Tagged: Film

Theatrical Thursday – Excalibur, 1981.

Director – John Boorman, 1981

Below is a clip depicting the knighting of Arthur; if you’re a fan of Richard Wagner (my favorite composer), note the very Wagner heavy score.

Below is a fan made trailer, which does quite an effective job evoking the power and mystique of the film:

Musical Snapshot – John Barry – English Composer

It has been said (and can succinctly be argued) that a film’s score can sell a scene as good as (and often better than) any actor, as the musical components tend to lend a cinematic depth that can reveal much more than pure dialogue alone.  A memorable film score can provide an added edge that can ‘make or break’ a scene, accentuate an actor’s delivery, and suffuse a character with layers that would otherwise largely go unnoticed without an aural connection.

John Barry, English composer, was a master at capturing the galactic grandeur of a Main Title, one who understood the inestimable power of understated simplicity, and possessed the skill to craft three dimensional progression throughout the course of his tunes.  The timeless elegance that accompanies his work hearkens back to the old Hollywood theme of big scores, big instrumentation, and big musical personality, all tidied up and packaged into a tightly orchestrated, multi-layered track.  John Barry, a composer whose vibrant, melodic pieces reveal a magnitude that digs straight to the heart of a script, and whose tunes resonate magically with any dialogue.

Indecent Proposal – Indecent Proposal –

Dances with Wolves – John Dunbar Theme –

Dances with Wolves – The Love Theme –

Dances with Wolves – Kicking Bird’s Gift –

Dances with Wolves – Farewell and End Title –

Dances with Wolves – The Buffalo Hunt –

Dances with Wolves – Rescue of Dances with Wolves –

The Scarlet Letter – The Love Theme –

My Life – End Title –

Night Games – Descent Into Decadence –

The Black Hole – Overture –

The Black Hole – End Title –

Out of Africa – Main Title –

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service – Main Theme –

Bad Accents – Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991).

Hollywood has long been accent confused; the mere hint of an accent is meant to suffice for any nationality on Earth.  Britons generally serve as the universal go to voice for any global race, as Britons have systematically portrayed German Nazis (Valkyrie, The Eagle Has Landed), Vikings (The 13th Warrior), and most recently North Africans/Egyptians (Exodus: God and Kings).  We are forced and made to believe that any accent is better than no accent at all, an absurdly pervasive premise that is shoved down our movie going throats on a regular basis.  It hearkens back to the days of ingorance when Laurence Olivier and Constantin Stanislavski portrayed the Moorish character Othello, and the screen was full of white men and women masquerading as Asians and Native Americans (such as Stephen Macht as Heavy Eagle in The Mountain Men), and every other non white ethnicity on the planet.  Only in the very recent modern times have ethnicities been able to…shocker…portray themselves.

A classic example of accent forgiveness is Kevin Costner in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Costner’s 1991 take on the legendary English tale.  As is commonly known, Robin Hood was the fabled English outlaw of Sherwood Forest who challenged the evil authority of the Sheriff of Nottingham, robbing from the rich and winning the hearts of the poor on his way to literary glory.  It would be assumed that, portraying such a well known figure of English lore, either an Englishman would assume the role, or someone that was adequately capable of producing the necessary English-ness that would make believers out of even the most discerning viewers.  Instead, we got Kevin in his most typical All-American self, with zero (and I mean zero) hint of credibility that he is the famous English longbowman who made the forest of Sherwood his bitch.  We got Robin of Cincinnati, who sticks out like a sore thumb as the only one sounding like he’s from Akron, Ohio while being surrounded by a largely British cast.  Even Morgan Freeman got his Moor on, while Christian Slater and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio sufficiently mustered thinly veiled European impressions.  I remember seeing this film in the theater as a kid, and even then thinking “what the hell”.  Behold, Robin of Montana in all his American splendor.

Wisely, they kept the original trailer dialogue free, which deftly concealed his distinct American-ness.  This wordless 2 minutes of trailer quite effectively duped the public: