Medieval

If you had to put money on who would be cast for a film about 15th-century Czech warrior hero Jan Žižka, then Ben Foster, Matthew Goode, Til Schweiger and Sir Michael of Caine would probably not be top of the list. But that is the impressive ensemble kitted out in ermines and armour by director Petr Jákl for this brutal, byzantine but strangely uninvolving historical actioner set in medieval Bohemia – apparently the most expensive Czech production ever.Foster plays Žižka, a seasoned mercenary who with his merry band of…

A medieval parchment from a monastery in Egypt has yielded a surprising treasure. Hidden beneath Christian texts, scholars have discovered what seems to be part of the long-lost star catalogue of the astronomer Hipparchus—believed to be the earliest known attempt to map the entire sky. Scholars have been searching for Hipparchus’s catalogue for centuries. James Evans, a historian of astronomy at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Washington, describes the find as “rare” and “remarkable”. The extract is published…

The image shows the orientation of the proximal femur and standardization of the femur diaphysis. Credit: Elin T. Brødholt, CC-BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) In medieval Norway, high status individuals tended to be taller and to have stronger bones, possibly as a result of a favorable lifestyle, according to a study published October 19, 2022, in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Elin Brødholt of the…

The lost star catalog of Hipparchus – regarded as the earliest known attempt to map the entire night sky – may have just been discovered on parchment preserved at St Catherine's Monastery on Egypt's Sinai Peninsula.In 2012, the student of leading biblical scholar Peter Williams noticed something curious behind the lettering of the Christian manuscript he was analyzing at the University of Cambridge.The student, Jamie Klair, had stumbled across a famous passage in Greek that was often attributed to Eratosthenes; an…

Medieval Times Dinner and Tournament, a family dinner theater featuring staged medieval-style games, sword-fighting, and jousting performed by a cast of 75 actors and 20 horses, held in Lyndhurst, New JerseyAnadolu Agency | Getty ImagesMedieval Times has thrown down the gauntlet.The restaurant-and-show chain is suing its employees' New Jersey union for allegedly infringing on its trademark by using the Medieval Times name.The complaint, filed Thursday in a New Jersey federal court, alleges that possible confusion with the…

The latest in nanoscale 3D scanning techniques have been used to reveal some of the finest secrets of a medieval material known as Zwischgold (part-gold): an ultra-thin metal foil consisting of a gold top layer and a silver base, used to gild sculptures.Up until now, only 2D cross-sections of the materials had been studied, but in a new study researchers have been able to create 3D representations of Zwischgold for the first time, revealing how it was put together and why historians might face challenges in restoring…

A drawing of the Italian poet and court writer Christine de Pizan writing. Credit: BNF Archives, CC BY-SA To "doodle" means to draw or scrawl aimlessly, and the history of the word goes back to the early 20th century. Scribbling haphazard words, squiggly lines and mini-drawings, however, is a much older practice and its presence in books tells us a lot about how people engaged with literature in the past.…

Anime maverick Masaaki Yuasa’s 14th-century rock opera gets off to the most traditional start possible with some stark Noh-style declaiming. But things quickly get pretty wild: Hendrix-ish behind-the-head lute shredding, phantom samurai breakdancing, giant whale lightshows. Retrofitting medieval Noh as a world of guitar gods and cavorting dancers, Inu-oh has its two disabled lead characters make a psychedelic plea in favour of slipping loose from dominant narratives, told in a fecund patchwork of styles by Yuasa that…

Dir: Lena Dunham. Starring: Bella Ramsey, Andrew Scott, Billie Piper, Joe Alwyn, Dean-Charles Chapman, Ralph Ineson, Isis Hainsworth, Russell Brand. 12A, 108 minutes.In Lena Dunham’s adaptation of Karen Cushman’s Nineties children’s novel, we meet a young maiden in the 1290s, Lady Catherine aka Birdy (Bella Ramsey). She’s sweet, rambunctious and utterly blithe when it comes to her privilege. Nestled inside a workman’s cart, on the way to see her friend Aelis (Isis Hainsworth), she wonders what life must be like for the…

via Bioscop Filmmaker Petr Jákl has lived a remarkable life already, but shooting blockbuster historical epic Medieval might have been his biggest challenge yet. A former professional judoka, Jákl scored three Top 10 placings at the European Judo Championships at three different weight classes in 1995, 1998, and 2000 and even went to the Olympics, before seguing into acting and landing roles in Hollywood productions like Bad Company, xXx, Eurotrip, and Alien vs. Predator. Moving behind the camera into writing,…