is pretentious and weird.

” So hopes grew high when Scott announced he was making Napoleon with 2019 Best Actor Oscar winner Joaquin Phoenix (for Joker).”

Phoenix is insufferably overrated. Joker was a terrible movie and his version of of the character was embarrassing compared to the Nicholson and Ledger versions.

“By the way, Steven Spielberg has been promising for a decade to turn Kubrick’s unmade Napoleon screenplay into a TV series. ”

With Tom Hanks’ dumpy and dull and untalented son playing Bonaparte, we can only hope.

New Yorker reporter on the > $1 billion settlement NYC has to shell out because of the racist exams to license NYC teachers.

The usual handwringing about “why, oh why, do people of color always score lower on aptitude tests??” The two potential culprits, as always, are: (a) The tests are racist; or (b) Society is racist. The experts seem to favor the society-is-racist answer.

When it comes to teachers who don’t pass the test, “we haven’t provided test-takers of color with the content knowledge that they need to go and be successful with students. And that’s really problematic for many reasons.”

It goes without saying that Ctrl-F “IQ” = 0 hits. But at least the solution to raising teachers of color’s pass rates is pretty obvious:

Many well-meaning policymakers have suggested that having “a more diverse teacher workforce necessarily depends on lowering the standards for who can become a teacher,” according to a report by the N.C.T.Q. . . . . Research strongly suggests that when Black students, in particular, learn from teachers who look like them, they do better in school

Zero mentions of what research “suggests” about kids trying to learn from dumb teachers.

My favourite depiction of Napoleon was in a BBC docudrama called “hero’s and villains”. It was a four part episode on the siege of Toulon. You can watch it on you tube although the fourth episode can be a little hard to find.

General Dumas was so physically impressive that, when the French Army landed in Egypt, Egyptians thought Dumas was the commanding general, Napoleon, and the brooding runt near him was some staff officer.

Based on trailers and snippets, this looks like it was made by AI, but then, that can be said of many of Scott’s lesser movies, which are most of his output.

Perhaps, a younger Scott could made it with more inspiration and energy. This Napoleon seems to convey Scott’s own world-weariness.

COMPILATION: Irish politicians spewing vile self-hatred against the Irish people.

One even describes the old Ireland that he grew up in as "very dull, white, pasty"

Stop voting for people that hate you.

pic.twitter.com/NPcPwIdExJ

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) November 29, 2023

The Irish are a very fair people, they never speak well of one another. ― Samuel Johnson

Napoleon Chases Josephine

A more accurate title. I could be considered a history buff. Had a semester of “French Revolution and Napoleon”. Though on this side of the lake I prefer the French and Indian War through the post-American Revolution Loyalist Diaspora period.

Watching Boney chase Josie became a distraction. The battle scenes, though interesting for the movie, were a bit off. Commanders of 300,000 man armies do not lead Saber Charges.

The movie’s presentation of Waterloo did not even try to look right. If you want to see that battle, see Rod Steiger as Boney in “Waterloo” (1970). De Laurentiis got it right.

Out of his historical epics, Exodus, Kingdom of Heaven and 1492 were all boring and only Gladiator was any good (if over-rated). And yet Scott is still able to convince people to invest in Napoleon. I guess they all pay for themselves eventually, but I won’t be rushing out to see Napoleon.

Napoleon supposedly once called Great Britain a nation of shopkeepers. The shopkeepers won the war. In the modern era the more capitalistic and commercially oriented countries generate more wealth which can then be used to fund a military large and powerful enough to win wars.

Britain went into a decline in the 20th century after it adopted socialism. By the nineteen twenties it could no longer afford an extensive navy which it could use to hold its empire. America is in the same situation a hundred years later. Our two trillion dollar a year deficits will soon make it impossible to maintain current levels of military spending and we will then end our overseas military adventuring.

It’s a pity that the film skirted over that Napoleon grew up in a Corsican Palace and that his fam were Florentine linked nobility. Family was Etruscan in a sense. Deep Paleo European.

we will then end our overseas military adventuring.

.Do you see any signs that is happening …these people won’t stop until we are eating sticks and twigs.

The shopkeepers won the war when von Blucher and his Prussians showed up. Britain won wars by itself when its opponents were chunking spears

Why oh why do directors cast American actors in historical European roles? Last week I watched a few minutes of The Cross of Iron (released around 1976 and directed by Sam Peckinpah) and remembered why James Coburn couldn’t convince anyone that he was a German non-commissioned officer in 1943 Russia. It sounds from Steve’s review that Joachim Phoenix has a similar problem playing Napoleon Bonaparte.

In any event, thanks Steve for seeing and reviewing this movie so that I won’t have to.

but the current European aversion to aggression only became a consensus after the Great War a century later.

Talleyrand maneuvered himself brilliantly into full participation at Congress of Vienna in 1814, where he negotiated a favourable settlement for France. And led to a near-century of relative peace in Europe from 1815-1914
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concert_of_Europe

The Germans of 1919 at Versailles had no one available of the genius of Talleyrand, was deprived of territory through plebicites and faced massive reparations, which nothing of the sort had been expected of France in 1815.

There was an ancient fight between the French and the English that spilled over into America Africa and India. The French were subordinated as they were always stuck fighting a continental battle in what we now call Germany. Ahem…while the English had the flexibility of a fleet to protect and block trade globally, and no need for an expensive army to forage and pillage. The only domestic security concern was Spanish or French landings in Wasn’t about capitalism. It was about Mercantilism. This not strictly speaking the same thing as Free Markets.

“But is in some ways the anti-Kubrick.”

Scott’s filmography is populist and pretty if a bit overstuffed. Kubrick’s are chilly and somewhat intellectual; event films for the culturistas. Scott delivers entertainments. Stanley plays on several levels. Both are responsible for some of my favorite films.

Napoleon puts Josephine’s mulatta servant Lucille in countless shots of parties as if she were a guest rather than a serving maid to lend a Bridgerton aspect to the proceedings, and includes novelist Alexandre Dumas’ half-aristocrat and half-black father, a French general, prominently in the Egyptian sequence.

There also appear to be quite a few black extras implausibly sprinkled into the bravura Austerlitz segment, but it’s hard to tell since everything is so murkily lit.

No doubt much thought went into squeezing in the required blacks.

So I suppose a movie set in a time and place where there simply were zero blacks just can’t be made today.

“Britain went into decline in the 20th century after it adopted socialism.”

The British Empire began its decline after the ghastly WW 1. The British dead numbered 867,829 to 1,011,687. Which means an overabundance of crazy English broads! After great cataclysms it is sometimes necessary to engage in social spending to keep the peeps housed and fed.

Besides Bismarck, Germans seem remarkably ham- fisted at diplomacy. The Stalin-Ribbentrop pact was only possible because two assholes were involved.

I recall some old German a- hole chiding me and another Ami in a Weinstube “You don’t chit about geopolitics”. Okay, Herman how does losing two world wars and having your women raped and your cities turned to smoking rubble feel. Have another beer.

I wonder if the underlitness of the movie is a way to get around British film industry diversity quotas that require more blacks be wedged into period pieces. …

I believe the greatest contributor to the minoritarian propaganda victory has been movies and TV.

Humans naturally develop at least some skepticism about what other people tell us. Children start out credulous, but then learn that some people are to be trusted and some not, and ergo to not necessarily believe verbal info from random people.

But we naturally believe what we see.

We used to learn about “the world”, “the way things are”, our people, our heroes, our norms, our traditions and our values “around the campfire” from our elders. But with movies, then TV, suddenly people learned of “the world” directly from movie makers, piping in their world view, their values … and bypassing not just our elders, our own people, but bypassing our natural verbal “b.s.” detectors to present their world view as reality we see.

Having those movie makers be people alienated from, or even hostile to the people and culture they “entertain” has been an absolute disaster for America–and through it to the Anglosphere and the West. And even without this particular American issue with Hollyweird, the movie makers, the people drawn to “drama”, are absolutely the last people you’d want running your nation, defining your norms,values, culture or raising your kids!

One of Napoleon’s officers said that Napoleon was “as great as a man can be without character.” The character flaw that eventually proved his undoing was his unbridled cynicism. He continually played off one ally against the others in his enemies alliances with promises he continually broke. Eventually, he lost all credibility and his enemies united to defeat him. He was also the butt of a particularly clever pun. He commented to an Italian actress that all Italians were thieves. She replied: “No, just a good part [buona parte]”

The clearly intended takeaway is that teachers who weren’t smart enough to pass a basic-knowledge exam cried racism and will get to collect millions of dollars as a result.

The correct takeaway.

Are they trying to claim that racism made them fail? Yes, I suppose they are.

Regardless of whether or not the US intervenes, Biden will be there to airlift millions of rapefugees here.

I am not going to watch a movie with blacks at Austerlitz until there is a film bio of Shaka with white dudes in the impi.

“ which nothing of the sort had been expected of France in 1815.”

