pothos.org

I've posted my movie review. .
http://www.isidore-of-seville.com/alexa ... r.html.Tim Spalding

Well, so much for Stone.

Well, maybe you'll will disagree..I didn't say anything about the sexuality in the
movie, nor do I plan to. In the larger strokes, it's
correct. It looks to me like this is going to be a
big issue. I can certainly see reviewers reacting
in different ways over this--giving points or
taking them away. .Of course, I'm going to see the movie again.
That's an endorsement of sorts!.Tim

I dont know how to put ,but on your web have some dissinformation.
Attack on the article from a Macedonian nationalist angle. Reading Fox's Alexander the Great he perceives (falsely) support for his position. Therefore, Fox has "gone Greek," and was probably paid off.
Jason Mico is not at all defender of the nationalist,and he is not at all up to your article regarded like that anywhere-anytime.Macedonian nationalists will laught on this.What is more he is Conservative American and some of that you will find here->
http://www.gopusa.com/opinion/2004/jm_0305.shtml
For the rewiew ,i can say that I have been right in my post for Alex and Jesus - of decipting history
for entertaintment.

Personally I thought your review of the History Channel's special on Alexander was too polite. So, you have me intrigued! Maybe it's good I was given a free voucher worth two shows.
Regards, Andrew

I was certainly interested in checking out your
story, but you are quite wrong. Certainly, one
does not need to be a Greek national to
espouse Greek Nationalism, or a Macedonian
national to espouse Macedonian Nationalism. I
have no idea of Mr. Miko's ethic background, and
it doesn't really matter that he has lived and
worked in Macedonia for seven years. I concede
that "Macedonian Nationalist" may mean
something more extreme in Macedonia itself. As
your link noted, Miko was a friend of the
moderate Macedonian politician Trajkovski. The
real test, however, is what he SAYS:.In the review of Fox, he exhibits complete
ignorance of what a professional Classicist
means by the terms "Greek" and "Macedonian."
Misled by this ignorance, he concludes that
because Fox sometimes uses the terms in
opposition in his biography, but has recently
been head to have described the ancient
Macedonians as Greeks, Fox is: (1) "apparently
[a] Greek apologist." (2) "gone Greek", and (3)
probably bought off, eg., "And so I admit that for
once, you, my Macedonian friends, may be
correct about individuals being bought off." .That's an outrageous accusation, more so for
being rooted in ignorance. Why would he say
these things, post them on a Macedonian
Nationalist website and publish them in a
Macedonian newspaper? Are they not the sorts
of things a Macedonian Nationalist says. If you
don't like that term, why don't we use another?
Banana. Is banana a term you'll use? "An
ill-informed champion of the bananaization of
history?" Much better. I enjoy these word games,
don't you?.Certainly you *could* believe that Macedonians
and Greeks are non-overlapping terms. But Fox
clear does not, nor did he in 1973. Despite his
claimed re-read, Miko neglects to cite a
passage at the beginning of the book, where
Fox clearly states the Macedonian natives spoke
Greek..Anyway, arguing over these topics are absurd.
Believe what you want. The rest of us will (1)
think you a bigot, (2) remove your posts.
(Speaking of which, I hope the admins here will
be kind enough to remove these posts.)

Tim, I thought you did a nice job of it, thorough and well-written. Thanks!I'm starting to see a pattern in the reviews: aversion to the dialogue. It's strained, stilted, over the top and thus un-engaging or even laughable; that's what we're hearing. (Also there are lots of objections to the accents, especially Angelina's Jolie's, which she herself says is Albanian. Kleitos from Yorkshire struck me as very strange.)Didn't a few of us have concerns about the style of the dialogue even when we were looking at audition sides, a few months back? I know I did, and hoped it was only because they were out of context and not yet in the mouths of good actors...Bracing myself,
Karen

I agree with near everything.It is my point that Jason Mico is regarded to be moderate,and is not at all representing Macedonian nationalist view.He cannot be advocate for them,nor he can coment for them.However in this article he attack Historian from his moderate view.It is his point that reading the book from 1973 and today that Fox have changed the wiev. For historian and his book i am not at all comenting.
By the way on the web where you find this article
is his bio->
http://www.realitymacedonia.org.mk/web/ ... p?nid=3658
where you can find this from him:
"Now that you have an introduction to me, those who wish to have a well-thought out, open and transparent debate about the issues are more than welcome to contact me. I welcome the debate if anybody is up to the challenge. To those who want to criticize me behind the cloak of anonymity and cowardice, I say this: put up or shut up.Jason Miko is a free thinker and an independent advisor and has lived and worked in and around the Balkans for over eight years and with them for eleven years. The views expressed herein are wholly his own. He can be reached at janos@earthlink.net.
It is my intention to clear the things,and not to argue.

Does everyone in Britain speak *cockney*, I should say not. Fifty states in the USA and believe it or not most people in each state has a different accent. The same with many other countries. What more can I say....

