Word: nottingham
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...SHERIFF OF NOTTINGHAM by Richard Kluger (Viking; $23). Robin Hood has only a minor role in this novel of 13th century England. The Sheriff, maligned by history and Hollywood, is shown to be a dutiful official confronting personal and moral dilemmas and the origins of constitutional government. A real parchment turner, richly imagined and beautifully written...
...Hollywood's hottest independent producer, to do some fine-tuning on his $57 million movie Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves when he felt that the editing left something to be desired. "I went in ((to the editing room)) with the smallest pocketknife," he explains figuratively. "The Sheriff of Nottingham's death scene was so prolonged it was almost comedic. I don't think you need to see a knife twisting 16 times in a guy's gullet. If you've got to kill him, kill him quickly and move on with the story...
...bustle of bodies and cameras produces congenial movie movement. Two of the actors carry this larkish spirit throughout the film. Geraldine McEwan, in devil-doll weeds, makes for a hilariously desiccated witch. And Alan Rickman, fairly drooling with delight at his own wickedness, plays the Sheriff of Nottingham as a vibrant cartoon villain: Snidely Whiplash rampant...
These performers are British; they were steeped from birth in high style and the seductive melody of theatrical rhetoric. But the leads -- Costner, Mastrantonio, Christian Slater as Will Scarlet, Micheal McShane as Friar Tuck, Morgan Freeman as a Moor displaced in Nottingham -- are all American, intoning flat varieties of American English. They sound like tourists stranded in Sherwood Forest. And they inadvertently give a new meaning to the story: now Robin and his band are vagrant colonials who save England from those who can actually speak the language...