France paid Germany a massive reparation after losing the Franco-Prussian War. It was paid entirely in gold coin and two years early.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_indemnity

“He would have made an extraordinary peacetime ruler, but he was so talented at war that he didn’t work hard enough for peace.”

Like a man with a hammer, a man with Napoleon’s WAR rating will see everything as a war.

Joaquin Phoenix, a talented dude, was no bueno for the role.

It wasn’t as much as his American accent, it was the informal language and clunkiness of his lines.

“You think you’re so great because you have boats!” came off just plain dumb.

Had the line been reworked, it could have been a sharper more poignant barb at the English AND still allowed Scott to portray Nap as petulant yet savant overgrown child.

“The great man with such bad manners” was a well crafted retort.

Our two trillion dollar a year deficits will soon make it impossible to maintain current levels of military spending and we will then end our overseas military adventuring.

Britain’s decline was not from socialism, but was a very long term thing, of being less productive and having a smaller population than rising nations like the US, Germany and later Japan. (In the case of the US, being much smaller and less productive.) Debt from the War, really took away the punch bowl.

The threat to America’s status is demographic not financial.

The US is still highly productive, with a bunch of leading industries and has 330+ million people. But the replacement population put in place–basically 3/4 Latino, 1/4 Asian–while it has some very sharp Asians folks who will continue to do great engineering, simply is not a match in overall quality–smarts, conscientiousness, trust, cohesiveness–as the whites they replace. And they are growing rapidly–especially the Latinos with the “Biden Administration”‘s open border. And blacks–a boat anchor–continue to grow rapidly and will also start to explode–Steve’s “world’s most important graph”–if the immigration insanity is not quashed and soon.

Having half a billion people, but with the demographics of Brazil is not a formula for “winning”.

My Review of “Napoleon”

My notes on your review:

Napoleon, the most charismatic hero in Continental European history.

Awright, who here’s gonna take the bait?

a little Buster Keaton stoneface

Buster Keaton? Guys, I barely knew ‘er!

Seriously, “a little Buster Keaton stoneface” is top-notch (accidental) literary smut. Bravo.

but the current European aversion to aggression only became a consensus after the Great War a century later

Not a full consensus, if Germany and (Soviet) Russia were considered part of Europe. Their later non-aggression pact was pretty aggressive.

(Recall that Gladiator, which everybody looks back on fondly, ends with the Roman Republic being restored, which, to the best of my recollection, didn’t actually happen.)

OTOH, the conclusion to Gladiator realistically did imply that upon his granted early release, Djimon Hounsou’s grinning character Juba was about to embark on a stereotypical crime spree.

OT: This is what happens when you try to extort a guy with “Go f*ck yourself money.”

Elon Musk tells advertisers to “go f**k yourself” 😂😂😂

pic.twitter.com/4cVKMuPCn8

— Alex Rosen (@iFightForKids) November 29, 2023

Ridley Scott’s 1977 film ‘The Duellists’ with Harvey Keitel and Keith Carradine, is extraordinary, a memorable film set in related period history

And was promptly spent in London. Apparently.

There is a great painting in the Tate Gallery showing the British army taking back Jersey off the French. The British officer has his faithful blackie servant in the center of the painting. Having black servants would have been a sign of connection to the riches of Sant Domingue (Haiti). Josephine was a planters daughter.

https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/copley-the-death-of-major-peirson-6-january-1781-n00733

Sitting in my chair at a movie-house, watching this (or any) heavily spectacle-oriented film, I would probably find myself making the rotational “get on with it” gesture with my hand. Maybe I am just old, but I suspect that most of the commenters here at Sailer University would also prefer fewer hoofbeats, and more of the multi-layered screenwriting that had such enormous potential in a biopic of Emperor Lounge Lizard. (Credit to Bradshaw’s review for coining “lounge lizard”) Of course I haven’t seen the film, so dunno, maybe it does exactly what I am about to suggest. I would have extensively employed a “meta-narrative” technique in which other characters, and flashback-scenes, are used to try to understand and explain, and add humor to, this elusively complex personality profile. Steve, thank you for your review; as always, it is comprehensive, thoughtful, informative, superb.

Ridley Scott’s first film The Duellists might be his best.

https://t.co/GWunvvrLZy pic.twitter.com/me7Q2aLz3P

— Firearms Policy Coalition (@gunpolicy) November 29, 2023

The boxed wine connoisseurs are out in full force today with their copypasta garbage, begging the ATF to create a national firearms registry.

Push back by commenting against the ATF “Engaged in the Business” Proposed Rule today; you can find the link at https://t.co/zDNpa324R5. pic.twitter.com/WIW0E7z14y

— Firearms Policy Coalition (@gunpolicy) November 29, 2023

Ladies and gentlemen,

We present to you the legal equivalent of a boxer tying their opponent up in the corner because they're being annihilated.

They are stalling. Our victory is inevitable. https://t.co/UOdmnxqnH5

— Firearms Policy Coalition (@gunpolicy) November 29, 2023

Good film overall, but it’s hard to take Keith Carradine and Harvey Keitel as Frenchmen. Didn’t believe it for a minute, and that really hurts the film.

Eventually, Keitel sort of grows on you, like a sore, but Carradine looked and sounded all wrong.
You can almost hear him hum, “I’m easy, I’m easy.”

Fine ending though.

Unlike Kubrick, Scott frequently misfires with forgettable flicks like Prometheus, Robin Hood, 1492, and G.I. Jane.

Never saw Robin Hood, G.I. Jane was dumb propaganda, Prometheus was weird, but had a few promising elements. But I rather liked (and still do) 1492. A lot. The soundtrack alone is gorgeous.

There also appear to be quite a few black extras implausibly sprinkled into the bravura Austerlitz segment

Ugh, just ugh.

Apparently, Denzel Washington will play the doomed Carthaginian general Hannibal in an upcoming epic. Carthaginians (Poeni = Phoenicians) are Africans, yo!

I wish John Milius were healthy and could make his lifelong passion project: Genghis Khan. He’d do justice to that, I would think.

Blade Runner by a mile.

Alien is pretty effective but its success mainly owes to Giger’s designs and Weaver’s presence, an architectural statement of its own.

Legend is awful. Black Rain is pretty good cop thriller, nothing great.

1492 is simply unwatchable. Thelma and Louise is stupid because of the script. Gladiator is dumb spectacle. Hannibal is trash. American Gangster is solid, certainly one of his better works. White Squall and Matchstick Men are good. Kingdom of Heaven is bloated. The Counselor is overly slick but effective and terrifying. Martian starts well but turns ridiculous.

Scott is a very limited talent. He has a good eye for details. When he works on good material with sound cast and crew, the result can be impressive. But with poor material, he gets lost and even the visuals become pointless and excessive.
Unlike Kubrick who took total control of his work and conceived of it from top to bottom, Scott is simply a designer of another person’s idea and vision.

They can’t find a Levantine actor or a North African to do it?

So I suppose a movie set in a time and place where there simply were zero blacks just can’t be made today.

Part of the movie was filmed in Malta and Morocco, so do British filmmakers still have to bow to the Random Negro Law there? Apparently. Scott did, anyway.

Despite the accused “murkiness” (northern Europe is often murky), I still found Napoleon‘s severe case of Random Negro Syndrome annoying and distracting. Though I don’t disqualify a movie for having RNS, it does turn out to be an almost unerring marker for a bad product. And Scott’s Napoleon is a failure as history, as entertainment, and as iconography.

I am not a great admirer of Napoleon, but even I felt offended on Napoleon’s behalf at this propagandistic English slander masquerading as an epic historical biopic. Besides the problems Steve mentions, the script, casting, acting, and directing are all terrible, which is sad because none of it had to be that way.

Napoleon’s handkerchief should have had an acting credit, since it upstages him in so scenes as Phoenix is constantly dabbing at all the estrogen tears Scott orders up.

Phoenix’s age and mumblecore delivery are not his only problems. His brazen American accent grates against all the plummy Royal Actor’s Guild—or whatever they call it over there—speech of every other player. The murk is muddled further because some British accents are meant to convey the character’s British social class, while some are meant to convey something about their French social distinction, but then some French dialogue is actually in French, so the viewer is left with a lot of subconscious code-switching. In Stone’s Alexander, Irish accents indicated Macedonians, while English accents meant Greeks. It was a clever way to redeploy a complication of multinational casting as an asset to final product. No such cleverness in Napoleon though.

But as others have pointed out, Scott hasn’t made anything worthwhile since Gladiator.

People are surprised that Ridley Scott’s Napoleon pulled a bait and switch for its supposed target demographic when he already did this with Kingdom of Heaven. Here’s a story about Hollywood markets trying to capture the same audience that went to see The Passion of the Christ. pic.twitter.com/1y8t7Fgq7Q

— Hideo Kojima's Bastard Son (@ReforgedSwordo) November 26, 2023

So I suppose a movie set in a time and place where there simply were zero blacks just can’t be made today.

