Smart Words About Cinema
Excalibur (Warner) The myth and legend of King Arthur has long been a favorite fascination of popular culture, the source of countless novels and movies and the inspiration for an iconic Broadway musical that became the nickname for John F. Kennedy’s too-short inspirational time as American President: “Camelot.” Forget the real-life history, the very mention [...]
[First published in 1982, in "This Sceptr'd Isle" Autumn Quarter Film Series, Office of Cinema Studies, University of Washington.] The Quarry, a 75-minute film for the BBC (early 1960s): A sculptor named Arthur quests for a very particular kind of stone, amid many references to King Arthur, Merlin, and magic. Point Blank (1967): On some [...]
[Originally published in Movietone News 56, November 1977] Who’s the biggest box-office star at the moment? Not Redford, not Newman, not Eastwood, but, it would seem, the Prince of Darkness, whose presence in or on the periphery of a large number of popular movies in recent years has led to what Variety might call a [...]
[originally published in Film Comment Vol. 31 No. 4, July/August 1995] The world is full of women who hunger for movies that unreel not Gawain’s but Guinevere’s gutsy quest to repair her own—and thus others’—broken souls and psyches. The Round Table of peerless travelin’ ladies includes Bringing Up Baby‘s Katharine Hepburn, a vessel of dangerous [...]