My mother was from Yorkshire, and she said each different *valley* had its own accent. In fact, 30 years after she came to Canada, some people could still identify her place of origin as Leeds.One sad thing about the globalization of information... all that lovely diversity of accent will be lost. Well, maybe. Who knows?Philip and Alexander's Irish accents work for me, but Olympias's doesn't... I feel almost as if it should be Scottish or Welsh more than Albanian, to extend the accent-substitution logic, since she's from somewhere close to Makedonia, but not Attica (which I believe is being represented by fairly upper-crust British accents). And Kleitos should have been another Irishman, not a Yorkshireman. And Darius's English should be heavily accented, yes, and some sort of Middle Eastern works, but it should not be broken English, as he is supposedly speaking his mother tongue...Of course, I'm actually saying all this without having seen the movie, just clips. It may be that a whole movie of it makes my ears bleed and I'll just wish everyone was speaking Canajan like me.Perhaps we should thank the Gods that the project which was going to star Matt McConnaghy (sp?) as Alexander didn't get off the ground. He is from Texas. An Alexander who sounds like George W. Bush would be more than I could stomach ;-)Warmly, eh
Karen

I don't agree with the accents criticism. They
didn't bother me at all. Jolie's is "Slavoid"; I'm aware she calls it
Albanian. It didn't sound the Albanians I've
known, but none of them were women, and
none were purring, and certainly none were
screaming at me. I think there's a strange snobbery of ignorance
at work, that somehow the ancient world can't
use different accents--that that's unhistorical, or
something. But, of course, unless you did "The
Passion," and had them all speaking ancient
Greek.... THAT's not the problem with the movie.That said, my father was bothered off by it, and
he's well educated and such. Maybe it's just me.

Well, I think we are at a loggerjam over
terminology. I understand that Miko is not, by
Macedonian standards a Macedonian
nationalist. If his political association is a guide,
we may guess he supports a federal
Macedonia, with autonomous areas for
Albanians. More power too him. I am not saying
he wants to push the Albanians into the sea. He
may well be a very nice guy..That said, in the context of Alexander, his
opinions are those of Macedonian nationalism,
ie. the notion that the Ancient Macedonians were
not Greek, didn't speak Greek, and that they
were the ancestors of the modern Macedonian
people..In saying that, I don't want to tilt too far toward
Greek nationalism. The "racial" stuff is pretty
hard to recover. If we accept that "nation" is in
large part a "constructed" notion--neither a
Macedonian or a Greek nationalist would
agree--we have in ancient Macedonia an
interestingly case. By this standard, Macedonia
was in or out depending on polemical position.
By non-polemical ancient standards, Macedonia
was a mixed bag. By the standard of
language--and recognizing that the boundaries
of a "language" are also constructions--it's
almost impossible to claim that Macedonians
spoke another "language," still less an ancestor
of the current language of Macedonia..Interesting and constructure debate could be
had on all these points. But it has to be had by
people who (1) know the evidence, (2) approach
social science issues without bias and with a
determination to open questions up and
understand the issue, not shut it all down with a
label..I also think it's important to understand that
without a modern--nationalist--debate, this
would be an issue for obscure scholars. Have
you heard impassioned arguments about
whether the Telmessans were Carians or
Lycians? Herodotus raises the issue, and it
was apparently a live one in antiquity. You don't
hear about this, and most of us don't care much,
because it has no "consequences" for current
debate. The Carians and Lycians are
gone--melted into the local population of SW
Turkey..Pardon a "reductio ad hitlerum" but I find that
discussion of these issues is a little bit like
discussing the influence of Jewish business
people in prewar Germany. No doubt an
interesting paper could be writen about that
topic. We could evaluate the extent to which
Jewish investors were integrated into

Don't take me wrong, I actually think using different accents of our time to reflect the different accents at the time is a great idea... I'm just thinking maybe it could have been done *better*.Tim, I have to ask you -- I just read a reader review in the New York Times saying that people in the theatre actually *laughed,* on the death of Hephaistion. I cringe at the thought... could something of such significance to the story actually have been SO badly done to have gotten such a wrong response? Did that happen in the theatre you saw it in?Warmly,
Karen

From now on, I'm going to wonder whenever I
hear that people in the theater laughed (or
whatever). I was in a theater with twenty-odd
movie critics. When I came out, some were
discussing the fine points of Stone's infrared
shots, and speculating about how dollies were
used. They were not a "real" audience. .I don't recall laughing there. There may have
been. There certainly were a few scenes that
ought to have been dramatic where there was
laughing. And yes, the only non-critics in the
roomGÇömy father and IGÇöwere also laughing..As a side note, there weren't any moments of
*intended* humor, so far as I remember.
Moments like this get the audience "on your
side." And maybe people just need to laugh
once an hour or so. So, if you don't give them a
joke, they'll laugh at a death....Anyway, I hope I lowered expectations. You'll
enjoy it more now. There ARE enjoyable
moments.

OH GREAT! Now my sentence is cut off
mid-sentence, and I look like an anti-semite.
First I'm a Jesus nutball, not I'm an anti-semite.
CAN WE PLEASE FIX THE FORUM?.Anyway, we have to remember that these are
live issues with real consequences. People in
the region care about these issues in ways that
are completely different from the way a scholar
might. These ideas undergird others, and those
ideas have legs. Since '89 the region has been
swept by war, with attendant civilian targetting,
ethnic cleansing, massacres and rape. This is
not play-time. These are not Carians and
Lycians.