Part of the movie was filmed in Malta and Morocco, so do British filmmakers still have to bow to the Random Negro Law there? Apparently. Scott did, anyway.

Despite the accused “murkiness” (northern Europe is often murky), I still found Napoleon‘s severe case of Random Negro Syndrome annoying and distracting. Though I don’t disqualify a movie for having RNS, it does turn out to be an almost unerring marker for a bad product. And Scott’s Napoleon is a failure as history, as entertainment, and as iconography.

I am not a great admirer of Napoleon, but even I felt offended on Napoleon’s behalf at this propagandistic English slander masquerading as an epic historical biopic. Besides the problems Steve mentions, the script, casting, acting, and directing are all terrible, which is sad because none of it had to be that way.

Napoleon’s handkerchief should have had an acting credit, since it upstages him in so many scenes as Phoenix is constantly dabbing at all the estrogen tears Scott orders up.

Phoenix’s age and mumblecore delivery are not his only problems. His brazen American accent grates against all the plummy Royal Actor’s Guild—or whatever they call it over there—speech of every other player. The murk is muddled further because some British accents are meant to convey the character’s British social class, while some are meant to convey something about their French social distinction, but then some French dialogue is actually in French, so the viewer is left with a lot of subconscious code-switching. In Stone’s Alexander, Irish accents indicated Macedonians, while English accents meant Greeks. It was a clever way to redeploy a complication of multinational casting as an asset to final product. No such cleverness in Napoleon though.

But as others have pointed out, Scott hasn’t made anything worthwhile since Gladiator.

People are surprised that Ridley Scott’s Napoleon pulled a bait and switch for its supposed target demographic when he already did this with Kingdom of Heaven. Here’s a story about Hollywood markets trying to capture the same audience that went to see The Passion of the Christ. pic.twitter.com/1y8t7Fgq7Q

— Hideo Kojima's Bastard Son (@ReforgedSwordo) November 26, 2023

I wonder if the underlitness of the movie is a way to get around British film industry diversity quotas that require more blacks be wedged into period pieces. Napoleon puts Josephine’s mulatta servant Lucille in countless shots of parties as if she were a guest rather than a serving maid to lend a Bridgerton aspect to the proceedings, and includes novelist Alexandre Dumas’ half-aristocrat and half-black father, a French general, prominently in the Egyptian sequence. There also appear to be quite a few black extras implausibly sprinkled into the bravura Austerlitz segment, but it’s hard to tell since everything is so murkily lit. Maybe that’s Sir Ridley’s compromise with the recent diversity demands: In my extreme old age, I’ll kowtow to the BAFTA quota-meisters, but I’ll turn down the lights so my humiliation is less evident.

Steve, Ridley Scott has always done this, even when there was little social pressure to shoehorn in blacks. Gladiator came out a quarter century ago and had lots of various blacks in it. Kingdom of Heaven had random blacks in it, even in scenes set in medieval France. Even his Alien from 1979 had a prominent black character in it. There would have been no controversy had he included 0 blacks in these films at the time.

Scott has always done this, and back when he was doing it when there was little pressure to do so, it was clear he got some sort of kick out of it or was some sort of way to signal his virtue or avant garde-ness while making commercial Hollywood films.

Napoleon was a bad film and has solidified Scott’s reputation has an overall mediocre director, despite some good films early on. He can’t be trusted with historical movies especially, in part because of his long track record of a penchant for shoehorning blacks.

So I suppose a movie set in a time and place where there simply were zero blacks just can’t be made today.

Part of the movie was filmed in Malta and Morocco, so do British filmmakers still have to bow to the Random Negro Law there? Apparently. Scott did, anyway.

Despite the accused “murkiness” (northern Europe is often murky), I still found Napoleon’s severe case of Random Negro Syndrome annoying and distracting. Though I don’t disqualify a movie for having RNS, it does turn out to be an almost unerring marker for a bad product. And Scott’s Napoleon is a failure as history, as entertainment, and as iconography.

I am not a great admirer of Napoleon, but even I felt offended on Napoleon’s behalf at this propagandistic English slander masquerading as an epic historical biopic. Besides the problems Steve mentions, the script, casting, acting, and directing are all terrible, which is sad because none of it had to be that way. (Napoleon’s handkerchief should have had an acting credit, since it upstages him in so many scenes as Phoenix is constantly dabbing at all the estrogen tears Scott orders up.)

Phoenix’s age and mumblecore delivery are not his only problems. His brazen American accent grates against all the plummy Royal Actor’s Guild—or whatever they call it over there—speech of every other player. The murk is muddled further because some British accents are meant to convey the character’s British social class, while some are meant to convey something about their French social distinction, but then some French dialogue is actually in French, so the viewer is left with a lot of subconscious code-switching. In Stone’s Alexander, by contrast, Irish accents indicated Macedonians, while English accents meant Greeks. It was a clever way to redeploy a complication of multinational casting as an asset to final product. No such cleverness in Napoleon though.

But as others have pointed out, Scott hasn’t made anything worthwhile since Gladiator.

People are surprised that Ridley Scott’s Napoleon pulled a bait and switch for its supposed target demographic when he already did this with Kingdom of Heaven. Here’s a story about Hollywood markets trying to capture the same audience that went to see The Passion of the Christ. pic.twitter.com/1y8t7Fgq7Q

— Hideo Kojima's Bastard Son (@ReforgedSwordo) November 26, 2023

Henry Kissinger is dead.

A.M., though made overseas, isn’t all the RNS stuff about the scene back in Hollywood or America in general, the awards shows, the reviewers (not counting Steve Sailer), etc.? I mean, there aren’t any laws about showing 10% blacks by mass(?) in every movie yet, are there?

Anyway thanks for the 3! Michael Scott .gifs. That was a favorite of mine. For those wondering, Michael really freaked out when he found out the HR guy Toby was back in town…. very understandable.

Ahhh, shit, so there’s gonna be a movie?

(Actually, done by someone with an honest political viewpoint, it could be very interesting.)

What a great feeling!

Vangelis • 1492 – Conquest Of Paradise playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_kEzt1hc21_JV4aNPdczBkGnZyUNjJWeY0

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1492:_Conquest_of_Paradise_(album)

Ridley Scott’s 1977 film ‘The Duellists’ with Harvey Keitel and Keith Carradine, is extraordinary, a memorable film set in related period history

Yes, yes, yes! I saw it when it first came out and was blown away. I watched it again recently and it held up very well. Both Keitel and and Carradine were excellent, and I thought they both were headed for stardom, but neither one did much of anything afterwords.

Diana Quick as Laura, d’Hubert’s mistress, played Lady Julia Flyte in the television production of Brideshead Revisited.

Hell’s population is up by one.

Right on everything except Blade Runner. Without the sets that’s a pretentious snoozer.

Scott is simply a designer of another person’s idea and vision.

Scott got his start in the advertising business.

It was proportioned according to population to be equivalent to the indemnity imposed by Napoleon on Prussia after wrecking it at Battle of Jena–Auerstedt,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_indemnity#Indemnity

Bismarck said „Ohne Jena kein Sedan“ „Without Jena, no Sedan“.

Although to be fair, by annexing Alsace-Lorraine he violated his own adage “Politics is the Art of Possible” by precluding Franco-German rapprochement.

Here’s a good review that echoes some of what Steve says. I’m disappointed that the movie appears to be pretty surface-level, biased, inaccurate, and wastes a lot of time on the Josephine romance.

https://unherd.com/thepost/napoleon-the-movie-is-anglo-propaganda/

“Squeezing 20 years of continent-wide political and military tumult into 158 minutes was always going to leave important chapters on the chopping block…Some liberties were so jarring as to remove the viewer from the cinematic experience. Napoleon charges sabre-first on his horse like an impatient captain at the first opportunity. The Battle of Austerlitz, his greatest triumph, becomes a cartoonish mousetrap on ice…Yet the film’s main flaw is its asinine plot, and apparent indecision as to what it wants to be. Scott evidently wanted to cover Napoleon from crib to coffin, but the film lacks any convincing narrative thread to hold it…”

“A giant to the French, he remains an ogre to the English. What he was not, however, was a half-wit man-child. Phoenix plays Napoleon as a stupid figure, a characterisation the film struggles to square with the reality that the idiot depicted somehow became the most powerful man in Europe. Phoenix claimed that he wanted to explore this “petit petulant tyrant”, harking back to Britain’s viciously effective anti-Bonaparte cartoons. When the film (finally) ends, the black screen lists the casualties of Boney’s wars. This is a blatant attempt to induce guilt in any viewers who might still have any admiration for Napoleon after such a character assassination.”

“I would have gladly settled for a movie about an increasingly egotistical and tyrannical dictator, rather than an unconvincing melodrama and Wikipedia-deep exploration of the Napoleonic biggest hits. Even as a piece of Anglo propaganda, the film falls flat on its face. Scott had so many other angles to explore. His film could have been about Napoleon’s increasing obsession with winning the great power rivalry with England, but we are left guessing as to the strategic motives behind most of the battles in front of us.”

