Word: grails
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Still, Boorman provides some dazzling images: Uther riding across a sea of dragon's breath: a bizarre scene that crosscuts an act of adultery with the gruesome death of the betrayed husband: Perceval, hanging, nearly dead, as his Other Self reaches for the Holy Grail. Alex Thompson's garish cinematography gives every scene a fantastical fiery glow and Anthony Praff's production design is, by inappropriate turns, marvelous and ridiculous. For instance, most of his medieval castles have a finely detailed primordial look, but his contrast to these palaces, the new and civilized Camelot, is a high-tech Xanadu full...
...pacing remains erratic for the next two hours. Boorman gives us almost the entire legend: young Arthur's gaining Excalibur: Merlin's education of the young king: Arthur's courting of Guenevere: the establishment of Camelot: the love triangle of Arthur. Guenevere, and Lancelot: the search for the Holy Grail: the power struggle between Arthur and his half-brother/son (through incest) Mordred. Alas, the film stumbles between episodes, failing to connect the careful pattern of events coherently. The numerous battle scenes--exciting, if a bit gratuitously gory--always run too long. Even the tone of the film vacilates between...
Boorman set himself a task only slightly less daunting than the search for the Holy Grail: to tell, in 140 minutes, the epic of Arthur, Guenevere and the Knights of the Round Table. He has a millennium of tough acts to follow: Malory and Tennyson and Tolkien, Wagner and Lerner and Loewe. On screen in the '70s, George Lucas set the story in space (Star Wars); Robert Bresson made it austere (Lancelot of the Lake), and six English cutups made it funny (Monty Python and the Holy Grail) But Boorman has never been cowed by precedent or expectations...
...Pudding Show plot, which--no matter where or when it is set--always seems to come out the same: wicked, chesty baritone schemes to murder or domineer others as air-head, goldilocks daughter falls in love with dim-wit tenor. Serfs Up!'s Monty-Python-and-the-Holy-Grail setting--with dozens of "thou's" thrown in--provides plenty of comic soil for puns to take root in; but it doesn't materially affect the stock Pudding plot--even if there is a peasant revolution, nasal lords and ladies, smelly peasants, and a trio of disco-dancing suits of armor...
Many junior faculty at Harvard and elsewhere succumb to the same pressures as Klein's students, in search not of grades but of the elusive academic grail, tenure. Klein insists it's not a trap she will let herself fall into; ask her about her chances for tenure, and she will reply: "Zero. I don't think I could take any other kind of perspective on it. My way of coping with this place is to really work on developing the very best record that I possibly can so that when my tenure decision comes up I will be able...