Friday 3 September 2010

The Jewel Of The Nile: FACTGASM

Against my better judgement and, indeed, my own advice, I didn't watch a load of great movies on Bank Holiday Monday. Instead I watched The Jewel Of The Nile, the One True Voice to Romancing The Stone's Girls Aloud.


I won't bore you by banging on about how, in the long and sad history of inferior sequels, this one stands mulleted head and shoulders above most. Instead, prepare yourself, because I'm going to FACT you till you fart.

Just so you know, these facts have been independently verified by the Fact And Truth Checkers of the United Nations Trust Society.

FACT!
The poster is 28 times more exciting than the film.

FACT!
The video of the song of the credits of the movie, which repeatedly features the popular misheard lyric "Go And Get Stuffed", is single-handedly responsible for the death of the trend in which movie stars appeared in music videos for their own films.

FACT!
The novelisations of this film and its vastly superior predecessor were credited to Joan Wilder, the romance novelist played by Kathleen Turner in the films. That's meta before meta was even invented.
FACTETTE!
The cover design for the Romancing The Stone novelisation kicks the Jewel Of The Nile cover's ass off.

BEST FACT EVER!
The Jewel Of The Nile was the last film to be released on Capacitance Electronic Disc, or "Selectavision", an utterly bonkers prehistoric home video format which worked like a vinyl record, with grooves and a stylus and everything.

You may consider yourselves well and truly FACTed. I hope it was as good for you as it was for me.

To share a post-FACT cigarette, click here

13 comments :

  1. You forgot to mention that the film's lazy anti-Arab racism was directly responsible for the creation of Al Quaeda. Osama Bin Laden said so in one of his video diaries.

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  2. There is one very cool explosion when they fire the missile at the wooden gates, one of the most satisfying explosions in movie history. Sadly, it does not compensate for the heinous crimes committed by the rest of the movie. Good post.

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  3. If Jewel of the Nile is One True Voice and Romancing The Stone is Girls Aloud, my question to you is...

    What's War Of The Roses?

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  4. A series of dynastic civil wars for the throne of England, fought between supporters of two rival branches of the Royal House of Plantagenet: the houses of Lancaster and York (the "red" and the "white" rose, respectively).

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  5. Thank you Wikipedia! I walked into that joke I suppose.

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  6. A movie? Ona record? You crazy.

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  7. I think that you have given us the most interesting facts about this movie.

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  8. In the analogue world in which it was born the CED system had certain advantages over emerging VHS and Betamax. The disc players were cheaper to make than tape machines because there were far fewer parts. There was no rewinding to bother with. The problem with the system was that it did not record video and only 30 minutes of a film could be fitted on each side of the 300mm discs. It was 17 years in development so was outdated by video tape almost as soon as it launched. RCA lost about $600 million on the doomed project.
    RCA should have seen earlier that this project was no Jewel but they were in denial.

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  9. Romancing The Stone frickin rocks.

    See what I did there?


    But Jewel of the Nile is a washout.


    See what I did there?



    Taxi?

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  10. At least I know who to ask to take over when I retire.

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  11. True about Selectavision's development costs; this fiasco nearly bankrupted RCA, and would have -- if not for the relative profitability of JVC (= Japan Victor Company.) Derisively known as "Needlevision" within the electronics industry, the players were so naff that later ones had a snap-in stylus and head assembly, the failure rate was so high.

    But amazingly (and you're probably aware of this) CED was not the first stylus-read consumer video system. The first, the 'Phonovision' system, was produced in Britain. . .circa 1933, with the first experimental recordings made around 1928. And, that system could record.

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