“An ancient [sic] fight between the French and the English . . . It was about Mercantilism.”

That’s right.

But talking about ancient history . . . the Carthaginian Empire was built on trade and backed up by a powerful fleet (like the British Empire). The Roman Empire at that time was more a military and political enterprise (like the Napoleonic Empire?).

Napoleon’s infatuation with Rome may have led him to misjudge the changing times.

I think Conrad’s The Duel, although it is not, strictly speaking, about Napoleon, does a better job of communicating the fundamentally romantic and aristocratic sensibilities of the era than either your or Ridley Scott’s essentially rationalist attempt to comprehend Napoleon.

Of course Napoleon wasn’t a great man of peace. Who would want to be a great man of peace? This was 1800, not 2000.

That is why the Jews set up Hollywood in California and deprived the inventor of mass media ( movie camera/ projector and the phonograph of his (Edison) patents through lawfare. They realized mass brainwashing was possible . Watching friends root for the gym class spazzes of the IDF as they murder women and kids makes it clear. Few can think critically about Jews. The taboos are too ingrained.

In other Ruler news…

More Than 130 Masses Celebrated in 5 Countries to Promote Queen Isabella’s Canonization

On Nov. 26, 1504, Queen Isabella of Spain — known as “the Catholic” monarch — died, and more than 500 years later, 133 Masses were celebrated in her memory in thanksgiving for her life and legacy as well as to promote the cause for her canonization.

For several years, the Enraizados en Cristo y en la Sociedad Association (Rooted in Christ and in Society) has kept up an ongoing campaign to promote devotion to the queen of Castile, who has been named a Servant of God by the Catholic Church.

This year, 133 Masses were celebrated with this intention, most of them in Spain but also in Argentina, Mexico, Venezuela, and the United States.

The campaign joins the relaunch of the diocesan commission to promote the cause of canonization for the queen. The diocesan phase, which began in 1958 in the Archdiocese of Valladolid, was concluded in 1972.

https://www.ncregister.com/cna/more-than-130-masses-celebrated-in-5-countries-to-promote-queen-isabella-s-canonization

Napoleon is so staggeringly, completely, monumentally bad – just truly ghastly- that words fail me in trying to do it justice.

The dialogue is risible, the scenes are uniformly very poorly lit, J. Phoenix is hilariously miscast, the editing is disjointed (that may not be Scott’s fault), and the battle scenes genuinely sterile and dull. In the end, Napoleon remains a brute, and a complete cipher. And it is not helped by having the only Actor with a range smaller than Keanu Reeves play the title character. Of all of Ridley Scott’s films that I have seen, it is by far the worst.

The only possible deflection of my criticism is that maybe the long version is better – theatrical Kingdom of Heaven is kind of incoherent, but the Director’s cut is a near masterpiece. But the best you could hope for in this case is moving it from absolute garbage to …..garbage.

A huge waste of time and money , and an even huger disappointment, from a Director who has made a lot of films that I have really liked.( BTW, Gladiator was not one of them.) Oh well, Kubrick’s last three films were pretty much crap too.

He could hardly admit it was, now could he?

On the dark side, Musk had to grovel. On the bright side, Big Jew did not just make another friend. My guess is people like Musk believe in payback. I wouldn’t try humiliating him this way.

I finally got around to seeing Buster Scruggs and not a single Black! face. Furthermore, the Indians are proper savages. There’s even a little joke where we think we’re going to get the obligatory wise and noble Indian moment but don’t.
And they’ve been getting away with this sort of thing for a long time–without making period pieces, which used to give you a pass. And when you think of it, for a pair of smart-assed Jewish brothers it’s remarkable how their work has matured over time to suggest an unnatural regard and sympathy for their gentile countrymen.

Could be the appropriate thread to drop this:

What made the original Star Wars such a great movie was the Brits in it–Alec Guiness, Peter Cushing. The American actors, maybe, just maybe apart from Harrison Ford were “meh.”

‘Apparently, Denzel Washington will play the doomed Carthaginian general Hannibal in an upcoming epic. Carthaginians (Poeni = Phoenicians) are Africans, yo!’

Now, I could have done without hearing that.

How about Marlo Thomas, better? Prettier, and no more ridiculous.

It would be logical for Venezuela with its oversized military it can’t continue to fund to invade as Biden won’t stop them. No better time!

Guyana is now in the Brazilian orbit, they are very pro-Brazilian. Portuguese has replaced Spanish as a second language in schools. If there is trouble it will be a showdown between Venezuela and Brazil, US involvement would not be needed to sort out the Venezuelans.

It would be logical for Venezuela with its oversized military it can’t continue to fund to invade…

Invade with what– Tarzan vines? Certainly not tanks. Guyana intentionally keeps the majority of her territory not only undeveloped, but virgin. Precisely to keep the New Venetians at bay. “Strategic depth”.

Guyana has only two international road crossings. The one with Brazil is the only land border in the Western Hemisphere where traffic switches between left and right. The Guyanese intend to keep it that way. Even if outnumbered 35-1.

Sorry about the unintentional multipost.

Steve, feel free to delete the other two.

Luxembourg can’t be France because they speak in German, and can’t be Germany because they write in French. Smart strategy.

But Alsace has the same set-up. Why doesn’t it work for them?

“They can’t find a Levantine actor or a North African to do it?”

They could but they won’t, ever. The point is not historical accuracy, or to make a good movie. The point is to worship sacred negroes, and demoralize and degrade whites. “Look, a superior negro general nearly defeated Rome!”

As for Napoleon, I prefer GB Shaw’s witty “The Man of Destiny.”

As for Ridley Scott… The Duellists, and Alien. Blade Runner was stylish but retarded. It’s all downhill after that. Hannibal is so dreadful he actually gets points subtracted from Alien.

Eh, looks like you came out of that Disney incident unharmed. Well done!

And that from a population of 800K.

Here is the full interview:

Joqueian Phoenix has a hairlip.

Oh, goodness gracious, somebody actually knows something. Give ‘im an IQ test!

The battle scenes, though interesting for the movie, were a bit off. Commanders of 300,000 man armies do not lead Saber Charges.

Also, Napoleonic ordnance did not have percussion fuses. Cannonballs landing and exploding on impact as if it were a WWII film was a constant irksome anachronism.

Exploding ordnance of that era had timed fuses. Getting the timing right was an art and science.

I guess simulating impact explosions is easier for pyrotechnic directors, but with modern CGI, simulating explosive shells hurtling or rolling(!) toward enemy infantry who then have to wonder if the time fuses will ignite the explosives lethally or harmlessly would be at least as visually compelling cinema.

There was an ancient fight between the French and the English that spilled over into America Africa and India.

The Seven Years’ War, with fighting in Europe, Asia, America, Africa, and the major oceans, could be called the first world war. Which would make the Napoleonic Wars the second world war, making WW1 and WW2 actually WW3 and WW4.

WW5 will probably mark the end of Western civilization, if the Left hasn’t already finished it off.

“Little Boney” is a really weird way to refer to an astounding historical figure and Europe’s penultimate adventurer-conqueror. It’s like me referring to Dwight Eisenhower as “Little D,” or calling Robert E. Lee “Bobby.”

OT possible Sailerbait?

The Army retroactively pardons the black Houston mutineers of 1917, who rampaged through the city shooting white civilians at random, including a teenager who was just sitting on his porch—what part of their actions are we rehabilitating exactly? https://t.co/Cm4iy0oaCt

— Helen Andrews (@herandrews) November 14, 2023

Napoleon supposedly once called Great Britain a nation of shopkeepers. The shopkeepers won the war.

And they won it by enlisting the other powers of Europe to do a large part of the fighting. That’s the English way.

Napoleon was a dictator, so I can’t really admire him, but I don’t exactly admire the scheming English either. There is a reason for the term “Perfidious Albion”.

What made the original Star Wars such a great movie was the Brits in it–Alec Guiness, Peter Cushing.

Even in Star Wars, the British accents seemed organic because Brit-speakers Guinness and Cushing represented the old order: Jedi knights and Imperial bluebloods, respectively. The American accents were the brash new guys: farmers, smugglers, rebels.

James Earl Jones, though American, spoke Vader’s role with stage-British enunciation, which crossover dialect reflected Vader’s upbringing in the old Jedi order while he is using the Force as a modern anti-insurgency tool.

When Ridley Scott needs to turn to George Lucas for successful directing advice, you know he’s failing badly.

Ridley Scott has always favored style over substance. I don’t mind: movies are a visual medium and style is important, perhaps more important than substance. But substance isn’t irrelevant, and his movies are often pretty shallow.

Scott’s best movie is his first: The Duelists

Blackhawk Down was a good war movie (although Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket was, I think, a better movie about war). It did a good job at showing a rather complex fire fight in a way that could be followed.

Gladiator was overrated crap.

