"And Ajax by mad passion borne stern had replied, fierce scorn enhancing scorn to fell extremes…"
Using my DSLR camer, I decided to get all artsy-fartsy with all the old Playmobil figures with which I’d played as a child 25 years prior, and with which I hoped my own kids would play.
This particular black and silver fellow was my favorite one.
Like, of all time.
He reminded me of a Black Knight.
“Joe Versus the Volcano is all kinds of things at once — a fact which no doubt contributed to the poor reception it received upon its release in 1990.
But at its heart, it’s a fairy tale. It’s filled with travels and travails, obstacles and the overcoming of them, adventure and romance, symbolism and archetypes. It’s a deeply searching and existential film that doubles as both a satire and a romantic comedy.
It absolutely tries to bite off more than it can chew, trying to do far too much in its 102 minutes – and as a result can be a bit of a mess at times (especially in certain moments of its final act) – but it’s also, to those of us who love and embrace it, a deeply moving, almost transcendent film.
I have been trying, and failing, to write about Joe Versus the Volcano for over five years now. Trying to find a way to talk about it that does it any kind of real justice, that even partially conveys the enormity of my affection for it.
I’m simply worried that I won’t get it right, that I won’t be able to capture the sheer magic of the thing – a movie that is passionately embraced by a championing few (whom I happily count myself among), and derided—or worse, entirely overlooked—by a majority of people today…”
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“Joe Versus the Volcano” achieves a kind of magnificent goofiness. Hanks and Ryan are the right actors to inhabit it, because you can never catch them going for a gag that isn’t there: They inhabit the logic of this bizarre world and play by its rules. Hanks is endearing in the title role because, in the midst of these astonishing sets and unbridled flights of fancy, he underplays. Like a Jacques Tati, he is an island of curiosity in a sea of mystery.
Some of the movie’s sequences are so picaresque they do themselves in: The native tribe, for example, is a joke that Shanley is unable to pull off. What’s strongest about the movie is that it does possess a philosophy, an idea about life.
The idea is the same idea contained in “Moonstruck”:
that at night, in those corners of our minds we deny by day, magical things can happen in the moon shadows. And if they can’t, a) they should, and b) we should always in any event act as if they can.”
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From FB:
“Looking towards South Mountain near Burkittsville, MD. Beautiful country.”
A note from my oldest daughter (age 6): “Daddy’s Bad”
According to her, still valid…
“March 24th marks the feast day of the Norse god Heimdall, the Christian Archangel Gabriel, and the Celtic goddess Britannia.
Britannia is best known as a national personification of the United Kingdom. The name is a Latinisation of the native Brittonic word for the island, Pretanī, which also produced the Greek form Prettanike or Brettaniai, which originally designated a collection of islands with individual names, including Albion or Britain. In Modern Welsh the name remains Prydain.
After the Roman conquest in 43 AD, Britannia meant Roman Britain, a province covering the island south of Caledonia (roughly Scotland). Britannia is the name given to the female personification of the island, and it is a term still used to refer to the whole island.
In the 2nd century, Roman Britannia came to be personified as a goddess, armed with a trident and shield and wearing a Corinthian helmet. After centuries of declining use, the Latin form was revived during the English Renaissance as a rhetorical evocation of a British national identity. The personification of the martial Britannia was used as an emblem of British maritime power and unity, most notably in “Rule, Britannia!”.
A British cultural icon, she was featured on all modern British coinage series until the redesign in 2008, and still appears annually on the gold and silver “Britannia” bullion coin series. In 2015 a new definitive £2 coin was issued, with a new image of Britannia.
The goddess Britannia was often associated with the Roman goddess Minerva, who was herself the Roman appropriation of the goddess Athena. Both Minerva and Athena are based upon the ancient Phoenician goddess Barati, recognised in the Indian Vedas as Goddess of the Waters. Athena and Minerva were goddesses of arts, trade, strategy in war, and wisdom. As the overseas and furthest territory of the Roman Empire, the British Isles soon became identified with the goddess of warfare and water. Her feast day is considered to be a day of orderliness and protection.”
Song Of Ajax 