Browsing: History versus Hollywood

A Brief History On January 5, 1956, producers and editors of the major Hollywood motion picture, Alexander the Great, starring Richard Burton in the title role, were hard at work preparing the movie for its March 22, 1956 release, cutting its running time from over 3 hours to 135 minutes. Digging Deeper The film is of course about the great Macedonian King and conqueror who ruled an enormous empire carved out of the Middle East and Mediterranean by his own leadership between 336 and 323 BCE.  During his reign, Alexander defeated the great Persian Empire and all others that stood in…

A Brief History On April 17, 2015, Universal Pictures releases Unfriended (previously known as Cybernatural and before that as Offline) to theaters in the United States of America.  The film tells the story of the paranormal aftermath of when a high school student named Laura Barns committed suicide due to ridicule received over an embarrassing video of her passed out at a party, but did this incident really happen? Digging Deeper An initial search of the internet might suggest that the incident actually occurred.  The embarrassing video of drunk Laura was posted on Youtube here, but “has been removed as a violation of YouTube’s…

A Brief History On March 28, 845 A.D., a Viking raiding party led by Ragnar Lodbrok (a.k.a. Lothbrok) sacked Paris, the future capital of France, proving that it was not just coastal towns that were susceptible to such raids.  As was typical, they were given an enormous ransom to leave. Digging Deeper Ragnar Lodbrok is also the star character of the current History Channel series Vikings, in which he is depicted as a semi-mythical Viking hero kind of a George Washington, Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, King Arthur, Hercules, Theseus, Perseus, all rolled into one.  A first-class production, the television series has superb acting and…

A Brief History On October 26, 1881, Tombstone, Arizona was the site of what became known as “The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral,” probably the most famous shootout in the history of the Wild West.  Plenty of movies have been made about the incident, including one in 1957 by that same name, all of which got various aspects of the incident wrong.  Like most depictions of the gunfight, the 1957 film shows a long-ranged massive shootout whereas the real incident featured fewer guns, fewer shots and a much closer range in a fight that lasted perhaps 30 seconds.  Unlike the depiction…

A Brief History On October 22, 2014 and again on October 29, 2014, the FX channel television production American Horror Story: Freak Show features a two-faced character based on an alleged real-life human freak named Edward Mordrake. Digging Deeper With actor Wes Bentley portraying the unfortunate, two-faced man, the show takes us back to 1952 in Jupiter, Florida where a troupe of human freaks is assembled as a carnival sideshow.  If you have ever seen the iconic 1932 film Freaks, you might know that by that time in history, the public was beginning to not take too kindly to deformed humans…