Arthurian Movies

Hollywood has an obsession with taking classic stories and screwing them up completely. A constant example of this fascination is the way Hollywood continually manages to screw up the Arthurian legend (who needs Excalibur when you're doing the story of King Arthur.....). When you look back through the history of attempts to translate this story to the screen, there's probably only been one attempt - Excalibur - which has has proven to be in any way watchable (no Josh - I'm not counting Holy Grail - it's meant to be a farce).

There's a movie on the horizon which has a good chance of breaking this trend of crappiness. King Arthur - a film which is set, not during the usual knights in shining armour middle ages, but during the period of the 5th and 6th centuries when the Roman Empire was disintergrating.

Not only do you get Clive Owen (the man who should be the next Bond) and Ioan Gruffudd (the star of the excellent Hornblower TV Movies - exploding powder monkeys everywhere!) charging around in Roman armour kicking all sorts of arse,

you also get Keira Knightley charging around in blue paint and.... well the picture kind of says it all...

Check out some more pictures here. To quote Clive Owen on the film

'What appealed to [Clive Owen] was the script. "It's a new take on the whole King Arthur story -- unlike anything you've ever seen before," he says. "What I didn't realize is that King Arthur is actually a myth that developed over hundreds of years and has been slowly pieced together. "There's this sort of romantic vision of Arthur. Our version is set earlier than it's usually set. We have it at 500 A.D. as opposed to medieval times. Basically, the Roman empire is crumbling.

"I play Arthur, who is half-Roman," Owen says. "He's a commander of a crack team of military knights who, at the beginning of the movie, gets the mission from hell -- to go into dangerous, unknown territory and rescue a family as the Saxons are invading by the thousands, and the rebels are out there fighting. Meanwhile, Arthur has always held onto Rome as something he wants to return to and something he reveres, but it keeps changing."' (Again emphasis added by me)

Downside - it's got useless lump-of-wood Joel ("I'm Owen Lars and this is my gurlfriend Beru" useless exposition) Edgerton in it. Hopefully he dies in a gory mess of swords and arrows....

On another note - some of you may have heard of another movie The Passion of Christ (formerly known as The Passion), which has stirred a fair bit of controversy up amongst the Seppo's for being anti-Semetic for daring to suggest that the Jews of the time were in some way responsible for having Jesus put to death by the Romans.... Anyway check out this story from CNN

Lightning strikes Gibson's 'Christ'
ROME, Italy -- Actor Jim Caviezel, who plays Jesus in Mel Gibson's controversial film "The Passion of Christ" was struck by lightning during shooting.

While that's kind of funny, this is my favourite part of the story

An assistant director on the film, Jan Michelini, was also hit -- for the second time in a few months (Added emphasis mine)>

Some wags have of course suggest that God might be trying to say something here.....