I wanted to see Napoleon – maybe I still will, but it sounds pretty bad. Napoleon was, by all accounts, a very charismatic man. Phoenix is kind of a zilch. I just don’t see him in the role.

The best Napoleons were: 1.) David Swift in the BBC’s production of War and Peace, 2.) Rod Steiger in Waterloo, and 3.) Ian Holm in the BBC teleplay Napoleon and Love.

I remember reading once that, second only to our Lord Jesus Christ, Napoleon was the subject of the most autobiographies and nonfiction books of the 19th Century.

With good reason. Without Napoleon, the world would look incredibly different today. Truly one of the great men of history. He’s in the class of Caesar, Augustus, Henry II, Charlemagne, Alexander the Great, and Genghis Khan in terms of “great man”.

Its sad Napoleon is not so well known or respected in the Anglosphere as he should be. British propaganda over the centuries has done much to diminish him and his accomplishments. Now he’s just known as “short guy cucked by his wife who won some battles but whose arrogance and superior British military actions destroyed.”

N.B. Napoleon had a life long fascination with, of all people, Muhammad the creator of Islam. But it makes sense: unlike Jesus, Muhammad was also a military leader and extensive legal code creator who’s actions both shocked and awed the people of his time. He reorganized much of the Middle East following the collapse of the Western Roman Empire and the stale, corrupt governing of the Eastern Roman Empire (who still held much of the Middle East as old Roman provinces). Muhammad also had some of the most shocking and terrifying military victories of all time.

Napoleon likely saw a lot of himself in Muhammad, the big difference being Napoleon didn’t really think about the supernatural except as it was useful to controlling the masses while Muhammad was a bona fide religious zealot for his dark faith.

Coiffure à la victime, I am told, is the term of art.

https://images.theconversation.com/files/560501/original/file-20231120-15-7ghcdh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=136%2C35%2C3245%2C1820&q=45&auto=format&w=926&fit=clip

https://theconversation.com/napoleon-the-films-fashion-tells-a-story-of-its-own-from-cropped-hair-to-ribbon-chokers-218208

Thank you for admitting your insanity.

“Little Boney” is a really weird way to refer to an astounding historical figure and Europe’s penultimate adventurer-conqueror. It’s like me referring to Dwight Eisenhower as “Little D,” or calling Robert E. Lee “Bobby.”

Well, what were they going to do? It’s not like ‘low energy Boney’ had much of a chance of sticking.

Napoleon’s mother languages were Italian and the dialect of it spoken in Corsica. He learned French after being sent to France to study when he was 10. He learned fluent French but never lost his accent and had trouble spelling in French. I thought the movie would have been improved by the comic touch of having Napoleon speak in an Italian accent like Chico Marx instead if an American accent.
That, and used an actor who wasn’t twice the age Napoleon was at the point when the movie started.

there aren’t any laws about showing 10% blacks by mass(?) in every movie yet, are there?

Steve’s review referred to “British film industry diversity quotas”, so it sounds like one of those “non-governmental” rules that may as well be governmental.

You know, like NGOs, i.e., Non-Governmental Organizations, always seem to be doing exactly the wish of the government, often using government money.

If you want to see that battle, see Rod Steiger as Boney in “Waterloo” (1970).

100%!

One of the greatest scenes in cinema history: the charge and the destruction of the Scots Greys:

Napoleon’s mother languages were Italian and the dialect of it spoken in Corsica.

Yeah, I considered that too, but the characters of Napoleon’s brother and mother, whose accents should have been at least as divergent as Napoleon’s, were played by a couple of Anglo actors in the standard Royal Shakespeare style.

I mean, there aren’t any laws about showing 10% blacks by mass(?) in every movie yet, are there?

Eh, maybe we could get by with just that Roxanne Gay woman in every movie?

Russians won the war. Brits just delivered the final blow to mortally wounded and exhausted beast.

“Adam Driver in 1386”

Adam Driver means nothing to me, Steve. Then again, my memories of 1386 ain’t what they used to be.

Barry Lyndon with a better leading man than Ryan O’Neal could have been good. Odd to see Leonard Rossiter in it too, Kubrick must have liked him, perhaps his comedic acting or personality, because he couldn’t do dramatic acting. Rossiter had a more appropriately minor role in 2001.

The essential “Italianess” of Napoleone Buonaparte usually gets downplayed. The French have a vested interest in ignoring it, the English and Germans just don’t understand it.

A young Al Pacino would have been a great Napoleon. It’s too bad no one in the 1970s thought of it.

A young James Gandolfini might have been even better – he had the right hairline. But Pacino is probably more skilled at conveying intelligence and natural charisma combined with cruelty.

It is worth noting that the movie Waterloo was directed by the Soviet Russian director Sergei Bondarchuk—John Huston was earlier slated to direct it. The Soviets contributed four million dollars to the production, a huge sum in the late 1960s.

They also contributed the services of 17,000 soldiers from their army, to serve as extras. Not surprisingly, the realism of the battle scenes in that movie far exceeds in versimilitude the modern era CGI fakery of Napoleon.

Ford really carries Star Wars, not appreciated enough. Having actors like Cushing, Guinness and Jones was entirely necessary.

‘Perfidious Albion’ was sour grapes by the French. The Corsican Ogre was reviled across most of Europe, and rightfully so for drenching it in blood, a lot of it French, but I doubt that bothered the Corsican Italian that much.

Napoleon is as overrated as a general as Robert E Lee, good reasons why in the end both were losers to superior generals in Wellington and Grant. Possibly Napoleon might not have been as hated had he bothered with logistics, Wellington certainly did, living off the land generated a great deal of hate. The Spanish guerrillas bled France dry, and the Russians finished them off.

There is a current of historical thought that claims Napoleon was, except for the Russia campaign, not a conqueror & military aggressor & that most of his campaigns were basically defensive; warring against most European powers was necessary because they wouldn’t let France, something new & feared as the embodiment of the future doom of feudalism, just -be. I don’t know how much this is supported by empirical evidence, since it goes against the popular notion of Napoleon as the enlightened conqueror.

“What I tell you three times is true” – Hunting of the Snark.

It’s just a preference of mine, and I’ve rarely seen a filmmaker try it, but in my view, if you’re going to do a biopic, I think it’s better to concentrate entirely on a specific key occurrence in the subject’s life, rather than doing a sweeping attempt at the whole thing. Beatles at Shea Stadium, for instance, or recording “Revolver,” rather than the whole entire Story of the Beatles. More opportunity for character insight and appropriate detail.

On a separate note, if they are going to do a Denzel movie with Hannibal as a negro, it sort of follows that the entire Carthaginian army would be all negroes — not a black guy commanding a white army. I’d almost like to see them try that, just for the lulz — and to see the white audience’s genuine reaction to such a spectacle. Might be rather a jarring tonic for the stupefied masses, to get a glimpse of their future.

Accidental. The films were made n London studios.

Popular author Egon Friedell thought that Napoleon was perhaps the last condottiere, at least in some aspects. He ranked him as the ultimate European genius, above Shakespeare and Goethe (a strange comparison).

OMG, another domino that is an existential threat to the American way of life. I get it now. The US learned its lesson in Vietnam, and has been busy in recent months importing masses of Venezuelan bad guys to here so we don’t have to fight them in the messy jungles of Guyana.

My mistake; here’s the full interview:
Most Controversial Elon Musk Interview (Seriously Heated – Must Watch) | Timestamps Included

That was the official British position & of a few of their authors, for instance Thackeray. Most of the creative English minds highly appreciated Napoleon, from Byron to Hardy. Hardy’s masterpiece was about him:

It’s been a while, but I think the definitive description I read of Waterloo was in “Face of Battle” by John Keegan 1976.

If I am correct about the source, the movie “Waterloo” presented the battle as closely as any movie could.

You may have also seen “Revolution” with Al Pacino. One closeup in a fight of a cap lock.

Commenter Mike Tre posted this over a week ago…

The intelligent part I don’t see so much when I think of Al Pacino as Napoleon – the Italian/Corsican and cruel bits: Yep, clearly.

Napoleon was – not least – an intelectual. He invited the writer and minister Goethe over, when he was busy fighting big battles near Weimar. – Turned out, he – as always, he said – carried with him young Goethe’s 3 week stroke of genius The Sufferings of Young Werther – about teenage longing vs. adult’s resistance.

Frankly the best portrayal of The Little Corsican that I ever saw was by Herbert Lom in the King Vidor/Hollywood version of “War and Peace” (which featured a marvelous score by Italian composer Nino Rota of “Godfather” fame, side-by-side with a dreadfully miscast Henry Fonda as Pierre Bezuhov).

Thanks. Truly depressing that such a dynamic and interesting figure was reduced to this. Unfortunately the “Wikipedia-deep” level of historical interest in major historical figures will probably continue to grow as the distance between the present and men of consequence grows. Our culture is still firmly in the grip of ideological cultists who absolutely loathe Western civilization and the people who made it possible.

