No 211 - Moulin Rouge! Director - Baz Luhrmann I remember very vividly when I first saw this film. I was in sixth form when it came out, and was a student of 'Theatre Studies', so there was naturally a lot of talk about this overtly theatrical piece. However, I was not convinced that I would enjoy it, it looked overtly soppy, a chicks film. Finally I was convinced to go and see it (Tom Done, who was in the year above and who was utterly terrifying, though who is now a good friend, won me over by stating the line I have used as a title. Surely a film MUST be good if it features unconscious Argentinians and cross dressing dwarfs!). So one evening I went to the Regent cinema in Wantage ( now shut down ) with my best friends Hanna and Richard . The film completely blew me away, and is the only film that has managed to firmly grab my attention in the first second, as the curtains open and the conductor arrives to play the 20th Century Fox theme. It uses the production company's
Watching TV series: Merlin. It's Sunday, Merlin's on! By definition, anybody who adds to the huge Arthurian body of work (possibly the hugest of all), takes "liberties" with the myth, but that's not even an appropriate phrase, because there's only the tiniest piece of historic truth in the whole thing, anyway, whatever Glastonberry shopkeepers will tell you. There was some wartribe chief vaguely corresponding to this Arthur fellow centuries before the medieval period when his adventures are always set. I had to study Le Morte D'Arthur for the Agrégation, back in my long gone youth, and read just about every little piece of arthuriana I could lay my hands on. Before and after, I'd seen a zillion movies and a zillion TV products and read a zillion comic books dealing with Arthur and Merlin and the whole gang. But this new product does take more liberties, as it were. Unexpected ones, I mean. Notably when it comes to the relationships between the protagonists. Plus they're all lovely-looking. Who cares if they speak twenty-first century (occasionally mid-Atlantic) English? Good to see Anthony Steward Head again (how I miss Buffy! there are one or two metaleptic jokes). Irish Katie McGrath is gorgeous. Sometimes she looks like Madonna circa Like A Prayer, sometimes like Eva Green, Rachel Weisz, Monica Bellucci, Keira Knightley... Very entertaining indeed.
