and I'm relieved. I watched the second half of the Director's Cut of Kingdom of Heaven. Hell of a lot better than the theatrical cut which I've only seen a painful ten minutes of. The first ten minutes were really enhanced by knowing that the priest was Balian's Brother. I can't even imagine that movie without all the political implications of Sibyla's son. Eva Green gives a good performance. Too bad that this cut wasn't the theatrical. She probably would have broken out into public attention faster.
The first 2 hours of the director's cut was a lot of interesting stuff about the politics and ideology of the day. The other 2 hours on disc 2 is pretty much straight up warfare. I really liked how they made Balian operate with religious relativism in mind. Even Saladin, the invading Arab king, wasn't a stereotyped bwah hah hah evil foreigner. The villain of the movie being a Templar Knight was interesting. David Thelwis and Jeremy Irons are great in their supporting roles. I can't believe that Ed Norton actually played a character that is a Leper and hence entirely covered up for the whole movie, yet he makes it work splendidly. The movie actually reminded me of Gladiator in regards to how fully realized the later Crusades periods were depicted. I love that Ridley Scott sketches out storyboards for his movies and pays enormous amounts of attention to the visual style in his films. He's a true artist. For goodness sakes 20th Century Fox, why the fuck didn't you just give Ridley his cut to start off with, or at least let him decide what to trim. Peep this screenshot from the movie of Saladin. Orlando Bloom is a pretty good damaged hero in this movie. I still think that Elizabethtown is his best outside of LOTR though. I'm probably in the minority on that one though
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