Now that some British museum has deemed a little known Roman emperor transgender we will no doubt get some kind of biopic about that, or perhaps on Sporus, a kid Nero had castrated and dressed up like his dead wife.

“I wish John Milius were healthy and could make his lifelong passion project: Genghis Khan. He’d do
justice to that, I would think.”

I wonder if technology will be advanced enough to cast a CGI John Wayne in the lead.

France paid Germany a massive reparation after losing the Franco-Prussian War. It was paid entirely in gold coin and two years early.

The big winners were the Jewish bankers who managed it all. Look up Gerson Bleichroder.

… a lot of films that I have really liked.( BTW, Gladiator was not one of them.) Oh well, Kubrick’s last three films were pretty much crap too.

Please turn in your theMann card at your earliest convenience.

Even in Star Wars, the British accents seemed organic because Brit-speakers Guinness and Cushing represented the old order: Jedi knights and Imperial bluebloods, respectively. The American accents were the brash new guys: farmers, smugglers, rebels.

Good overall take. Princess Leia might be the blueblood exception. Her parents both spoke ‘American’; in the prequels young Anakin spoke with an American accent—maybe he later chose, as Vader, to have his voice processed differently as an imperious psy-op affect.

Napoleon was – not least – an intelectual. He invited the writer and minister Goethe over, when he was busy fighting big battles near Weimar. – Turned out, he – as always, he said – carried with him young Goethe’s 3 week stroke of genius The Sufferings of Young Werther – about teenage longing vs. adult’s resistance.

Reminds me of the fascinating wholly apolitical (not a party symbol or soldier to be seen anywhere) 1939 German short film below promoting the KdF Wagen, known today in the vernacular as the ‘VW Beetle’.

In the film, Karlsbad Journey, Fritz and Illse take their Volkswagen in search of German renaissance man and philosopher Goethe, taking the same path across Germany that he had whilst alive.

Many obvious parallels between the Napoleonic Wars of France and WWII Germany, ie the conquest of much of continental Europe, the aborted cross channel invasion of England, and the failed attack upon Russia, amongst others.

As alternative history, had Napoleon come to power in 1930’s France, would he too have developed a ‘people’s car’ for the French nation?

Thanks. After the original Star Wars, which I loved as kid and still as an adult think was a real classic, I kind of lost track of all the sequels, prequels, and spinoffs.

In a fit of nostalgia I once tried to catch up on all the post-original Star Wars movies, but I kept falling asleep. “How am I falling asleep during action movies?”, I thought, “Something’s wrong. (There is a disturbance in the Force! lol)”. I never tried again.

This is a long way of saying that I don’t really know anything about Princess Leia’s parents. (That Israeli actress plus the Anakin meme guy maybe?) I vaguely remember a “young Anakin” movie with a round-faced blond kid.

But yeah, Leia is a bit of a flaw in my theory. She should have coded more genteel-British, but I guess you could say her American accent indicated she was “with the people” despite her pedigree.

Anyway, the main point was just that American directors Stone and Lucas understood how to use their actors’ accents to improve their movies, but Limey Scott made his movie even more muddled.

“an overabundance of crazy English broads”

My girlfriend had a pile of maiden and widowed aunts and aunts once-removed who lost fiances or husbands in WW1. This was in the 1970s. They weren’t so much crazy as sad.

“It’s fifty-one spring-times since she was a bride,
But still you may see her at each Whitsuntide
In a dress of white linen and ribbons of green,
As green as her memories of loving.

The feet that were nimble tread carefully now,
As gentle a measure as age do allow,
Through groves of white blossom, by fields of young corn,
Where once she was pledged to her true love.

The fields they stand empty, the hedges grow free,
No young men to tend them or pastures go see.
They have gone with the forests of oak trees before
Have gone to be wasted in battle.

Down from their green farmlands, and from their loved ones
Marched husbands and brothers, and fathers and sons.
There’s a fine roll of honour where the Maypole once stood,
And the ladies go dancing at Whitsun.

There’s a straight row of houses, in these latter days
All covering the Downs where the sheep used to graze.
There’s a field of red poppies, a wreath from the Queen.
But the ladies remember at Whitsun,
And the ladies go dancing at Whitsun.”

“Many of the old ladies who swell the membership lists of Country Dance Societies are 1914/18 war widows, or ladies who have lost fiancés and lovers. Country dancing kept the memory of their young men alive. When Shirley Collins started singing the piece to the tune of The False Bride, the impact was disturbing, for many people in audiences identified with it. Tears were frequent. “

https://mainlynorfolk.info/shirley.collins/songs/whitsundance.html

1. I guess I don’t really know who Jokin’ Phoenix is. Was thinking you all meant Pedro Pascal, who would have been great. At least he’s sort of Mediterranean looking and a classical actor…loved him in Prospect…mesmerizing.

2. Here is a link to the article with the Murty story–long and pretty good…I don’t agree with everything in it…but it’s solid stuff.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/conservatives-in-hollywood

Haha. Yeah, I agreed theMann‘s comment except for the Gladiator dis. How can any man not like Gladiator?

Don’t you think Joaquin Phoenix is too old (49 yrs and looks older) for the role. In his prime as a young emperor Napoleon was only 35 years old, and he died in exile age 51.
He was 29 during his successful siege of Toulon. Phoenix looks old, blase and tired during the whole film.

Agreed. Looking for examples of Robert E. Lee being referred to as “Bobby” is instructive. Here is one from iSteve content generator Ta-Nehisi Coates in 2010.
The Ghost of Bobby Lee
https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2010/04/the-ghost-of-bobby-lee/38813/

P.S. One of the more entertaining things about Glenn Loury and John McWhorter’s podcasts is listening to them discussing TNC.

A cast of tens of thousands of Yugoslavian conscripts…

Paul Kersey did a piece on that.
https://www.unz.com/sbpdl/when-murdering-white-people-becomes-a-positive-fact-of-history-us-army-overturns-convictions-of-110-black-soldiers-in-1917-houston-riot-who-were-convicted-of-mutiny-murder-and-assault-killing-white/

They are shameless. Are they trying to provoke blowback?

Skillful ruthless cunning cowardice. Based.

“Most famously, Stanley Kubrick contemplated making a Napoleon movie to follow up 2001. But the project proved too daunting for even Kubrick, so he eventually applied his research into the 18th century to Barry Lyndon instead.”

Kubrick was widely known for doing extensive research before beginning historical period films. Scott couldn’t care less. Numerous online postings have ridiculed his lack of adhering to basic facts regarding Napoleon and the era he came from.

Kubrick was not the first filmmaker in world cinema to apply historical research when making epic films. That honor goes to legendary filmmaker, the one who put Hollywood on the map as a force in world film, to Cecil B. DeMille. It was once stated that in Paramount’s Studio’s library of books for research purposes for projects, 90% either came from DeMille’s private library, or were utilized by DeMille.

The entire idea of doing one’s historical homework before making an epic film by making use of extensive historical research is directly traced to Cecil B. DeMille, Steve, and not Stanley Kubrick. Every single detail that was to before it was placed on the screen was exhaustively researched beforehand, in order to get it right.

* Although unlike DeMille, there still persists that some of the extras in Spartacus are wearing wrist watches on their forearms. Kubrick should’ve caught that oversight.

“Gladiator vs. Spartacus, Alien vs. The Shining, Blade Runner vs. 2001, Black Hawk Down vs. Full Metal Jacket, and Thelma and Louise vs. Lolita.”

Lolita? Seriously? A bit overwraught and overrated, certainly not one of the ’60’s greatest ever films made.

Which Ridley Scott film would be compared to Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove? Kingdom of Heaven? (albeit, once again Scott’s lack of historical accuracy is appaling, and in this front DeMille’s The Crusades is a far better historical epic).

“…is 1/3 dot Indian and 1/3 black and mostly Anglophone”

Very similar in population makeup to Britain’s nearby former colony of Trinidad. But Britain’s other former Caribbean colonies (such as Jamaica and Barbados) never had a significant imported Indian workforce. No idea as to why that was the case.

I was fortunate enough to see a three-screen (as it had been intended) showing of the Abel Gantz silent film Napoleon, with live musical accompaniment, it was great. Mainly battle scenes, but though it was long, it never became boring.

In any case, that take should not be forgotten.

Reading it again, I see Steve is making a point about Scott’s rather inexplicable, retrospective treatment of Napoleon in line with Gillray’s caricature of the time instead of what the remove of history would show about Napoleon. But then of course, Scott’s a Brit.

4.) And don’t forget Ian Holm in Time Bandits!

Typically because they’re heterosexual. Or they’ve spent more than a few minutes thinking of the Roman Empire.

it’s not possible to adequately tell the geopolitical story; it’s too big, and obviously beyond even a technical master lacking any intellectual depth. So what is a director to do? The usual. Fall back on something like Freudian analysis in an attempt to “get inside” the character.

Napoleon should be treated in a miniseries by a serious director, not some confectioner like a Scott or a Scorsese.

