the groundhog day project

"What a wondrous vision "Excalibur is! And what a mess." So begins Roger Ebert's review of Excalibur , and as usual, Roger says it pretty well. "This wildly ambitious retellings of the legend of King Arthur is a haunting and violent version of the Dark Ages and the heroic figures who (we dream) populated them," he continues. "But it's rough going for anyone determined to be sure what is happening from scene to scene." The problem with Excalibur , though, is not that it's particularly confusing. It is just so damn full of, well, pieces of every story about King Arthur that any of its audience are likely to know. There's a reason that The Sword in the Stone offers up next to nothing (though, admittedly, I might be remembering the better part of the film if not the larger part of it) about Arthur as an adult and spent time with that training. There's a reason that the recent King Arthur: Legend of the Sword was born out of a plan ...

Speaking of remakes and reboots and sequels, in theaters today is King Arthur: Legend of the Sword . Take a bunch of fantasy clichés, at least one biblical one, throw in some first act anachronistic organized crime (think: they cast Charlie Hunnam because they were fans of Sons of Anarchy and only then realized they were making a pre-medieval film), a whole lot of Robin Hood-style/freedom fighter stuff, and mostly none of the actual tropes of King Arthur stories. Which is kind of weird given that Guy Ritchie is from England. But, also exactly what one should expect given Ritchie's short-attention-span style of directing. There are some great visuals here, of course. Ritchie can do those. The opening sequence's oversized elephants, for example--if we had reason by then to care about any of the characters being slaughtered, would be fairly frightening. We don't, of course. Have reason to care about any of the characters. In fact, we'll hardly have reason to care about...