Discovering Alexander

Because I enjoy inflicting pain upon myself, I decided to tune into the Discovery Channel's hour-long presentation called "Becoming Alexander." It's a chronicle of Colin Farrell's journey to "become Alexander the Great" as he prepared to portray the giant in Oliver Stone's latest picture.

Actually, the show did have a few interesting moments, but that was overwhelmingly outweighed by the utter stupidity of the concept. As Oliver Stone put it, the "spirit of Alexander" somehow infused the cast and crew with strength and was responsible for the success of the project. To top it all off, somehow the spirit of Alexander was living through star Colin Farrell. The show became a one hour hagiography of Farrell (I hate the fact that I have to, one principle, dislike Farrell for his stupid Hollywood persona and such self-aggrandizing drivel; he seems like a hard drinking, cigarette smoking, cool Irish dude apart from it all).

It was fascinated by the three months of training the cast went through prior to shooting (though again, the show over-played the difficulty of that; Alexander and his men went through upwards of eleven years of actual combat and hardship). Also, as an interesting bit of method acting, Farrell assumed a leadership role during the "boot camp;" the rest of the cast would call him "Regent," he led his men in exercises, etc. I wonder if that ends up affecting the realism of the battle scenes, and I wonder if any other directors have tried out such a technique.

I'll probably end up seeing the movie at some point, just out of curiosity, despite the fact that it looks likely to be disappointing. Judging from the ads this will prove to be a poorly written and conceived movie.