The Yak Shack Forum

I just got back from seeing this new Disney film by Jerry Bruckheimer.  Very entertaining and fast moving.  The film runs 130 minutes.  It stars Nicholas Cage, Sean Bean, Harvey Keitel, Jon Voight, and Christopher Plummer to name a few.

Here is a brief story line:  A secret from our Nation's past will lead to the greatest adventure in history.  Nicholas Cage stars as the brilliant Benjamin Franklin Gates, third generation treasure hunter.  All his life, Gates has been searching for a treasure no one believed existed: amassed through the ages, moved across continents, to become the greatest treasure the world has ever known.  Hidden by our Founding Fathers, they left clues to the Treasure's location right before our eyes - From our Nation's birthplace and Capitol to clues buried within the symbols of the dollar bill.

Gates' life long journey leads him to the last place anyone thought to look: a map hidden on the back of the Declaration of Independence.  But what he thought was the final clue is only the beginning.  Gates realizes in order to protect the world's greatest treasure, he must now do the unthinkable: steal the most revered, best guarded document in American History before it falls into the wrong hands.

In a race against time, Gates must elude the authorities, stay one step ahead of his ruthless adversary (Sean Bean), decipher the remaining clues and unlock the 2000 year old mystery behind our Greatest National Treasure.

This film is going to one of the big money makers this year.  Definately recommended!   :)

going tomorrow am :)

Sean Bean?

I am there! ;D

Looks like it hit #1 at the box office then, pushing poor Spongebob in at #2...

I'd like to see both movies though!

The Spongebob movie is OUT???? :o

We haven't even gotten a sniff of the trailer in Australia yet :'(

Thanks :) I googled the release date - not until January 6! :P

I like Sean Bean as an actor but I wish he would get some good guy roles.  The last roles of this type I saw him in were the BBC production of Lt. Sharpe - outstanding series and very highly recommended and the role he played of a British SAS soldier in the first Gulf War.  It seems everything since: the James Bond movie, LOTR's, and now National Treasure, he is on the other side or in the LOTR's case good, then bad, then redeems self at end before dying.  

Some good movies out here and more to come.  Again I do not understand why the films are not released at the same time all over the world.  Me thinks it would help eliminate piracy and keep my friends in England and Australia happy!   :)

I agree--give him so good guy roles. And leading as well. I'll take him over Nicholas Cage any day--for looks and acting. I had never heard of him before LOTR but have come to think quite highly of him as an actor.

I'm trying to remember Troy (I promptly forgot the horror that was that movie for the most part). Sean had a small part in that but I can't really remember if the audience was supposed to be rooting for one side or the other.

But yeah, the different release dates is odd. It all depends on the film--some films open worldwide, others not. Some take forever to get to other countries, some not. But you would think it will eliminate some piracy.

The really big releases that have the most publicity (ie Star Wars, Spiderman, etc) tend to have worldwide releases in all majot territories. Shame they can't get their act together on other slightly less high profile releases.

I saw the trailer for National Treasure on www.quicktime.com - it looks fantastic! I can't wait for this to come out in the UK  ::)

Hey Alyssa:

Thanks - I forgot Sean Bean's role in Troy!  He did play a decent character there!  I would also like to see him in leading roles as he has so much to offer.

Have you ever seen him in the Lt. Sharpe series?  That is where I first saw his talent and great acting ability.  The series is set in Spain , Portugal, France, and England during the late 1800's when England was fighting Napoleon and France.  I believe there are at least 16 episodes that follow Sean Bean's career starting when he was a Sergeant in the first show to Commissioned Officer for saving the life of Duke Wellington!  He is placed in charge of expert rifleman and tasked with special missions both with the regular forces and behing the lines.  Excellent acting, filming, music, and story line!  I highly recommend it as you should be able to find them at your video rental store.
   

He also plays the good guy in Equilibrium with Christian Bale. It is definitely worth watching. He was excellent in When Saturday Comes playing a loser who comes good at the end. He does play the bad guy really well and a few others to see are Patriot Games with Harrison Ford, Airborne and Don't Say a Word. One of our finest actors in my opinion but then again I go week at the knees when I hear him doing the voiceovers for the O2 adverts.  :-*

i haven't seen the Sharpe series but would really like to. I've heard great things about it and Sean's performance. Maybe when I'm settled in NZ I'll try and find it.

regarding release dates, I think we have a winner. "Bad Santa" came out in the US (and not sure where else) around this time last year I believe. I know that Billy Bob Thorton was nominated for a golden globe for it.
And for what movie did I see a commerical for on TV today? You guessed it--"Bad Santa". So probably a YEAR later than in the US. I dare say its' been out on DVD for ages.
 ??? ???

Sean played Odysseus in Troy - meant to be a good guy I'm sure (as was Achilles) though you weren't rooting for the Greeks generally because of nasty Agamemnon.

Of course Sean has cannily guaranteed himself top billing if they ever film the sequel (the Odyssey).

Actually that could be pretty good - imagine CGI Cyclops and some nubile guest stars as the Sirens. who would be your choice for those attractive maneaters?

Kevin

Nah, there's not enough war in the Odyssey ;) everything's bettle related in epic films at the moment - Troy, LOTR, King Arthur etc etc

and dont forget Alexander which as a classicist I'm really looking forward to. Let's see what Oliver Stone did with that!

Kevin

Oh yes me too - it's not out here until the 7th of Jan :) If you get it early in the US then let us know if it's any good.

im in the uk too - well actually in central norway training IT this week and in Copenhagen next week but I do normally live in the UK anyway

Kevin

Well hopefully you'll be back by the 7th :)

Did you study classics in the UK?

yes - Oxford, where I still live. I studied classics and then became a computer programmer because I thought there'd be more money in that. 20 years later here I am - I havent retired yet...

Anyway at least I get to travel (Norway, Denmark, Iceland this year - as well as in the UK) and wherever I go in the world I only have to mention Oxford and they tell me all about how much they like Inspector Morse

KEvin

Ooh booo hisssssssss (Oxford :P)

I had a friend who did the Classics course at Oxford. I remember before he started he particularly looked down on those who did the course that required no previous experience of Latin or Greek (at the start, I think it's only recently been introduced). All the people on the fast track Latin/Greek course  quickly caught up with him so he had to eat his words  ;D - the last I heard from him he had had one too many and tried to get on a bike from one side and fell off the other ahhh happy days.

(and that's why shunning the trend I skate around Cambridge and don't bike although that will all change next year :()

and thats why when i was at college i never had a bike as all my friends ended up with scars in one place or another from horrific drunken biking accidents

i just used to take the bus or walk everywhere when i was a student its not so dangerous when you fall over


but why are you giving up skating next year?

kevin

Well Mark is moving quite a way out to one of the surrounding villages - and the roads on the way there are a bit major - so I'll have to get a bike :(

boo!

I will still have my nice 'in College', riverside room (yeah the house is so old that when I asked Mark to put the desk in the corner nice and straight - he asked "which wall would you like it straight with?" I find it marginally disturbing that I live in a house built by people incapable of using right angles  :-\ )

i only visited cambridge a few times but i always liked the way the colleges sit on the river.

of course oxford is miles better in all other respects  :P

kevin

How very difficult it is not to moderate your post :P hee hee we are all entitled to our opinions although those from "the other place" are of course all wrong ;)

Is it true you call us "tabs"? I have a friend (English graduate)who constantly refers to Cambridge as Tabland :) (presumably deriving from Cantab... but it's very odd - and all too easy to call you all Oxen after that ;)

Which brings us to our Bovine Connection ;) the Yak Shack... hmm perhaps Mark (owner of the Yak Shack) is an Oxford Graduate Sympathiser ;)

I never heard of that before but you would be justified in calling us oxies if we called you tabs.

Strictly speaking you would be an alumna Cantabrigiensis and I would be an alumnus Oxoniensis as graduates of the two 'varsities.

Neither of the places has very exciting names - bridge over the Cam v. the place where the cows (or yaks) ford the river.

Still both are very pretty in different ways

perhaps we should agree to differ  ;)

kevin

Oh you two snobs, you! ;)

OK - I admit it!  :-[

Oh go on then since it's Christmas :)

Actually I never intended to go to either University :P but you go where the funding is don't you ;) I haven't been to Oxford mucheither to be honest. I had a whistlestop tour once by a friend who had been there for almost 3 years. All I remember is having tired legs and peering into Tolkien's old office ;)

The Magdalene over there looks rather forbidding (which I like) my Magdalene has a homely cottagey feel (which is good whilst you are studying here of course ;))

Magdalene? What's that in the context of Cambridge and Oxford?

It's a College... hmm.. how to describe it? It's like a glorified halls of residence for postgraduates, but as an undergraduate you are taught in College (in supplement to your basic lecture courses in the main department. Each lecturer (called a don or fellow) is affiliated with a College - so if you are an undergraduate, a College  then a good deal of your one on one (or two students to one lecturer) teaching is done by the Fellows attached to that College.

They also sort out your accommodation (for a price :P) and host nightly formal dinners (where yes I have to wear a gown... and no it cannot be cut up and used for Cambridge costume cards :P)

Does any of that make any sense or was it all babble  :-\

it made sense to me 'cos it's basically the same at Oxford. :)

We like to stress the differences between us and Cambridge so our 'Magdalene' is spelt 'Magdalen' (pronounced 'maudlin').

It wouldn't do to be the same.

