Dennis Moore.....

Who, in the words of the possibly immortal Mr Python, did indeed rob from the rich and give to the poor, much as Russell Crowe attempted to do in the recently Beard-viewed Ridley Scott epic, Robin Hood.... better by far than the awful Forestry commission bound Prince of Thieves, if only because it has the audacity to invent a French invasion, the landing craft, a whole new legend of the Hooded one, sideline the Sheriff, and keep a straight face while intoning towards King John that "an Englishman's home is his Castle...." Pausing only to remember that his own father wrote the thing that might have become Magna Carta, Russell Crowe and his accent gallivant from one side of the channel to the other, pretend to be knights, hold a folk rock night in the hamlet of Nottingham, a smallholding of only 5000 acres or so.... which to the Beard's memory of such things is a quite impressive seven and a bit square miles... or around a quarter of the size of todays current city.. a fairly healthy holding, although Cate Blanchett tries several times to play it all down.... but, like Crowe's accent, she doesn't fool anyone.... at least Terry Scott... sorry, Mark Addy, as Friar Tuck makes a good go of being properly Hoodie.... and very near comes close to saving the film... apart from the fact that I kept expecting to hear him utter "oo er... crumbs..." all the time... perhaps Mr Addy may be pleased at the resemblance to the immortal Terry... personally i would, if only because of June Whitfield.. but I digress....

Now, Hollywood has a habit of taking perfectly good stories, legends and History and making a complete cock up of it.... and usually for no good reason... The Beard is of the opinion that those lovely Orange adverts have it right...you know the ones... but it seems that at least one person in the land of capped teeth and Caesar salads (Tell me on a Sunday anyone??) believes that stories that have been doing the rounds for hundreds of years can be improved by ignoring most of the content... and who knows, they could be right....

Now, the Beard could cope with this if the alterations actually improved or at least didn't affect the storyline... but, as in the case of Robin Hood, it appears that someone wrote a medieval drama, couldn't sell it to anyone, and so altered the names of the main characters in order to get the film past the beady eyes of the execs... which is a good ploy admittedly... and is apparently very necessary... but why, I hear you ask...

And the answer is simple... it's the fault of the audience... that's right... its all down to us.. honestly... the beard has often said that paradoxically we all seem to like something new, anything fresh and virgin, to quote the divine Ms Amos, yet we also love to stick with what we know.. so, in the early days of cinema, whatever was on was an experience... but even then the filmakers made movies of popular books.. but at least some of them tried to put new stuff on, and peope went to see it, simply because it was on... but as time went on, and going to the flicks became commonplace, so the films became a bit samey... and because of thsi dichotomy, we end up with peopel who have a new idea having to hide it within a new story... who wants to see a film about medieval intrigue that wasn't a best selling book?? the money men will say.... but who wants to see a film about Robin Hood.... well...

So the Beard lays the blame squarely at the feet of the general public... and still decries the heinous act of changing perfwectly good storylines for no good reason.... take Peter jackson's Lord of the Rings.... now, the Beard is the first to admit that removing one of the encounters with the Black Riders in the Shire was fine.. after all, how many times do we need to see the nail-biting Hobbits hoiding under a tree.... and the general public can probably do without the Tom Bombadil/Barrow Downs episode, despite it being one of my favourite bits.... but missing out the Voice of Saruman and the Scouring of the Shire is, basically unforgivable... as was making Grima fairly pointless.... if anyone wants a discussion as to the significance of this episode, drop me a line.. and as for the elves getting to Helms Deep... well, don't get me started....

The Beard's favourite electrical sales guy and the Beard himself often bemoan the fact that Hollywood has no idea how to redo Anime films.. the only two that the Beard can remember being any good being Crying Freeman and Blood;The Last vampire... and of course, we all understand Alan Moore's reluctance to put his name on movies adapted from his work.... Watchmen was basically ok, admittedly, but V for Vendetta remains unwatchable to fans of Moore's original...

But as I say, it's our own fault.. if the general populace were willing to take the occasional risk, then maybe we would see more and more originality.... but that's probably asking too much... after all, go to any cinema as the filmgoers are coming out, and ask their opinion of the film... 99% of them will sing its praises... 80% won't be able to tell you the plot, but that's by the by... the rest will be made up of people who don't want to appear different, poor people who don't want to admit that they just spent a couple of days pay on being bored... but that's folk...

Still on the subject of films, the Beard and his future Beardess went to see the almost certainly execrable Sex and the City 2... which admittedly had its moments... there were moments when Sara Jessica Parker was off screen, which is a bonus in anyone's book, and then there was the cameo from Miley Cyrus... which was worth the admission price alone... now the Beard never used to rate the young Miley, being more of a Hilary Duff fan... but then apparently 75% of us will have mental problems at some point.. but I digress.... but all in all, it wasn't the worst way to spend an evening... and at least the only sportsmen featured were rugby players... which was a merciful relief.... and at least among the racial stereotypes and awful clothes, there was at last the hint that, as the Beard has suggested in the past, Sex and the City is not as liberatingly feminist as it always made out.... but is in fact the exact opposite... but at least it wasn't football....

The Beard has luckily managed to escape said overrated playtime so far... not one game have i seen, not one score do i know, and my life is no worse for it... several have attempted to inform the Beard of the progress of the England team, and I am sorry to say that i seem to have perfected at last the skill of not actually taking any of it in.... now, if I could do the same for all useless information, perhaps the friends of hirsutery would be happier... or perhaps not...

The emphasis on football has however re opened the whole thing about heroism.... now, call me churlish if you dare, but a bunch of overpaid nancy boys kicking a ball about and taking time off from injuries that the average kickboxer would ignore doesn't seem all that heroic.. and to suggest, as one newsreader did that somehow these short wearing millionaires would somehow save the country seems at the very least naive, and in my opinion insulting to the thousands of men and women in HM Forces who are actually charged with that job for real... now I'm sure that if kicking a ball around a field really could save our country, the boys and girls in the Army Navy and Air Force would be the first to buy some studded boots.... and to be honest, if the Beard is to believe the little he listens too, if it was down to the England Squad to save us, we'd be ruled by a different country each year.... which may not be a bad thing.... but yet again I digress...

So to sum up... try something new, don't worry about sport, give a big cheer to our lads and lasses in DPM, and various blues, and please please please lets start bigging up real heroes.... and as a postscript, the Future Mrs Beard and the Beard's tent are up in the Outer Hebrides, a lovely part of the world... of which more later... but until we stop hailing zeroes as heroes, Wisebeard salutes you!!!!!!!!!!!!!