And I Finally Got Round To....

This afternoon at work I produced a 250 word recommendation for a project in about 15 minutes. A few weeks ago I wrote a 1500 word positioning paper on a technical legal point for a committee of the Board in about 2 hours. Both of these had to be precise and clearly worded with all of the facts in place. Neither of them was on subjects about which I have a particular interest.

So why do I find it so difficult to knock out 500 words for a blog of an evening? It's not like I haven't got anything to write about. Can you have writer's block specific to a subject or a PC? If so, I've never really suffered from it before. I'm struggling to get the briefing pack for my CoW game together as well.

It doesn't help that I am, honestly, easily distracted. I mean the IPL has become really quite fascinating, - not real cricket, of course, but fun none the less.

However a justifiable distraction is that I finally got round to watching "Admiral", a two hour epic biopic of the life of Admiral Kolchak, White Russian hero and for a short while Supreme Ruler of Russia.

The film is a recent Russian production and is claimed to be the most expensive film ever made there. It is certainly sumptuous and doesn't stint anywhere in production values. Loads of it may be CGI, but it looks pretty damn real most of the time (check out the naval gunnery).

The film covers his life from his service in the First World War (ie nothing on his polar expeditions) and is hung round his adulterous, and possibly unfulfilled, love affair with a brother officer's wife. This doesn't really work all that well. and has a sub-Dr Zhivago feel to it. However I watched it with Mrs Trebian and even with sub-titles we both felt that it moved along at a fair rate and didn't let you get bored (ie I didn't lose any Brownie points by making her sit through it)

It helped enormously to have read a lot on the Revolution and Civil War period, otherwise bits are disjointed (Kronstadt mutiny takes about 2 minutes and consists of lots of officers being shot). However all you wargamers out there want to know if it is worth it for the military bits and pieces. Well I'd say yes. The naval sequences are excellently done, and I could find no fault with the land battles. The uniforms look good and the equipment - the Putilov guns and the Maxims - seemed to me to be spot on. Most of the big picture history is right, although some of the minor details may not be (was he thrown into a cross-shaped pool, cut in the ice?). Plus it doesn't really major on his anti-semitism and the atrocities he oversaw, so from that point of view it's a whitewash.

I regret that I didn't get to see it in the cinema as it is supposed to be a big screen epic experience and even with home cinema and surround sound it isn't the same. Still it's worth bothering with. Amazon have it for £5 at the moment which is less than I paid for it.

Just what I needed to put me in the mood for a Good Friday RCW struggle to the death.

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