I watched Elizabeth:The Golden Age tonight at the movies. While it was an excellent movie, I had some reservations on it as to the dialogue and the general cohesion of the story. In comparison,1998’s Elizabeth was an all-around fantastic, tightly woven picture which both impressed and educated. I thought it was better than Elizabeth:The Golden Age, but that’s perhaps typical in movies that have sequels.

At any rate, my reservations are as follows: I thought the dialogue fell short from conveying that “grandeur” I expected conversations of the period to hold. I noticed there were far too many “slangish” catch phrases that made me cringe at their corniness. Another issue I had with the movie was that some scenes seemed utterly disconnected. I was a pain in the ass due to this, I kept asking my sister questions like “why did he do that?,” “who is that?,” “why did that happen?,” and “what is going on?.” Needless to say, she is never going to a movie with me ever again. Thank you, your majesty.

The story itself was enjoyable. The movie related the story of Elizabeth’s reign over England in the late 1500s to the early 1600s, and in particular the war waged by King Philip of Spain in the name of the Catholic God against the bastard Queen of England. It had this dark, religious, imposing mood to it which I loved and which I always enjoy in movies.

The part of the story I did not enjoy very much was how much emphasis was put on the Queen’s romantic life (or the lack thereof). I felt it was a little too much for my taste and I felt overall bad for poor Elizabeth who was unlucky in this movie with Sir Walter Raleigh as she was in the previous movie with the Earl of Leicester. It was a golden, manless age for the Queen I guess.

I wanted more war fighting, more blood and gore, more torture, and more devilish scheming in the movie. I really like that stuff and although I did not see much of that tonight, I still think Elizabeth:The Golden Age is a great movie you should not miss if you like history and romance and beautiful costumes.

I bought this statue in the summer from a Chinese man who was also selling metallic Mao Zedong alarm clocks and little red communist books. He was very anti-bargaining.

I googled the maxim to learn more about it, and here’s what Wikipedia says about it:

The three wise monkeys are a pictorial maxim. Together they embody the proverbial principle to “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil”. The three monkeys are Mizaru, covering his eyes, who sees no evil; Kikazaru, covering his ears, who hears no evil; and Iwazaru, covering his mouth, who speaks no evil.

- Wikipedia English

Just for fun I checked the Arabic article on the monkeys. Ironically, the Arabic Wikipedia says almost the exact opposite about the maxim:

رمز القردة الثلاث هو رمز هندي قديم على شكل ثلاثة تماثيل تعكس صورة السلبية والإنهزامية بأشكالها:

لا أرى.لا أسمع.لا أتكلم

- Wikipedia Arabic

There are several explanations listed in Wikipedia English for the maxim “See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.” Only one explanation is in any way relevant to the Arabic article; “it is commonly used to describe someone who doesn’t want to be involved in a situation.” However, in the Arabic article the only explanation present is that “the statue reflects negativity and defeatism” and none of the original interpretations is listed.

I thought this would demonstrate how much more work we need to do to bring Wikipedia Arabic up to par with other Wikis. A lot of people depend on Wikipedia for general information and many of them do not realize that not everything published there is necessarily true. And most Arab internet users depend on Arabic as they surf, and search for Arabic materials. As it is, the possibilities for being misinformed from something as simple as Wikipedia English are enormous, let alone its Arabic version and the inaccuracies found there.