'Excalibur' - Classic or Dud

Actually, it isn't so bad, though it's no Excalibur. Nigel Terry's naive Arthur rules.

Which obv. would have been considerably more interesting than the trilogy we've ended up with

Just imagine Nicol Williamson as Gandalf

Excalibur is classic. Things I love about it: the use of 'Seigfreid's Rhine Journey', and of the Parsifal prelude just as Percival sheds his armour underwater and then enters the Grail castle, Guinevere dancing at the beginning, the whole Uther Pendragon prelude which shows how Arthur was concieved with the power of the Dragon, the whole 'you and the land are one' theme, which like Merlin and Morgana sets the atmosphere of paganism and christianity existing alongside eachother, a bearded repentant Launcelot at the battle of Camlann which also features nicely bloody fight between father and son, and of course Merlin.

Not necessarily.

http://c-coy.com/media/reference/excaliber.gif

lol i was coming here to post that

boing boing, right?

merlin amazed me as a kid in this film.

wow, funny i have a DVD-R of excalibur just like that (proper spelling obvs)

Now I want to watch this movie again

Classic classic classic.

Another of Ebert's sins is giving this movie a bad review because he was confused about the plot. He was a bit foggy that day, I suspect, but I guess when reviewing movies is your job, sometimes you have a grumpy day at work.

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19810101/REVIEWS/101010322/1023

Pauline Kael reviews are rarely online, but she basically offers up this movie her breasts.

I'm upset that the awesome gif above misspells "Excalibur".

Are you the mother and father of the child now Merlin?

i can't get throught this, don't know why. looks classic, but hasn't ever grabbed me from 3 or 4 attempts now.

the Parsifal prelude just as Percival sheds his armour underwater and then enters the Grail castle

this sequence is great, the entire movie gets put on hold for a weird mystical sidebar

o_O facts: arthur's mother played by boorman's daughter

The original cut of the film was three hours long.

would love to see this

boorman's output during this period also o_O

Deliverance (1972)
Zardoz (1974)
Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977)
Excalibur (1981)

yeah, that's a strange series of films. i like all of them, but only deliverance and excalibur are really successful, even if looked at solely in terms of their own ambitions. excalibur, though, is one of my favorite movies of all time. so ridiculously overripe.

boorman's 1965–74 run is totally unfuck-able-with

would love to see this on the big screen

out on blu-ray this week, tempting

Remake on the way.

First "weird" film I ever saw, aged about 12. Still absolutely, unreservedly love it, and I chanted the Spell of the Dragon's Breath amid castle ruins only the other day!

The wonderful score by Trevor Jones (Dark Crystal, Last of the Mohicans, Dark City) still awaits a legit release in any form. (In the film, chunks of Wagner are also used).

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-16727853

Nicol Williamson RIP. Always loved his take on Merlin. "A dream to some - A NIGHTMARE TO OTHERS!".

Noooo! Sad news. I watched "Excalibur" for the millonth time just the other night. Truly classic.

Yeah, need to get the Blu-ray of Excalibur pronto. Really want to watch it right now.

That's a good life: you're old enough to play Merlin, and then you live another 30 years.

Finally saw this. What a weird movie. "Excalibur" is edited like a two hour trailer for a movie that was never completed, just a bunch of scenes and random dialog.

i think it tells a pretty straightforward story and is propelled by narrative as much as lurid weirdness, but i've seen it like 10 times...

Ha, I bet it would play as well (or not well) on chapter shuffle.

In a film of crazy scenes this is far and away the craziest:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-pliu-57CE

edited like a two hour trailer for a movie that was never completed, just a bunch of scenes and random dialog.

actually it feels like an homage to the legend of king arthur books in that way, episodic, without a "modern" sense of how narrative works

They're showing this at the cheapie beer theater in Portland next week, I think.

Someone should do a batshit sword and sorcery poll, if there has not yet been one. "Flesh & Blood," "Conan," et al.

All sword & sorcery films of the 70s and 80s are batshit, in all truth. 'Hawk The Slayer'? 'Krull'?

the sword and the sorcerer!

^have had in .avi form on my thumb drive since 2011, the right moment never seems to arrive

Sword and the Sorcerer has the most amazing sword ever depicted in cinematic history, and Richard Lynch. It's well worth your time.

