Posted on 09/29/2018 4:45:09 PM PDT by Twotone
Back in the Nineties Robert Altman released a droll Hollywood satire called The Player about a murderous studio executive, and included towards the end a parody action movie with Bruce Willis. A couple of weeks later Altman ran into the producer Jerry Bruckheimer, who told him he'd seen The Player and liked the Willis parody. "That's where you went wrong," he said. "You should have made it for real," he advised Altman. Bruckheimer's made them for real for decades: Top Gun, The Rock, Con Air, Pearl Harbor, and franchises, franchises, franchises - Beverly Hills Cop, Bad Boys, Pirates of the Caribbean, National Treasure. Oh, and, on telly, CSI, CSI: Miami, CSI: NY, CSI: Nunavut, etc. But, for all those interminable franchising operations, to mark the 75th birthday of one of the most successful producers of all time, I thought I'd pick one of Mr Bruckheimer's more ambitious bits of hokum, his 2004 take on King Arthur.
This is not your father's Round Table. There's no castles, no sword in the lake, no Mordred, no Holy Grail, no Camelot, no love triangle, no Richard Burton warbling 'How To Handle A Woman', and not a lot of women to handle in any case. Instead, this is supposedly the first Arthurian tale to be rooted in historical Arthenticity. There is a Round Table, but it looks alarmingly like the UN Security Council table, which, for all the claims of authenticity, I doubt you'd have found in a fifth-century Berwick furniture showroom.
And that's where we are - the fifth century up at Hadrian's Wall in the fag end of the Roman Empire.
(Excerpt) Read more at steynonline.com ...
Hey, I love Steyn, but I don’t read columns on his site (didn’t know he had one), so this was just off the wall to me. No skin off my nose, just thought it would really go somewhere! Not expecting a review of an old movie!
I love Steyn & have joined his club. There’s stuff there that isn’t available to the public at large. Having grown up with the old movies, not to mention enjoying the music my parents played, I get lots of interesting history from these columns. You just never know what’s going to pop up.
Thank you! Culture and Education.
They view them as something to dominate and destroy as part of a plan to rebuild society.
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