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cscsmith21
Reviews
My Best Friend's Girl (2008)
Loathed this.
I hated everything about this film. The casting was awful and the characters deserved to be hated. Thats not something I say lightly. Alexis is a total bi**h. She treats Dustin like crap and somehow its OK but when he treats her like anything less than perfectly shes outraged and make the traditional romantic drama "victim woman".
Then there is the ending where Dustin is pawned off with Alexis' roommate Ami. Now I don't know about you but I would never hook up with someone who could be friends with a girl who treated me like sh*t. I have to say that I hated this film worse than "How to lose a Guy in 10 days" which was pretty bad.
World Without End (2012)
Awful trash
First off, I read the book which was okay but a bit repetitive of Pillars of the Earth. I was really looking forward to this series but ended up massively disappointed by it instead.
Cynthia Nixon should go back to Sex and the City because her performance was 100% rubbish. God, if I saw her "I have a cunning plan" expression once I saw it a thousand times. She couldn't do anything with the character. Not that the rest of the cast were 1000 times better. Peter Firth was the only one who did well and Gwenda at least seemed interesting but neither were given enough time or breathing space to grow more.
On top of that, some things are just implausible. Like how does Mother Cecilia get to be head of the nunnery and the town without learning how to spot and understand troublemakers like Godwyn. Politics, as Prior Philip understood, is part of being a leader of any description. Plus there is Gwenda, forcefully called "the Saxon" as if the writers were so lacking in confidence in this show that they hitched it "Pillars". Sort of "wink wink nudge nudge you remember Ellen don't you". Incidentally, the series creators lack of confidence is something that is obvious all the way though the 8 episodes.
Another issue was its out and out invasion of history. Where Pillars would have local and town leaders meet with historical figures, this was possible because Kingsbridge was near places those people would conduct their business. Finesse, in other words. World without End pulls history around to have the likes of King Edward III give inordinate attention to, and finally launch an all out war against, Kingsbridge when he's only just begun invading France. I mean they have him specifically say Kingsbridge.
There are other things too. Like how, when the plague strikes, does the character of Merthin know about "quarantine". He actually says quarantine. I'm pretty sure that wasn't invented until decades even centuries later. Or how the appearance of the statue of the Madonna changes so radically between Pillars and World without End without any of the people noticing or caring. Surely they must have realised at some point that (A) the statue was fake and (B) they weren't real miracles.
The Bridge collapse was utter rubbish. Half the people looked like they were jumping off. Also, I just couldn't buy that falling off a crappy little bridge like that one would kill such a number of people as to be worthy of being called a major disaster.
The way King Edward II was treated, as in the news of his "death" in the first episode, was stupid. It treated like freaking water cooler gossip or a scene from Eastenders or Coronation Street. For Gods sake, if a King back then died in mysterious circumstances, lords and peasants alike would be shitting themselves because more than likely a major war would break out.
All in all, a very poor show and a slur on the fine work that was "Pillars of the Earth", both the book and the series.
Relic Hunter: Irish Crown Affair (2000)
Historical mistakes
I am Irish and a student of Irish History and I cannot believe the amount of misinformation in this episode and the review by fabian5.
First off, to call Brian Boru "the last King of Ireland" is wrong. At the time, Ireland was a grouping of territories under various local and provincial kings. The most powerful of these provincial kings was usually acclaimed the High King. This, though, did not guarantee subservience or loyalty from lesser kings. And he was not the last. The last one was Rory O'Connor in the 1160's and that because of the Norman invasion.
The episode furthers its inaccurate take on Irish History by making Boru look like he is in his 30's or 40's when he generally thought to have been in his 70's or 80's at the time of the Battle of Clontarf in 1014 (not 1000). His age makes the absence of multiple bodyguards all the more puzzling since Boru would have been too old and distraught over the deaths of his son and heir and his sons eldest son to wield a sword effectively or fight a young and strong enemy soldier. The battle was fought against a coalition of rebellious Irishmen and local Danes allied to foreign invaders. Plus the Irish did not wear 13th or 14th century armour as shown in the episode.
To top of the historical inaccuracies, "Ireland" did not gain independence from Britain in 1922/23. 26 of 32 Irish counties were set up as the Irish Free State while the rest were set up as Northern Ireland. A very limited form of independence for both entities and both were/are very much under Westminsters control.