The Latest(ish)
Boston, Mass.—It was, said U.S. District Judge Douglas P. Woodlock, a man who has, quite obviously, never seen the inside of a Manhattan apartment, a “grim, mean and oppressive space,” but, on a sunny Thursday afternoon, the fenced-in “cage” designed to hold demonstrators protesting at the Democratic National Convention (or, at least, haranguing the delegates as they go to and fro) is practically empty. “Pens are for animals,” say the signs, but this is the pen of a Kentucky Fried Chicken’s dreams, airy, spacious, an acre to roam where, what’s more, the human inhabitants are, I suspect, almost all vegetarians. [...]
Cage Heat
July 30, 2004
You would need to have a heart of stone to leave out the stone, but that’s just what the team behind King Arthur has done. In a year of a Troy without Zeus, Antoine Fuqua has directed a King Arthur without the Lady of the Lake, Uther Pendragon, Morgana la Fey, Mordred, the Holy Grail, Camelot, Avalon, or, yes, even a stone. Not even a pebble. The rationale? Well, this new Arthur, the Roman-British Lucius Artorius Castus, complete with a glum band of Sarmatian knights (a bunch of foreigners—this Brit notes) is, supposedly, the real deal. His is the story [...]
A Very Contemporary King
July 23, 2004
King Arthur; published originally in National Review Online
Do you remember Brian, Brian Cohen? Yes, that Brian. You know, Monty Python’s Brian, Life of. Well, 25 years on, he’s back—back for his Second Coming. It has been a sly, mocking resurrection, a manifestation confined to a limited number of movie theaters, all timed to take advantage of (a little) this vintage comedy’s quarter century and (a lot) Mel Gibson’s startlingly savaged Savior. The Pythons themselves have been characteristically reticent about the timing of the film’s re-release. Coyly, its director, Terry Jones, merely told the press that it was “just a piece of shameless commercial opportunism on our part. [...]
Brian’s Back
July 1, 2004
Life of Brian; published originally in National Review Online