I saw "Slow Burn" yesterday with my sister. Oh my. It was ... "bad" is not even the word for it. There were 10 people in the theater at the start of the movie and 4 left mid-way through. The rest of us stayed. We were the crazy ones. The ones who thought that somehow, someway, this would make sense. Silly us.

That's the one where Jolene Blalock is randomly black and then not black, or something? Can you flesh that out for me in whitefont? The trailer looked ridiculous.

"Slow Burn" Spoilers Yes, Jolene Blalock is the "is she black is she not" character in the movie.

The movie is a mix of various movies, shoved into a blender and pureed into some really bad mix. Mostly it's a riff on "The Usual Suspects" -- with the writers apprently deciding that if that movie had one (potentially) unreliable narrator, 2 or 3 would be better; and if one surprise twist at the end of the earlier movie worked, then 2 or 3 of those here would be better.

The questions include whether Jolene Blalock killed Mekhi Phifer's character in self-defense or cold-bloodied murder; who is Keyser Söze Danny/Danni Lumpkin; and would the movie have been any better if they made it longer? (The answer to the last question is NO - the movie's saving grace that it was only about 90 mintues long.) ***

Thanks. Boggles. Who the fuck thinks that Jolene is black? I thought she'd had a UV bed accident. So, is she or isn't she?

"Slow Burn" Spoilers I don't know about Jolene Blalock personally. I think in the movie it eventually came out that her character was white but could and did pass as black for career reasons. Or because it served her purposes in getting near the bad guy. Or not. I dunno. I stopped paying attention to all the twists and turns at some point and just waited for movie to be over. ***

Wow--there's actually a good review for Pathfinder! Admittedly, it's from the Flick Filosopher, whose taste is different from the majority of critics in select films (Bobby was in her top 10 from last year), but she seemed to like it on its own terms, which she relates to 300 and The 13th Warrior.

The interview with Urban implies that there was actually tons more research and cultural sensitivity going on than the trailers would lead one to believe, but the basic premise is not enough to lure me in in the abscence of a compelling ad.

I saw it last night. It's deliberate and slow in ways not like 300 or The 13th Warrior. More similar to the latter.

Interestingly, the Norse did transport cavalry on longships. Stinky ride, I bet.

They'd have ridden big "cold blood" Northern horse stock, which is characteristicly hardier than the much faster "hot bloods", so there's that, too. Which is about all the history of horses I know....

Not "big" - they'd probably have ridden something more like Norwegian Fjord or the Gotland - I mean, were the Vikings known for their cavalry?

Or the Icelandic Horse - which claims to be the only true Viking horse.

Were the horses in the movie Icelandic horses?