Dinner & a Movie

And both were good! Hot dogs and sour kraut in the slow cooker and the movie Mongul. This was absolutely the best foreign movie that I can remember watching. It was filmed entirely in the desolate steppes of Mongolia, amidst beautifully sweeping vistas. Just the scenery alone is reason enough to watch it.

The movie is about the early years of Genghis Khan, from childhood up to his rise in power when he was still known as Temudjin. Since very little is known of Khan's life, there is much creative license taken by director Sergei Bodrov, so it is impossible to call it true history, although I felt culturally enriched by watching it.

The actors are all Mongolian, except for Temudjin (Japanese) and Jamukha (Chinese). The acting is superb. It is spoken in Mongolian and Mandarin, but dialog is short enough that reading the subtitles is not hard at all. They didn't use digital shortcuts, either. 1500 horses and riders had to be imported from Kazakhstan to China for one of the battle scenes. Some locations were so remote that the crew had to build roads to access them. Dad and I both give it a big thumbs up!!

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Note--Picture is of Tariat, Arkhangai Province, Mongolia from Wikimedia Commons, a freely licensed media file repository.