Fox V. S. Wolf, --- Jack Sparrow V. S. Blackbeard, & Femme Fatale, Angelica & A Bit More ("Pirates Of The Caribbean, #4: On Stranger Tides")...

               

     I though both Johnny Depp and Ian Mc Shane, as Blackbeard played beautifully.  Of course, I like Penelope Cruz; she's always good...

     Did you know that plot of the movie, "P. O. T. C : On Stranger Tides", was taken from a very interesting historical fantasy novel by Tim Powers, published in 1987?...  Yes...  That novel was nominated for the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel and it placed second in an annual Focus poll for best fantasy novel.

     In historical reality Blackbeard was certainly a character...  Did you know that his pirating career lasted only about two years.  Yep...  Like "Black Bart', a.k.a, Bartholomew Roberts, once famously said, - "It's a short life and a merry one!"  Well, how "merry" I really don't know.  Pirates sure did a lot of merrymaking in Port Royal, where about every fifth building was a tavern, gaming house or a brothel, and which one preacher called "The Sodom Of The New World". (I think Port Royal's inhabitants and visiting pirates were sort of proud of that label because it stuck.)

     In "On Stranger Tides" Blackbeard is an evil devil who sails in a fiery ship with zombie officers.  (Supposedly, zombies were made by poisoning people with a very wicked and repulsive potion partly made from the dust of dried up puffer fish, (yuck!) --- supposedly.  :(  )  Blackbeard, Ian Mc Shane, has some great lines in this movie ---  "The truth is far simpler...  I am A BAD MAN.  And, --- "If I don't KILL one of them now and then they FORGET who I AM!"  Really, Blackbeard did say that when he shot his first mate Israel Hands in the knee, from under a table, and for no good reason at all, crippling the man for life.  (Yes, in spite of his wildness, or maybe because of it, Blackbeard is my FAVORITE pirate.)

     I always love Jack Sparrow.  He seems an  ineffectual pirate at first; until you realize that his fake drunken mumbling and swaying are part of the con.  Jack lives by his wits.  You have the feeling that he'll never, EVER be hung, that he'll fit himself, somehow, into the changing world of the eighteenth century, when governments will no longer tolerate pirating.  Jack might end up an official; I wouldn't put it past him.  I wouldn't put any scheming past him, actually...  ;)