Napoleon - 2023

I don't trust any historical accounts these days. Our timelines have been tampered with and so it's impossible to tell what's been made up, exaggerated or most importantly left out.

I do enjoy some historical topics while I wait for the full truth to be discovered or revealed and so Napoleon is a subject I've researched to some extent. I don't believe the logistical explanation for supplying 6 to 7 hundred thousand troops (Grande Armée) a thousand miles into Russia. I also don't believe that Napoleon was exiled to the island of Elba and then the island of St Helena for the reasons provided by the British. Why would you win a war and then give the vanquished their own island, a navy ship and a staff?

It doesn't make sense that Napoleon 'escaped' back to the French mainland and marched all the way to Paris with a rag tag army and even the logistics involved in that exercise as he had no official authority or state mechanisms to leverage.

This latest movie falls short of conveying Napoleon's full life as it would require a 10-20 part TV miniseries to do it justice but as I have an interest I thought I'd watch this cinematic effort and it jumps about like all earlier attempts. 

The editors keep in a few small movie set accidents. Things falling over, that sort of thing. It doesn't work and it's compounded by factual errors like stating Napoleon was born in 1768 (it was 1769) and that he bombed the largest pyramid in Egypt with cannon fire.

We need a big name actor to put on Napoleon's clothes and Joaquin Phoenix does a good job  with arguably Vanessa Kirby's Josephine Bonaparte as the stand out acting. It's a reasonable movie but I'd forgotten I don't like war scenes in films so I fast forwarded through those but the special effects were novel.

Below is an explanation of the credulity of the wartime logistics. He makes the mistake of undermining the claims but then conflates this with the existence of Napoleon at all which is silly but it's still worth watching.

Trans X - Living On Video (Moreno J Remix)

Birmingham Royal Ballet - Cinderellla

I went to see this at Southampton Mayflower Theatre last Saturday. It was exactly what I hoped for, anticipated and expected.

Over the years I've seen ballet productions by Matthew Bourne, English National Ballet, Birmingham Royal Ballet and Opéra de Paris in Beijing.

It was a better seat ticket than usual and the proximity exposed me to mistakes. Did I see those mistakes before? No. Was it still one of the best ballet productions I ever seen? Absolutely.

The opening scenery was sophisticated as I've come to expect yet subsequent scenes were absolutely minimal and cosmic themed at the end. The music for Cinderella is Prokofiev, it's the best score I've yet listened to. The dance ensembles were dazzling as were those very costumes. The lead female (Cinderella), Miki Mizutani is the essence of the role, in such a manner that I marvel how a Japanese girl can live on the other side of the world and play a very European part with such perfection - for me at least.

Special shout out to the pantomime ballet of the wicked stepsisters played by Eilis Small and Reina Fuchigami. Ms Small was very attractive from the get go despite playing a difficult lanky role of clumsy yet complimentary to the overall ensemble. I felt a connection with her that lasted longer than usual. Ms Reina Fuchigami played the plump sister and was in the top three dancers in the production. Again, clumsy but poetic is a difficult act to pull off yet both sisters do exactly that.

What have I missed. Serendipity. The seat to my left was occupied by the best conversationalist I've encountered in years. She was about 70 to 80ish and I would have spent the next 24 hours with her if not longer.