The college I went to all those years ago was Wadham, quite a new college built in 1600 or so...

kevin

- oh and our Magdalen has its own deer park attached to the college.

back to the snobbery :P

to be honest i didn't and still don't really go for any of that tradionalist stuff being at heart a good working class boy (don't ask me to explain the British class system  ???)

kevin

Magdalen has it's own school doesn't it?? I think St John's in Cambridge is perhaps a better comparison College to be honest :) [big, ornate, money coming out of it's ears]

Ours is pronounced Maudlin too! It's so funny to go to chapel and hear them say Mary *Maudlin* :)

yes magdalen has a school.

they used to say that you could walk from st johns oxford to st johns cambridge entirely on land owned by st johns

wadham (my college) is quite poor by comparison with the big ones like those. wadham had (has) a rep as being quite left wing and progressive - one of the first to go mixed. when i was there one of the quads was renamed 'ho chi minh quad' by the JCR

kevin

Wow, very progressive :)

Magdalene Cambridge is quite the opposite it would seem! They first let women into the College in 1989  ::) apparently some of the older Don's wore black arm bands and carried a coffin around first court in protest!

It's another world isn't it!!!!??

yes wadham was very progressive they even had mixed staircases

wadham has been mixed since the 1970s!

 :o

Hello there Oxford & Cambridge!!   :)  Tell me - is there a local movie theater in the town's where your schools are located and if so how many screens do they have?

Also how many students attend each school in total?

I can only speak for Oxford.

btw we dont call it a school - a university. and i attended it 20 years ago! (still live there tho)

movie theatres -

city centre

2 odeon (uk cinema chain) one with 2 screens, one with 5 or 6
1 independent with 2 screens

out of town a multiplex with 5 or 6 screens

total students at Oxford across all colleges (see Roz's post above for definition of college) is about 17,000.

are you thinking of visiting Oxford or Cambridge and want to see a movie? :)

kevin

Hi Kevin:

Mark & Roz are friends of mine and someday I will visit them at Cambridge and I would also like to see Oxford.
I know both of your institutions are Universities but we here in the States refer to both colleges and universities as schools in a general sense and no offense was meant!   :)

Both your Universities have so much history and tradition that I could spend a summer researching each.  As far as the question about movie theatres I was just curious what was available to the students in each area.  I always enjoyed going to my local movie house when I was a student in College.   :)

Mark told me about his visit to Professor Tolkien's old office at Oxford.  Since the popularity of The Lord of the Rings movies have you noticed an increase in visitors to see where he worked?

hi

no offence was taken really - its just strange to hear it described as a school! :)

oxford (like cambridge) is a very popular tourist attraction and i cant say i noticed a bigger influx since lotr.

another place to visit if you ever come apart from Merton College where Tolkien had his study is the Eagle and Child pub where he and C.S. Lewis and others used to go and drink beer and discuss the books they were writing.

and Tolkien used to live in a house in Sandfield Road not far from where I live now (well same area anyway)

I too enjoyed (and still do) movies very much and am busy passing that love on to my children though my fave movie theatre is not in Oxford itself and is more on the US style (I have visted the States a few times and you know how to do movie theatres properly - or 'cinemas' as we call them).

cheers

kevin

Not whilst you are staying with us you won't :P

Just kidding... how could I stop you gawping at Tolkien's old office ;) Of course it's now the office of the current Professor of Anglo Saxon... those are very big shoes to fill!!! Anyway, Dave (my very old school friend) took us there because he had had some tutorials in that office, I am not sure it's widely publilcised as his old office or I think the current Professor would feel like a goldfish :P

And *never missing a chance for a dig* thank goodness C.S. Lewis came to his senses and moved to the dark side (Magdalene College Cambridge), it's a shame he didn't take Tolkien with him.

In other alumni news, Samuel Pepys was not only an undergraduate at my College but was sent down (expelled) for drunken behaviour  :o ;D - sorry - but I like to get that one in! Somewhere along the line I do need to get thrown out of here before I graduate otherwise I'll never reach greatness  :P

time for the snobbery again - christopher wren was at my college!

i know thats all i can come up with  :-[ - i prefer the pepys story really but don't want to admit it.

kevin

That's cool - there's supposed to be a beautiful Wren chapel in Emmanuel College - exactly 80 paces from where I am sitting right now (writing a list of books and papers I need to go searching for tomorrow) and yet I have NEVER been to see it!

How awful is that??

(And don't forget Christopher Lee went to Emmanuel College Oxford... so that's one to impress everyone with here ;))

Hello Kevin:

Thanks for the advise - I would love to sip a pint where Tolkien and Lewis did!!  :)  Yea the movie theater industry is big business here and I am glad many of the theaters have gone to stadium seating with the latest sound systems - it sure makes viewing the movies very enjoyable!  :)

Roz:

Gee I had hoped you and Mark would be my tour guide at Oxford as well!!  ;)

Anyway folks has National Treasure opened yet in England?