Hacker Cinema
Versailles
2015 · TV series · 52 min episodes · 3 seasons
Created by David Wolstencroft, Simon Mirren
The story of a young Louis XIV on his journey to become the most powerful monarch in Europe, from his battles with the fronde through his development into the Sun King. Historical and fictional characters guide us in a world of betrayal and political maneuvering, revealing Versailles in all its glory and brutality.
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4 comments on Hacker News
I wish the title had not been edited from its original: "Everyone is Beautiful and No One is Horny." It captures so much better the essence of this rambling incomprehensible thesis that action movies have many beautiful people not having any sex. Alternate title: "Everyone drives cars in cities and no one is seen parking." To use his example, Starship Trooper is an action movie with satirical subtext, it is not served by having more horny people bang. Every narrative has to be edited to GET TO THE POINT. And then he leans on this faulty premise to criticize a bunch of weirdly unrelated stuff, movies made after the 90s, the cluttered interiors, McMansions, swoles, BMIs and 9/11. What?
There's plenty of beautiful naked people having sex on screen, uncomfortably many. Where has this writer been? The Tudors, anachronistic boobs and asses and fornicating beautiful people since 2007. This formula was so successful it's repeated in Games of Thrones, the trope so commonly employed it earned the moniker of "sexposition", naked people banging + dialogue = sex + exposition. It's also repeated in Versailles, Outlander, and from what I've seen of ep.1 Bridgerton. There's also plenty of beautiful people having sex, or at least demonstrating their horny-ness in RomComs, Sleeping With Other People comes to mind. Somehow I don't think the author was the audience for any of the above. He's complaining that there's not enough horny people in the movies he is watching.
I often watch French language tv shows or movies to keep up my language skills. I recently watched "Call my agent." Way better than "Versailles" ;)
Thing is, it's very difficult for me to understand. But I realized that if I put on CC in French, I can understand it no problem, almost as well as if the CC was in English. But without the CC, I can't understand it well enough to enjoy the show.
This leads me to believe that my difficulty in understanding spoken vs written French might not be so much grammar and vocab of spoken French, but rather the difficulty of translating sounds to words in real time.
I really should leave the CC off entirely, but I want to enjoy the show, so for now, my compromise is to watch with CC in French. I am almost certainly compromising my language skills this way, though.
CGI, like the rest of the film/tv industry, will go where the money is best. There is nothing in film/tv production that cannot be loaded into a truck and shipped elsewhere overnight ... people included. Work is moving to canada for the tax credits but you'd be surprised at how many "canadian" productions are actually filmed overseas. TheBorgias was canadian. Versailles, filmed in france with brit actors, is supported by the canadian government and RBC (my bank) no doubt for some tax advantage. Even the first season of the Doctor Who reboot in 2005 was a joint production with the CBC. Check the credits. No matter where it is filmed, canada supports it.
Heh, that's funny, I was just watching a 3 part BBC Documentary on Versailles[1] (part 1 Louis XIV, part 2 Louis XV, part 3 Louis XVI). They talked quite a bit about Louis XV's attempted assassination and Damiens. From what was said, most other countries were appalled at the execution style.
I'd still say The Terror and Great Terror during the French Revolution were far more barbaric while masquerading in the name of enlightenment though. Even someone like Robespierre, who initially despised the death penalty and was seen as a champion of free thinking ended up being tyrant responsible for the deaths of thousands and restricted basic human freedoms like the press and speech.
[1] http://docuwiki.net/index.php?title=Versailles_(BBC)