Sinbad!

Yesterday was gorgeous! Almost 60º, mostly sunny and calm. Yes, I know it’s winter and that’s too damn warm but, ya know, it was just one day and it was GREAT.

Did I take advantage of this freakishly warm, sunny day. Meh, a tiny bit. My good friend Joe came down (from all the way up in Salem!) to visit. We went for a  small walk and then sat on the seawall enjoying the view, the peace.

After that we settled in for dinner and The 7th Voyage of Sinbad. It’s a 1958 flick sporting some mega high camp. I suspect, back when it first came out, it was supposed to be a big, awesome special effects laden action/adventure/fantastical blockbuster. I wonder if, 60 years down the road, Star Wars, The Avengers and Harry Potter will be seen as fun but goofily antiquated. Yeah, probably.

When a princess is shrunken by an evil wizard, Sinbad must undertake a quest to an island of monsters to cure her and prevent a war. (source)

I enjoyed the hell out of the movie. One thing though, all the good guys – Sinbad, Princess Parisa, Sokurah the evil magician and even the genie (the actor? A ten year old boy – that’s just WRONG. Genies are adults. Sheesh, everyone knows that!) are all played by actors rockin’ a whiter shade of pale. Conversely, the trecherous cons, who Sinbad’s sprung from hoosegow to assist on his expedition, are swarthy-ish if not significantly darker skinned.

White = good, righteous and pure. Not-white = bad, untrustworthy and corrupt. Gotcha.

At least the smiling, happy, happy, HAPPY princess, (who was, possibly, tripping her brains out on Ecstasy with an LSD chaser), wasn’t blond. ...small favors, eh?

I felt bad for the poor imprisoned dragon. Hells bells, I’d breathe some motherfucking fire too if I was kept in a dark cave and chained to a rock BY MY NECK! Poor baby, of course he was a little cranky.

And then there was the brutal and wholly unnecessary murder of the poor baby Roc. The ship's crew was hungry? Fer fuck’s sake, they could’ve eaten seaweed (shut up. I like seaweed!). They were on a tropical island – weren’t there any fruit trees or other awesome, tasty vegetation? Obvs the American Humane Association and PETA were not on the scene for this epic.

OK, I even pitied the cyclops but only just a tiny bit. He seemed kind of dickish.

I wanna see this again.