Word: epical
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...throne of Scone that set the firths on fire. In a quarter-century of ferocious fighting he drove the English out of Scotland, broke his domestic enemies in a bloody civil war, founded a dynasty that endured for four centuries, and bequeathed to his countrymen their national epic...
Ghastly & Glorious. As an epic, the legend of the Bruce ranks among the noblest achievements of medieval romance; as history, it is miserably beset with errors. Recent researches suggest that the history of the Scottish war of independence must be considerably rewritten, and in this volume a Scottish professor has manfully attempted the task. He summarily deflates the theory that Bruce was merely an ambitious feudal magnate, effectively demonstrates that his movement was fundamentally powered by a patriotic passion for "the community of the realm of Scotland." At times the book is clotted with corrigenda, but it tells the ghastly...
...wear and do." Often he makes wooden constructions that are as simple as a man petting a dog. "In itself," he says, "that's a cozy act." Or, he confronts the viewer with Palace in Babylon, a cardboard mock-up of D. W. Griffith's 1916 film epic, Intolerance. As in a spectacular dollhouse, chariots, dancers, spear bearers, and potentates in braided beards are framed betwixt potbellied columns. Atop them trumpet curly-trunked elephants, seated like corpulent Hollywood-style brokers at a banquet. Playful, punning, and still a sophisticated commentary, it is, like most of Red Grooms...
...Harm's Way. As a man adept at turning big brawny books into big brawny spectaculars, Producer-Director Otto Preminger (Exodus, The Cardinal) often makes ostentatious movies, but he almost never makes dull ones. This epic based on the novel by James Bassett is among Preminger's liveliest. Its clear, unequivocal message is that World War II was fought to make the world safe for wide-screen melodrama...
Gothic mystery, savage modern satire, heroic epic-Castle Keep interweaves all three to create a surreal small masterpiece about the horrors and grim humors...