A recent Wall St. Journal review of this film roasted it.

Seems a lot of Big Name Directors get very lost and stupid after early successes.

Even fewer of them understand actual history and what made major figures important.

Related: De Niro’s 3 three hour turkey about some early 20th century murders in Oklahoma related to Siberian American (Indian) oil leases has also proven this point. Though the original characters in this true life story have long been forgotten. No one cares.

A good European director (British/French/German/Italian) might have a bias but at least that would have made a thoughtful film. Napoleon was the Hitler of his day, absent the genocide and total destruction of his homeland. (Some European films about Napoleon have been made, most were critical successes.)

Instead this film seems to be a weird love story revolving around a dunce in uniform. Since about half of Americans now can’t locate France on a map or globe, not a great idea.

Abel Gance wept.

So.. you’re a fan of Gladiator, or not ?

Carthage wasn’t a politically integrated Island. It was a bit vulnerable.

I do not like the Comparison between Carthage and the British.

One thing that does rhyme is the period of Carthage’s imperial expansion, if not the successful population colonisation that the British did over the Oceans.

Oh Jenner I’m flattered, but straight. (“So you’re a fan of Gladiator” would be a good covert homosexual come-on, a “friends of Dorothy” kind of thing).
Maybe you should visit the cockpit.

It would be great fodder for Amazon, Netflix etc.

Here’s how I’d do it.

Use the way Rome had Pullo and Vorenus as the actual story.

Interweave them into the events in cheeky historical fiction taking liberties. Pierre and Jean, let’s say.

Napoleon is there to be sure, always but you also get something of the Sharpe’s Rifles to give a flavour of the era. This would allow a Ney, Bernadotte (now Swedish ROYALS) or Murat (killed in Italy) to grow as characters. Then sort of snap back to the main guy as needed. Look at Brother Joseph in Spain fighting off the Brits looting the Prado. Pierre and Jean could show up making things happen good or ill

Bonaparte as the Sopranos.

Ciaran Hines did a great Caesar for example and Purefoy’s Mark Anthony was a classic for all time.

End it with Pierre and Jean demobilised migrating to America or preparing to go to Algeria.

Hmmm. Given a second chance, you’ve still not yet confirmed nor denied you’re a fan of Gladiator…

Oh look, the “I am rubber you are glue” riposte.
That’s adorable.

You only have the one gif?

You only have the one gif?

I can probably find more. Any requests?

Don’t forget Harry “S” Truman, a mobbed-up haberdasher who got to drop two nukes!

Also, made Israel possible, in return for a suitcase full of cash.

Truman’s parents couldn’t decide on ‘Solomon’ or ‘Shipp’ a middle name, so compromised on ‘S’. As it turned out, “Solomon” would have been appropriate.

You mention Ulysses “S” Grant, who also had the same phony middle initial. Apparently some kind of Masonic sign for “warmongering scumbag.”

At least they didn’t cast a black lesbian.

And Americans wonder why everyone hates them.

In Stone’s Alexander, Irish accents indicated Macedonians, while English accents meant Greeks. It was a clever way to redeploy a complication of multinational casting as an asset to final product.

The translators Penguin used for Russian novels in the 50s-60s would use various “lower” class British accents to depict various Russian social orders; Cockney, Geordie, etc. I suppose it worked in the UK but Americans it just made them seem like weirdos.

Unbelievably but wonderfully there’s a whole academic book on the “controversy” over Penguin’s bold new approach to Russian translations:

When the film (finally) ends, the black screen lists the casualties of Boney’s wars. This is a blatant attempt to induce guilt in any viewers who might still have any admiration for Napoleon after such a character assassination.”

Oh, boo hoo. So he killed 100s of thousands of White people, at least he liberated the Jews!

But let’s ask someone who actually lived during Napoleon’s rampages:

“Napoleon was not really worse than many, not to say most, men. He was possessed of the very ordinary egoism that seeks its welfare at the expense of others. What distinguished him was merely the greater power he had of satisfying his will, and greater intelligence, reason and courage; added to which, chance gave him a favourable scope for his operations. By means of all this he did for his egoism what a thousand other men would like to do for theirs, but cannot. Every feeble lad who by little acts of villainy gains a small advantage for himself by putting others to some disadvantage, although it may be equally small, is just as bad as Napoleon.” ― Arthur Schopenhauer, On Human Nature

Some directors are great because they are masters of the science of film-making. Likely Kubrick qualifies on this score.

Other directors have made great films because they had the expertise and technical genius of the ripe, fully developed Hollywood behind them, they had the resources, they had the experts, they had the creative artists to make great films. George Lucas may have had the inspiration for Star Wars and Indiana Jones as concepts: but it was all his experts that made them possible and made them good. Perhaps Blade Runner and Ridley’s Believe IT OR NOT’s “good” films are mostly the same way.

The trailer alone for the Napoleon film just screamed that it is unwatchable. I can’t watch galloping video game horses and take it seriously. They look liked animated toy soldiers: I’d rather watch stop motion and King Kong. Let me see King Kong in the public domain on youtube whenever I want. It’s about time.

Scott’s Napoleon is something you could adapt into a 1980s Atari game.

You know, like NGOs, i.e., Non-Governmental Organizations, always seem to be doing exactly the wish of the government, often using government money.

There is reporting that says at least two NGOs helped the Algerian stabber evade deportation and become an Irish citizen.

Joaquin Phoenix?

What? Peter Dinklage wasn’t available?

I liked the opening battle and some of the gladiator bouts, but the film was basically ridiculous. It has the same problem as Raiders of the Lost Arc – it is just silly and gets the history entirely wrong.

Napoleon had a life long fascination with, of all people, Muhammad… Napoleon likely saw a lot of himself in Muhammad…

Lawrence Auster called Mohammed “a successful Hitler”.

He’s in the class of Caesar, Augustus, Henry II, Charlemagne, Alexander the Great, and Genghis Khan in terms of “great man”.

But how many of their conquests survived, even the next generation?

His primary effect on the world may have been the spread of right-hand traffic and the metric system. The latter of which I understand he didn’t much care for.

I don’t recall there being one single black in that movie. I guess blackwashing history wasn’t a thing back then.

I had to look him up, but yes. Thanks.

Would make a great streaming series or TV mini-series.

I suspect this Ridley Scott version will tank at the box office.

That’s why they are releasing it now, before Christmas but after a long drought of new films due to the strikes. Maybe this Corsican will help the turkey digest and/or allow for a nice public nap…

I think Hollywood has gotten a lot stupider in recent years. Mostly comic book CGI laden sequels. I did like Oppenheimer and was glad it did good box office. Didn’t see Barbie, like most normal males.

Are “film schools” totally Woke or just full of dummies?

Napoleon wiped the Holy Roman Emperor off the map, created the rise of nationalism in Europe, united Italy (which led to its later unification), caused the British to become the pre-eminent world power, stopped the horrific evil of the Masonic French Revolution, emphatically displayed that the Ottoman Empire would not rise again, and instituted a fundamental change in the legal systems of many European nations down to this day.

Not to mention his innovations in warfare changed the playbook for all 19th century warfare going forward, especially for artillery. And gave hope to every common man that he, too, with a bit of talent, could rise precipitously.

If you think “His primary effect on the world may have been the spread of right-hand traffic and the metric system” you’re an ignorant fool and troll.

Popular author Egon Friedell thought that Napoleon was perhaps the last condottiere, at least in some aspects. He ranked him as the ultimate European genius, above Shakespeare and Goethe

Egon Fridell loved intellectual battles. – – – The louder, the better – to dethrone Shakespeare and Goethe was one of his t(r)icks.

In 1910 he gave a public lecture in Vienna saying that -Shaw would be better than Shaklespeare – and Egpon Schiele madde a great poster for it:

https://tinyurl.com/4f97a45b

Whether his wars were “defensive” or “offensive” (as if the French Revolution wasn’t about overthrowing the old regimes in all states, not just France) depends on whether he is viewed as a revolutionary or reactionary force.

People who say the Entente was attacked during WWI by an aggressive Germany never say that Gavrilo Princip and the Serbs did anything wrong. Just as we never hear that the Ukrainians did anything wrong to the ethnic Russians. Believing Napoleon’s wars were “defensive” is like believing that the Black Hand was just defending the South Slavs in Bosnia, that the plans of the Entente to wage war on Germany were just defensive.

If you’re British, you’d probably be more inclined to say that Napoleon was reactionary and bad, as opposed to reactionary and good, like Great Britain.

Intersting, thx.! – And quite charming. Lots of Goethe quotes. A documentary too.

Erik Ode became quite famous as a wise detective in the TV series Der Kommissar, ca. 1975 fff.
The French did build a people’s car too: The Citroen 2 CV – less sturdy than the VW Beetle, but very comfortable and versatile – : – –

https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?q=youtube+citroen+2+cv+cross+test&mid=9786E8703B40DB18A65B9786E8703B40DB18A65B&FORM=VIRE

France had been the most successful state of medieval Europe?

