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Sir Edward:
I watched it last night, and for the most part my opinion of it is pretty much what I was quoting above. Nothing really new to those of us who are already sword nuts, but interesting and informative none-the-less. It could be something that you show to your family or friends to help them understand why you love swords and history so much.

It's a pretty well done production overall, with some interesting visuals and very nice narration by John Rhys Davies. It was also nice to see some interviews with folks who are no longer with us, such as Hank Reinhardt (co-founder of Museum Replicas), and Paul Champagne (swordsmith who just passed away recently). The latter had a moment in one of his interviews that made me really take notice: knowing he just recently had a fatal heart-attack, his comment of "As long as I can swing a hammer, I'll keep doing this".

I'm curious to take a look at the second disc, which is full of special features.

Sir Brian:
Ok all this talk about this movie got me curious so mine will arrive Tuesday and I will
hopefully get to watch it while getting my armor ready for GARF!  ;)

Das Bill:
I'd watched this several weeks ago when SwordChick got her copy, and I enjoyed it very much. I'll echo everything Ed said above, particularly the comment about Paul Champagne (I knew Paul, so that was very touching to see him on film saying that he'll keep swinging a hammer until he dies).

I finally got around to buying my own copy, and I went ahead and got the two-disc set with the special features. There's the training segment in there that shows varius martial arts groups demonstrating techniques. While its neat to include this, I felt like the producers didn't give enough thought to who the audience was. There were several groups showing several arts, and most of the arts were not explained at all. There's one on Alfieri's plays... if you don't already study Italian rapier, then you would have no idea who Alfieri is. Further, most of the techniques demonstrated are fairly basic, meaning that if you DO already study Italian rapier and know who Alfieri is, then you probably won't get anything out of it. For the majority of the list of clips, they seemed to make the assumption that the viewer is already familiar with the WMA culture (at least for the WMA videos, anyway).

There's also a glitch in my DVD. The vid for Silver's Four Fights doesn't work (but I don't care that much, since I don't actually study or even like Silver's methods), and the vid showing the behind the scenes at the Higgins Museum also doesn't work (which bugged me more, because I wanted to see the swords!).

All in all, though, I'm happy with the main documentary.

Sir William:
I'm going to get a copy of this, been meaning to.

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