Film — The Thief of Baghdad

Yes, time once again for the event that first drove me to blogging, the Cambridge Film Festival.

Unlike last year, none of the first night opening films struck me, so the first out the door was this remastered print of the original 1940 classic Arabian Nights style tale.

The lushness of Technicolour showed -- for all that the effects indicated towards the bleaching desert sun, the sets strove to be as lush as any of those in the Yimou Zhang wuxia movies. That you could at times see the join did not detract from the extensive use of blue-screen effects.

Rather, the film showed its age more in the conventions of its story telling and its pacing -- and that we were spared being emoted at for the romance strand of the plot. Definitely a movie from a simpler time, when Araby was a far and mystical land, where orderly regime change could be effected simply by a brief aerial bombardment.