The burning question today is whether or not Alain Delon is worth watching as the man in black.

This can’t really be considered an “old timey” film since it dates from 1975. There’s too much franchise history preceding it for it to be cliche making in its own right, but it certainly provides enough material for later films to rip off. I can clearly envision the scriptwriter for 1998′s “The Mask of Zorro” sitting and watching this film, notepad before him and pen in hand.

But… What a great film. This film is fantastic.

It’s a zorro film, so you know what you’re getting. Zorro. A suave eliteist villan. He shoots a priest. What kind of bad guy shoots a priest? A zorro bad guy, that’s who. A beautiful dark haired woman who is courted by Zorro and the villain. A populace whose main role in the film is to be oppressed and to cheer Zorro when he kicks the soldiers into the water trough.

The comic relief is fat and harbours a bumbling malignance. He’s everything a bad guy’s sidekick should be. Our poor sargeant follows in a long and illustrious tradition of pudgy, poorly acted funny men, and he solidifies the role for the others who have succeeded him. Hmm… Perhaps ‘succeeded’ is the wrong word.

But tell me, why is it that when Zorro comes to a marketplace to ensure that peasants recieve fair payment for their wares, he only manages to lead the guards around the entire market, destroying all the goods and scaring all the livestock? There’s got to be a better way to lead the people to prosperity than destruction of capital.

Soldiers group up in convenient bunches to be felled by boards, nets, ropes, rolling barrels… and yes, the falling chandelier.

Zorro makes his sign with whatever is on hand: Sword, whip… If you fought Zorro in a bakery, he’d probably manage to wreck your shirt with an icing bag. (Hmmmm.. I wonder what kind of tip Zorro would use?)

The little kids are wonderful, classic on-screen children. “It’s de sign of Zorro! Zorro! Zorro? Zorrooo!”
“Zorro! He’s alive! Zorro can never die!”

The end fight scene is terrific. Our combatants wander halfway across the nation, destroying tapestries, mirrors and furniture along the way. They recklessly discard swords and pick up axes, spears and firebrands as they go. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a more drawn out fight sequence.

Yes, it’s all there, just like you’ve come to love and expect. But yet, somehow, you don’t know what you’re getting. This film transcends what you may have come to expect from a Zorro film.

It has a talking dog. Remarkably the dog plays a fairly important role and is capable of taking down an entire cavalry troop.
It has a servant who seems to have failed the Harpo Marx audition.

It has a title track featuring such poetry as,

“Here’s to being free, lalalalalalala, Zorro’s back.
Here’s to flying high, lalalalalalala, Zorro’s back.
…
Here’s to being free, here’s to you and me.”

Sung by Oliver Onions. I swear, you can’t make this stuff up.

And why do the opening credits roll the name,
“Moustache”?

Stealing from Raymond Chen,

“Canadian Ens happens to mention “the CanadArm” in an extensive list of
Canadian inventions. From what I can tell, Canadians are taught that
NASA’s job is to launch the CanadArm into space so it can move stuff
around.”

I’m in stiches right now. That is exactly what Canadians are taught.

Every Canadian knows about their own inferiority complex, but is it really that obvious to outsiders?

Oh dear.

Apparently, sometimes less is more. Our inability to work together means that the best solutions go wanting. In fact, sometimes we can be better off with fewer resources, because it means we’re more likely to come to an optimal solution.

And once again, science tries to catch up with stuff that has been known since the dawn of time. Like I said, parents have known this for years.

Dad gets to eat the piece of candy, and the kids who were fighting over it get to go be quiet somewhere else so Mom can bake the brownies in peace.

Everyone gets brownies.

Oh, and did I mention Dad gets the candy?

I just ran across one heck of an interesting site.

It’s a defunct blog. This isn’t remarkable in and of itself.  It’s a defunct blog which tells interesting stories, however, and that’s neat.

While I’m very familiar with the Internet as a news source, reference knowledge repository and communications channel, I don’t view it as a storytelling medium very often. This is likely because when I surf the web, most often I’m trawling for knowledge or looking up a specific piece of information. I’m not usually looking to hear a story.

Most of the websites I view aren’t published by gifted storytellers – they’re news or information feeds, but not story based.

But when a good storyteller decides to share something, it’s compelling.

The blog also happens to be interesting because I’ve always liked Google doodles. Additionally I find the concept of branding and of protecting a brand interesting. I remember hearing rumbles about Google’s dislike for the generification of it’s brand.

Finally this blog is interesting because it’s a little snippet of (recent) history that is being preserved. Although the blog is defunct, it’s still on the internet and has probably been archived. Quite possibly this story will be around much longer than the original author intended. I don’t usually think of the internet as a historical record of things, but it probably is.

We’re grateful to Samuel Pepys for keeping a diary, but imagine…

What if he and all his peers had kept blogs?