Friday, May 19, 2017

Faithful in its fashion …

… What King Arthur: Legend of the Sword Gets Right About the Middle Ages | New Republic. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

2 comments:

  1. In Where ‘King Arthur’ Came From, and Why the Film Failed: What’s so special, and worth preserving, about Arthurian legends Amanda Foreman concludes:

    The Camelot legends--along with their themes of idealism, courage, betrayal and loss--deeply influenced Chaucer and Miguel de Cervantes, the author of "Don Quixote." More recently, versions of the tales were written by Alfred Lord Tennyson, John Steinbeck and T.H. White ("The Once and Future King," 1958).

    When Jackie Kennedy said of her husband's tenure at the White House, "There will never be another Camelot," people knew what she meant. Nobody seems to know what "King Arthur: Legend of the Sword" was supposed to mean, if anything, and that's its tragedy.


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  2. Yes. I thought that John Boorman got it right in Excaliber. Nigel Terry's performance as Arthur is a rare example of an actor living a role, going from callow to genuinely tragic.

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