I beg to disagree.
I claim that Venice, Florence, the Low Countries, and England were clearly the most successful states of medieval Europe.

With the benefit of hindsight, Switzerland was also quite successful. But only with the benefit of hindsight.

Bernard Cornwall does a good job too.

The British,with unreliable allies, won because they had rifles, shrapnel, Wellington, and the Prussians to clean up.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterloo:_The_History_of_Four_Days,_Three_Armies_and_Three_Battles

Lawrence Auster said a lot of stupid things. If he was here for October 7 he likely would have become a pure neocon and spouted a veritable River Jordan of stupid.

Gladiator had some spectacular sequences but otherwise was boring, poorly scripted, and predictable.

With a good cast, big budget, and interesting history, it is sad to think how good it could have been.

Intersting, thx.! – And quite charming. Lots of Goethe quotes. A documentary too.

Yes, it’s fascinating. When I first came across it not so long ago, due to the high quality of it’s preservation, I thought for sure it was at least a 1950’s era film. But, no, it was made in 1939.

Erik Ode became quite famous as a wise detective in the TV series Der Kommissar, ca. 1975 fff.

He comes across as a pleasant and likeable sort, though perhaps older looking in the short film than his actual 20 something years in real life.

The French did build a people’s car too: The Citroen 2 CV – less sturdy than the VW Beetle, but very comfortable and versatile – : – –

The Citroën 2 CV is a very expensive car to be had nowadays, if you can find one for sale. I can only imagine it’s because many of the mass produced cars have not survived, and, or, have been snatched up by collectors.

Reg: “His primary effect on the world may have been the spread of right-hand traffic and the metric system.”

Abolishing the Holy Roman Empire and similar feudal structures in Italy was huge. After Napoleon reformed his empire, inherited rulers were permanently weakened and consigned to a practical level of power and status that at best was comparable to the British constitutional monarchy.

Dale:

“If he was here for October 7 he likely would have become a pure neocon”

The current war is another example showing God favors His chosen and blesses those who bless them, and curses those who curse them.

“I think Hollywood has gotten a lot stupider in recent years… Are “film schools” totally Woke or just full of dummies?”

A little of both, but what’s worse, they’re full of woke dummies (a redundancy, granted). But the real problem, as with journalism, law, and writing, is that there are film schools at all. Like some grouchy grump said back in the old days, “Law school? Bosh! A man should read law in the county courthouse.” Same thing goes for film. I make exceptions for technical arts like painting and music and even acting, which need conservatories because they require established technique… but a man of yore used to learn journalism by starting out as a copyboy when he was 13, and keeping his eyes open.

The problem with American art is that far too many would-be American artists have nothing interesting to say, and that is because they are afraid to go out into the world and get kicked in the balls, and risk learning something worth expressing.

De Niro’s 3 three hour turkey about some early 20th century murders in Oklahoma related to Siberian American (Indian) oil leases has also proven this point.

I read this book recently. It’s pretty good (only 300 pages) but it waits until the last third to document just how many of the Osage were killed or robbed by their care takers. The first 2/3 relates the nascent FBI cracking the murders of 10 or so Osage thanks to one guy, and Hoover taking credit for it all.

I have heard this said about Harry, but I’ve yet to see much evidence.

No matter. He did the right thing with the A bombs. Saved at least one million Allied/US causalities, and probably 10 million Jap deaths mostly from starvation.

Sometimes you have two options as a politician – bad and worse – and you don’t know one is which until later.

Granted, lots of ambitious directors have contemplated making a Bonaparte biopic…

Alain Resnais could have done Last Year at St Helena, with repetitive shots and reshots of the frustrated old man struggling with Forty Thieves solitaire. Or Bergman could have him on the beach, taking on the Reaper at whist.

Lawrence Auster said a lot of stupid things.

Be that as it may, he nailed it with this one.

After Napoleon reformed his empire, inherited rulers were permanently weakened and consigned to a practical level of power and status that at best was comparable to the British constitutional monarchy.

In other words, he wrecked Europe for good.

I just did a spit take.

Mohammed and his followers established their Arab supremacist religion in the entire northern third of Africa including Somalia, then north to Kazakhstan and east all the way into the Pacific and Indonesia. Pretty astounding.

Auster’s “Eloi tax” concept was spot on too. A conservative Ignatius Reilly scratching out a living in New York City before moving in with Laura Wood and her husband for end-of-life care; I don’t think they’d even personally met beforehand.

Thanks for the hat tip.

Leia speaks with an English accent in this scene, but not in any other. I’m guessing she is supposed to be mocking Tarkin.

I would not inherit any former noble titles, so I profited on a relative basis from Napoleon’s degradation of the antebellum nobility, and thus I’m obliged to approve.

I had forgotten what a bad actress she was.

Part of the movie was filmed in Malta and Morocco, so do British filmmakers still have to bow to the Random Negro Law there? Apparently. Scott did, anyway.

It probably depends on who was funding it. In any case I suppose these movie-makers are well trained to include blacks by now. It’s been going on so long.

“Commanders of 300,000 man armies do not lead Saber Charges.”

Scott has Napoleon charging on horseback wielding a saber at Borodino, which, of course, never happened.

Steve–equating a masterpiece like ‘Lolita’ to a chase film (Thelma and Louise’) is a bit much

There is a lot that demands giving Brits respect where it’s due. When Kutuzov was leaving St. Petersburg to take command of Russian army in 1812, he was asked “Are you hoping to defeat Napoleon?”
“Defeat? Heavens, no. Deceive, with God’s help!”

You’re mixing pretext and fundamental reasons for WWI.

I was amused to read an article by the historian Andrew Roberts slating the film, his argument was to ignore the twenty years of bloody self aggrandising wars, and to instead focus on the fact Napoleon removed restrictions on the jews. Is it good for the jews on a grand scale, by a gentile historian.

Ridley Scott has always been somewhat of a isolationist, as can be seen in the excellent Blackhawk Down and not so good Robin Hood, both critiques of Clinton/Bush and Blairite overseas adventurism.

The Citroën 2 CV is a very expensive car to be had nowadays, if you can find one for sale. I can only imagine it’s because many of the mass produced cars have not survived, and, or, have been snatched up by collectors.

If you’ve got 5000 Euros and a bit of time and mechanical skills, you can find one that will run for many years:

https://suchen.mobile.de/auto/citroen-2-cv.html

In Rome, the real men watched the chariot races. Go blue team!

I think the lack of men was even more pronounced in Germany.
I also recall being with a German girlfriend visiting a maiden aunt and commenting that clearly the aunt really loved children and it was a pity she never had any.
The girlfriend just rolled her eyes.

Maybe also this generation of women “normallised ” being barren among European womanhood

“The usual handwringing about “why, oh why, do people of color always score lower on aptitude tests??””

The Libtards/progressives are always pulling this shit on us. Itz almost as if they think we are all created equal above the neck (brain) and unequal below the brain (body).

These childish F##ks will never grow up.

Napoleon is as overrated as a general as Robert E Lee, good reasons why in the end both were losers to superior generals in Wellington and Grant.

Observations that will be eternally debated. Napoleon certainly had a knack for understanding the operational and strategic component of warfare and employed his army adroitly during the balance of his early and middle career. By Waterloo, he was running on the fumes of past glories. Wellington was certainly a good commander, one of the best produced by England. Mostly cool under fire, with a dry sense of humor, judging from some of the eyewitness accounts of those who served with him. He had a knack for judging the tactical/operational advantages of terrain; used it effectively at Waterloo. English are pretty stout in defense; witness Agincourt, Waterloo, El Alamein.

As to Lee and Grant, I’d say some enthusiasts overrate Lee, but he was very competent with what he had, and always fought inferior numbers against an opponent with much greater resources (and access to more). He wasn’t as good once Jackson left to go with God, but by 1863 the Army of the Potomac had also learned some hard lessons. Most importantly, he could inspire his subordinate commanders and troops, and they trusted him. Grant was not a brilliant general of deft operational maneuver, but did have clear insight into the old saw “Captains talk tactics, Generals talk logistics”. He understood and effectively applied his superior resources to wear Lee down through attrition warfare, which he and Lincoln knew Lee and the Confederacy could not win against.

“which he and Lincoln knew Lee and the Confederacy could not win against”

It is said that in pre-Spring and Autumn China, in order to avoid debacles like this where all informed parties could predict the outcome, two generals would amass their armies, meet one another on the field, then halt. The two opposing generals would ride forward to meet one another and confer: they would compare one another’s reputations, their resources, supply lines, the size and experience of the respective armies… then agree mutually that one was the victor, then the other would concede without an actual battle, thus avoiding all the carnage.

Tom Cruise in the 1990’s directed by Stanley Kubrick would have been a better Napoleon. His personality and acting style would certainly have been more in line with the real-life Napoleon. Not to mention he’s about the same height as Napoleon(5’6”) which was about the height of the average Frenchman in the 1800s.