Sword and the Sorcerer was the first certificate AA (14 and over only) i saw at the cinema and it was perfect in every mentalist gory sword that shoots blades way possible

Most amazing cinema sword:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ky5u6vm44ak

also Disney made Dragonslayer for kids lol wtf picture todays Relentless-addled tweens sitting thru that one

Nah, this movie is everything it should be. OTT behavior in an OTT world is its raison d'etre.

Well, that's for sure. Talk about a self-fulfilling prophecy.

hella headbands in this picture

The sheer amount of sparkliness in this movie is overwhelming. Also note that Liam wears almost the same outfit (with added sparkliness) in the Clash of the Titans remake.

gets points for being made 7 years after Python

jeez, what an ass on Lancelot

some hip NYC dad brought his 9-year-old to this. haha, fuct for life.

did not recognize Arthur as Derek Jarman's Caravaggio either

I thought the older gaunt & bearded Arthur looked very similar to his Caravaggio. The Lancelot actor died quite young iirc, well in his late 40's.

The King is dead. Long live The King.

http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2015/may/03/nigel-terry

Also a great Caravaggio. RIP.

this is the best movie ever made

aka Boorman's Wagner mixtape - not watched it in years, but saw it a few hundred times in the 80's. It's ace.

Those hairstyles are historically inaccurate, crimpers weren't invented till the 1970s

a guy gets so horny he successfully gallops atop a mist and it's like the 50th wildest thing that happens in this movie

way funnier than monty python

without doubt the coolest Merlin in any King Arthur movie as well

without doubt the coolest Merlin in any King Arthur movie as well

It's the chrome skullcap that does it.

the Merlin actor (Nicol Williamson) was originally meant to do the seemingly cursed role that Ian McKellen eventually took in Apt Pupil. From what I can gather from imdb, first James Mason was approached for it but he shortly after died of a heart attack. Then Richard Burton was considered and died of a cerebral haemorrhage before he was approached. then Nicol Williamson (who was a boozer and smoking 80 a day at one point) is listed for the role on the abandoned Apt Pupil production!

I presume it was abandoned cos he died that year.

Might’ve mentioned this years ago upthread but Boorman’s commentary on the og dvd is great. Also, Mirren and Williamson didn’t like each other and that tension was there throughout the filming.

need to hear that commentary

boorman would be a good candidate for the "people who have figured out how to live" thread

also I assume Ned already knows about this but:

Then there are the ones that got away. The hits (such as Rocky and Alien) he turned down because the scripts left him cold. Or the passion projects he was forced to abandon. Boorman estimates that he spent more time on the films that didn’t get made than on those that did.

In the early 70s, for instance, he corresponded with JRR Tolkien about a screen adaptation of The Lord of the Rings, a full 30 years before Peter Jackson brought it safely home. Boorman wanted to shoot the whole saga as a single three-hour picture. “I saw it as this big dystopian story,” he says. “And in this house, upstairs, we papered the walls with each scene. We’d look at it, stare at it and try to get some sense out of it. And I had all sorts of solutions. I was going to cast nine- or 10-year-old boys as the hobbits. Put them in makeup; beards and things. And then dub them with adult voices.”

Jesus, I say. It would have been a disaster.

“Yeah well,” he chuckles. “It might have been.”

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/feb/13/john-boorman-you-think-the-holy-grail-is-lost-no-i-have-it-on-my-piano

so many hoofbeats

Its reputation has ebbed and flowed over the years, and it's nestled in a particularly awkward stretch of Boorman's eclectic ouvre, but the most curious thing about this movie is that it was made at all so close to Monty Python's version. I was listening to the commentary track, and at one point Boorman mentions how easy it would be to laugh at his film and dismiss it as silly, and I thought, uh, yeah, didn't you see Monty Python and the Holy Grail six or so years beforehand? Wild that they pulled this off even with lines from that movie surely echoing around in their heads.

Also wild is that, scrolling upthread, there appears indication that I had seen this before, but I didn't remember a minute of it! The new restoration looks great though.

Its reputation has ebbed and flowed over the years

has it really tho?

it is a completely absurd film, which i love, mostly due to nicol williamson running amok

helen mirren is fantastic

nigel terry and nicholas clay are non-entities and everything else is laughable

The commentary track is great though. On the one hand, Boorman seems totally committed to the material; he claims it's the only of his films that he still watches. On the other, you get the impression he wanted to make this movie partly because he could shoot it down the street from his house, and got to cast most of his kids.

ok that's awesome