Random Article! 4/23/09

So history was slow today, unless you love Turkish succession issues or the minor battles in Spain (pre renaissance). Naturally with such a void I will have to create a new feature, with which to exercise my wit, or lack thereof. So now i am proud to introduce the "Random Article" feature, in which I hit the random article button on wikipedia and discuss the topic I get. Now this may get boring really fast, I once spent ten minutes hitting that button and got nothing but s steady stream of soccer teams and soccer competitions from around the world. I'm pretty sure wikipedia is 70% soccer related material.
So lets countdown to a new feature in...
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Liftoff (this is ground control to Major Tom)

HAHA FUCK!
(Today's article)Tiefland(elcitrtA syadoT)

So this article is about a movie directed, scripted, produced and starring Leni Riefenstahl. You probably don't know Leni, here's a picture, of her, next to another sporty chap who is not Charlie Chaplin. Alright, so Leni was a Nazi, and may have made a little movie called "Triumph of the Will" about how Nazi supermen are our superiors. Real classy lady.

The film is based on a play with the same name, Leni here decided to write a little script in '34, but didn't actually start production till '40, wrapping in '44. Even then it wasn't until 1954 that it was released. This was the last full length film she directed and starred in.

So lets break down the plot for all of you out there...

Wait, reviewing the plot now is confusing the hell out of me, lets try this anyway...

Pedro is a loser, who herds sheep in the Pyrenees (mountains between France and Spain) he awakes to find a Wolf just stone killin' his sheep, so he summons what energy he can to choke the bitch wolf out. Mind you I think that Pedro here represents the Monarchists, and the wolf Nazi airmen assisting the Fascists, but then again it doesn't because if that were the case Leni would have the wolf eat Pedro while efficiently doing gymnastics like a spaz. Anyway, in the lowlands a little community is getting its ass handed to it by a rich land owner named Don Sebastian. The Don, as his friends call him, has built a canal that is depriving his people of water for food, but is making his prized bulls very happy? Is that really a good reason to build a canal, do the bulls even notice? who will pay rent when everyone is dead from starvation? Anyway, the peasants are all like "Please don't starve us!" and Don replies with a chortle "No way, my bulls need to be all jazzed up, before I kill them with swords in a completely fair fight." However Don does have a serious problem, he is broke and owes some people money, apparently he's engaged to a woman named Amelia, who is wealthy and totally grossed out by his shit eating grin, so he does the smart thing and takes a local "beggar dancer" (a common job in Spain), Martha, and locks her in a golden cage at his 'pad'. She dances for his amusement, like people do, and begs him to stop killing his peasants. Naturally he says no, because seriously, why get out of debt by charging rent for the land you have all these peasants on, hell sell a bull you douche. So Martha runs away where she meets Pedro (Spains premier wolf throttler), but Don finds her and brings her back. Now deeply in trouble with his bookies he arranges to marry Amelia (because she changed her mind or some shit), but he also wants Martha, so he marries Martha off to Pedro, and gives Pedro a mill to live at, so he knows where to find his fuck buddy Martha. Well Martha fucking hates this plan and gets all up on Pedro's case for being a party to this ridiculous affair, to which Pedro responds "Uh, I love you, so that's kind of why i let him marry me off to you." Martha is all like "Bawwww", when suddenly Don walks in looking for something to fuck. Pedro uses his mad skills and chokes Don to death and then he and Martha go and live in the mountains, choking wolves by day and having dirty 'beggar dancer' sex at night.

Now the details of making this masterpiece, this triumph of the will, if you will. Leni wrote it in 1934, but she got involved in propaganda film making right about when the war started, so that really sidetracked her. Wikipedia says that she was disturbed by atrocities and didn't want to make any more propoganda films (I frankly have no clue, I prefer painting her a s a total Nazi). So she made her own film company, using her clout as 'Hitlers Favorite'. So she spent years making this film on location, facing numerous set backs, Goebbels was all like "WTF, why does Hitler dig on you so much?" For example Leni couldn't find an actress to play Martha, so she simply took the role. the major problem with that is the fact that she was 40 at the time and Pedro (as played by a guy named Franz) was 23, way to rob the cradle 'beggar dancer'.

Of course there's controversy too. Apparently the villagers used in background shots were Italian gypsies, selected from internment camps, hand chosen by Riefenstahl. Now this isn't the half of it, apparently once shooting wrapped for those scenes they were promptly deported to Auschwitz, there's a feel good hit if I ever heard of one, "Tiefland, 3 out of five cast members dead in the Holocaust". Also it says that James Cameron's shitberg Titanic echoes Tiefland in many ways, this makes James Cameron a Nazi in my book,so you better watch out Cameron, I'm on to you.

So I hope you enjoyed this first installment of "RANDOM ARTICLE", I'll see you the next time there's nothing good on this day in history.