Word: sword
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...these satellite attractions, kitsch battles ferociously with schlock, and the two styles often end up married. Kitsch: Medieval Times, a dinner theater that combines the art of knightly jousting with the bloodlust of pro wrestling. As the Red Knight attacks Blue with his mace and Blue responds with his sword, a spectator cries out, "Your mutha wears chain mail!" Schlock: Gatorland Zoo with its Gator Jumparoo show, in which thousand-pound alligators lurch out of the water to snap their jaws around dead chickens suspended from a wire. For connoisseurs of arcane Americana, the Orlando area also offers an Alligatorland...
...forerunner of the modern public relations man. From touting others, he has turned to writing his own epic tragedy, The Spanish Armada. At a rehearsal, everything goes wrong. The actors drop whole swatches of dialogue as turgid and unplayable. The bit players upstage the leads, who swat them. A sword fight is a model of slapstick ineptitude. A Minister of State (Petherbridge) comes out, stares at the audience long and balefully, and departs; he is, Mr. Puff explains, contemplating politics but discreetly not discussing it. When at last the battle with the armada unfolds, it is a clash between...
Along time ago, in a conference room far, far away . . . it was ordained that sword-and-sorcery movies would be the Next Big Thing. Just imagine crossing the fantasy worlds of J.R.R. Tolkien and George Lucas! Mythic reverberations! Megabucks! Didn't work. The crossbreeding produced curious offspring: the low- birth-weight Dragonslayer, the gnarled Krull, the sepulchral The Keep. Most 1980s moviegoers found the landscapes of these films too remote, the quests too familiar, the special effects too rudimentary--no laser blades here, just an endless arsenal of singing swords. Nor did the heroes and heroines of these chivalrous tales...
...title implies, this movie is a generic myth constructed from a whole slew of great tales of yesterday, you, far away and thither. Playing on an anticipation of the viewer's weak memory, Legend offers us a couple of migrant dwarves straight from Middle Earth, a little-used golden sword on loan from King Arthur, a satanic but tender-hearted Evil (Tim Curry) lifted from Goethe, an outdoorsy-type hero borrowed from Edgar Rice Borroughs (Cruise), a couple of white unicorns stolen from the planet of Pern and a fairy queen cloned from Tinkerbell. Now, 'tis true that...
...Sixth Fleet. Uncle Sam spoke loudly, vowing vengeance, then raised his big stick. Given the dangers posed by terrorism, such a response was understandable, even justified. Then, at least for a moment, came an eerie pantomime of waiting and hesitation. Given the risks involved, the fact that the sword of vengeance cannot always be swift was also understandable, also justified...