Archives for October 23rd, 2007

The infamous Lipizzaner debate from the film Crimson Tide. (1995)

It took me a while but here it is: the famous scene where Gene Hackman and Denzel Washington talk about Slovenia’s national horse, the Lipizzaner. (The name comes from the Slovenian town of Lipica) There are still occasional arguments about the origin of the horse but it’s usually between Austria, Slovenia and Italy.

In their goof section, IMDb refers to this scene as “incorrectly regarded as a goof” because:

While the horses take their name from the fact that the stud farm where they are bred is located in the village Lipica (in Italian: Lipizza), near Trieste in Slovenia, today all Lipizzaners trace to six stallions, all with Andalusian (Spain) blood.

That’s just goofy, to be honest. It would be like two people arguing about whether President Bush is from Connecticut or Texas, and me pointing out that, no, technically all people trace their origins to Africa. Ergo: he’s African. I would be right in a way, but also very, very wrong. Sometimes it’s possible to be both. And this is one of those times.

NOTE: I’ve decided to slowly give up on YouTube, which seems to be circling the toilet bowl these days, and instead use local video-sharing website MojVideo. If you can read basic Slovene, consider checking it out!