Rasputin

Okay, so maybe that casting director really didn't look that fondly on his memory...

Anyhoodles, I was watching it yesterday, with Imladris, and it was...um....interesting. First of all, I had to pause it for ten minutes while she literally rolled on the floor laughing and asking "What furry little creature died on his face!?!?!?" At one point my mom called up and asked if anybody needed oxygen as my charming sister was screaming with laughter at an alarming rate. Finally we were able to move on though...

I gotta say, as devoted as I am to my dear Mr. Rickman, and thankful as I am that this role came along as it gave him a Golden Globe and an Emmy and one other award I cannot remember the name of (I think it's British), he is NOT hot in this movie. Not remotely. Even I couldn't see it, and I found Johnny Depp in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory incredibly sexy. I don't know, it was probably the beard. Or the greasy hair. Or the fact that he was essentially a man-whore with a cross around his neck. I wonder what kind of monestaries they have in Siberia where he learned to do that... And then there were the scenes where I had to bury my head in the pillow and fast-forward while Imladris was screaming about how she had to go scratch out her corneas...but I digress.

But despite his lack of hotness, he was frickin' hilarious, probably unintentionally. The whole dancing thing---"Dance, dance...Revolution-literally!!!" So funny. And towards the end with the cabinet at Forney's house- "This is a beautiful cabinet, can I take it?" The "Russian" accents attempted by the cast composed of entirely British and Americans was quite amusing as well, but I still love the dancing. That's the best part.

Kind of a good movie, though, when you remove all that. The woman who played Alexandra was really good- she had that tortured gaze down pat. And Ian McKellen was the Tsar- one very faggy Tsar, in Imladris's words. :) The four girls all looked alike, except that Tatiana was sporting a uni-brow that I found quite distracting, but they weren't really part of th story. Alexei was good, except that he looked too healthy. But he was cute and a good little actor.

And Forney was in it!!! I love Forney!!! Albeit as the guy who kills Rasputin after trying really hard to do so for like an hour (no, it's not a spoiler, it's history. You should know the ending already. Sheesh.). But I still love him, as Alan's beard and drunken molesting of every female in sight was getting king of annoying.

The little historical inaccuracies were kind of annoying, though. Like the Tsar wasn't really ticked off at Rasputin, he pretty much believed, along with his wife, that he held the soul of this other crazy dude that had been healing Alexei. He didn't directly exile him, it was the other members of his little posse. And that friend of his (I forgot and probably wouldn't be able to spell it if I remembered) whose death was fortold by Rasputin didn't die that early- it was much later, during WWI. And there were only two chairs in the room that they were executed in. Come on, everybody knows that! The guy brought in two chairs- for Alexei and Alexandra- that part really bugged me.

So, I guess, in general it was a kind of okay movie, although I really enjoyed the part about the Romanov's more that the whole Rasputin thing, which isn't like me. But the ending was kind of upsetting because, as we all know, HBO can pretty much show anything they want, including the murder of children. Albeit with an extra chair.

Dance dance Bolshevik revolution! :)