I don't think I'll be going to see the movie "War Horse". Not because I tend to find most Spielberg movies a bit too treacly, and not because most horse movies make me yell at the screen (why do movie makers think we won't notice when they swap a 16 hand bay for a chestnut pony from scene to scene? why do movie horses neigh ALL the time? can you imagine how noisy the stable would be if real horses did that? and rearing! rearing is a VICE -- something you cure by cracking a raw egg on a horse's head or hitting him between the ears with a plastic baseball bat, not something you want to randomly encourage before every battlefield charge ... GAH!) But I digress.
No, the reason I won't be seeing the movie is that I get all teary-eyed just reading about horses in war. It's bad enough WWI wasted the lives of all those young men, but at least most of them enlisted of their own free will. Sitting in a cinema for two hours thinking about the eight million horses that were buried in mud, riddled by bullets and blown to pieces in that war is a bit more than my lachrymal glands can take.
Someone will have to see if for me. Let me know if it's any good.
And for the real story here's a Daily Mail article on a real life horse, the famous Warrior:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2049362/Steven-Spielberg-film-The-w...
(Thanks to Major Wes for the link -- and inspiration for this post!)
Jennifer Landels, Maestra di Scuderia
Devon Boorman is the Co-Founder and Director of Academie Duello Centre for Swordplay, which has been active in Vancouver, Canada since 2004. Devon’s expertise centres on the Italian swordplay tradition including the arts of the Renaissance Italian rapier, sidesword, and longsword, as well as knife and unarmed techniques. Read more from Devon Boorman.