Igenlode Wordsmith

The 'feature length sequel' to "Sous le Signe des Mousquetaires" turns out to be extremely short (the end credits plus initial recap of preceding events occupy between them a not insignificant chunk of the nominal running time, so it's probably less than a couple of episodes' worth) and fairly undistinguished, much as one expects of a Disney straight-to-video sequel :-p ( Read more... )

The story proper then takes up a year and a half after the events of Belle-Île, with d'Artagnan back in Paris (and apparently more than a little hen-pecked, even though he and Constance are not actually married yet). There is a general bar fight sparked off by Jussac attempting to molest a young woman who has come rushing in for shelter (lazy plotting, but again it was footage that figured largely in the fan-vids) and then an interesting twist when d'Artagnan rushes to save her, as he assumes, from throwing herself into the Seine, and it turns out that she was instead attempting to climb down the bridge and retrieve a hidden treasure all along. But when she eludes the over-helpful d'Artagnan and manages to make it back to the bridge, she is attacked and killed by an unknown in an elaborate metal mask... ( Read more... )

The actual action sequences work well enough, but the set-up is truncated and confusing. Given a little more space to play with, I suspect the script could have been considerably more developed; it currently feels like something that has been abridged almost to the point where it would have been better to simplify out chunks of it altogether :-(

One gathers that this feature (perhaps unsurprisingly) was not a sufficient success to have financed any more along the same lines. Still, it would have been intriguing to see an episode focusing on Porthos in danger and/or saving the day, or exploring his backstory...

So that's the end of the animated version... unexpected, but I think it works. And I appreciate the careful non-spoiler nature of the episode title -- even though theoretically we know that d'Artagnan is going to come out of this alive, because he is the Main Protagonist, and probably the others too, because nobody ever actually dies in a show like this one. ( Read more... )

Episode 50, La traversée de l'éléphant: I have been dragging these out because I know from the episode numbers that I am almost at the end, and wish to prolong the enjoyment...

Athos makes the (correct) call that they cannot possibly endanger the life of Prince Philippe and the future of the realm on the chance of being able to save the little mercer's daughter Constance from almost certain death, however much she means to them personally; Aramis makes the (correct) call to abandon the assault on the island by her small-boat force because the casualties among her men, who don't have Plot Armour, are too great; Treville manages to persuade the King to lead from the rear in order to keep the flagship out of range, which turns out to be the correct call, and Rochefort is obliged to make the call to abandon ship when they are almost within range after the fleet succumbs to red-hot shot from the fortress (the defences of which have been completed with the aid of the titular elephant). And Milady and the Iron Mask, having managed to drive off the two-pronged attack of the entire royal forces against their single point of refuge, make the unexpected call that they need to embroil foreign forces - 'France has plenty of enemies' -- in order to survive this, rather than just cackling villainously and assuming that they are invincible.

( D'Artagnan's plot armour )

The Secret of Aramis (episode 45 of Sous le Signe des Mousquetaires): we finally get Aramis' backstory, and it's... a bit underwhelming. ( Read more... )

But at least Athos and Rochefort are now allies, as hopefully anticipated (albeit in the guise of a joint attempt at escape after a failed attempt at rescuing the Cardinal!)

---

I separated and potted-up the three towel-tomatoes, which will now have to take their chances outside -- after the last week or so they have hardened off a bit, I hope. At any rate they no longer fit into the mini-greenhouse! Meanwhile I have a good five seedlings emerging from the second sowing, and the sweet peas in the jar now urgently need potting-up.

I finished watching The prisoner of the Chateau d'If, and did finally feel something (and there were a couple of songs that I actually liked, though I'm not sure why there were any songs in it at all, as this isn't a musical and there were only a handful of random songs at wide intervals throughout). The reason why there seemed to be "an awful lot of plot to be covered in the final episode" turns out to be that it is much longer than the other two, which are about 65 minutes each while this one runs about ninety minutes...

Even so it still seems quite rushed, and I don't see the point of including such characters as Valentine de Villefort and Maximilian Morrel when the subplot involving them has been entirely removed (also an issue, as I recall, with the Robert Donat version!) I was able to follow more of what was going on in this episode thanks mainly to my familiarity with the original plot, although where departures from this took place I was quickly confused. ( Read more... )

( Soviet Musketeers music )

I watched the first episode of the BBC's new drama "This City is Ours", mainly because it *was* the first episode and I often miss the beginnings of things and then have no interest in watching the remainder. But I shan't be bothering with any further episodes, I'm afraid. ( Read more... )


The second half/series of Sous le Signe des Mousquetaires was actually very intriguing as a set-up, because since they had (like the BBC "Musketeers") abandoned canon and were apparently writing their own material using the established characters and setting, pretty much anything was up for grabs and you couldn't tell which way the story was going to come out. ( Read more... )
At least d'Artagnan has finally confessed to lying to his friends about Milady's supposed death (although Athos nobly points out that, having, as I had suspected, guessed the truth some time previously, the fault was as much his in not speaking out earlier; even though he doesn't share the background of Dumas' character, this animated version of Athos is actually one of the few who looks and feels 'right' to me)

YouTube decided to show me (presumably due to my having watched the entirety of the first one) a whole series of fan-vids on the BBC "Musketeers" -- which apparently I never actually wrote about here, despite having watched it diligently throughout its run[s], and in fact named one of my Raouls in tribute to a character whose arc I particularly enjoyed!

I had forgotten just how *intelligent* that show was( Read more... )


Of course the fan-vids didn't go into any of that beyond the action sequences and the one-liners :-p
But YouTube proceeded in consequence to recommend me a 'review' of the various different screen versions of "The Three Musketeers" by someone who started off his upload with a scathing plot summary of the original story, saying how much he disliked the characters, accusing them of murder (for duelling) and rape and elitist behaviour, and generally demanding that a 19th-century novelist writing about the seventeenth century should adhere to the tenets of his 21st-century Internet-advocated ideology.( Read more... )

My immediate reaction was a strong desire to reread the novel in the original French, of which I own a copy! But I ended up by remembering that I had once been halfway through the animated series which was recommended to me by Violonaire as a childhood favourite, Sous Le Signe des Mousquetaires, a.k.a 'the one where Milady has green hair and Aramis is a girl' ;-)
( Read more... )