So, when someone titles something The Idylls of the Queen and subtitles it “A Tale of Queen Guenevere,” I, uhm, expect the focus to be on Guenevere, not on Kay? Though, unlike the last time this happened to me, it was not all icky and traumatizing and was quite good! Also, uhm, I like Kay, and most authors these days either forget he exists, or ( Read more... )

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19 x Camelot (1967)
48 x First Knight
23 x Guinevere (1994)
33 x Knights of the Round Table
13 x Lancelot du Lac
75 x Merlin (1998)
59 x Mists of Avalon
38 x Tristan & Isolde (2006)


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So, would you believe that not only have I never seen the 1967 Camelot but have actually never heard a single song from the musical ( Read more... )

Actually, First Knight is a pretty decent movie, if you like this sort of thing, aside from the incredibly silly casting of Lancelot.  Not brilliant, but not awful either.  The movie, that is.  Really, I’m not sure if it’s the writing of Lancelot's character, or just the fact that I don’t like Richard Gere. I mean, I don’t remember who was big in ( Read more... )

Sword of the Rightful King is an Arthurian retelling that doesn’t so much retell as reinvent in a quasi-realistic way. Kind of like King Arthur if it were a lot better and still had some magic.

Set in post-Roman Britain, this starts after Arthur has already been king for several years, but has not yet been fully accepted. Among his chief opponents ( Read more... )

Today’s adventure into Arthuriana on film was Lovespell, a Tristan and Isolde movie from 1979 featuring Richard Burton as Mark. Which would probably explain why it sometimes felt more like a Mark movie.

It tries to be low scale and mythic at the same time, with mixed results. In particular, the low scale aspect makes some of the more melodramatic ( Read more... )

Recently, I watched the 50s series The Adventures of Sir Lancelot, which is essentially an adventurous romp that played up the romanticized ideas about knights and chivalry. For 50s TV, the sets and costuming are actually pretty good, and the Lancelot was probably the most likable one I’ve encountered. (Well, that really isn’t hard. So far, most ( Read more... )

Last week (or maybe the week before) I tried reading Rosalind Miles’s Isolde trilogy. I made it about 40 pages before I was overwhelmed by how all other women were lesser being than Isolde and how her mother hated her forever and was eternally jealous of Isolde’s youth and beauty. Oh, and Isolde was Christian, and so far better and more ( Read more... )

Way back in high school (well, 12 years, which is a relative “way back”) I watched the Merlin miniseries by Hallmark when it first aired and, uhm, loved it. I rewatched it this week and, well, wished I was still watching it as an only semi-critical theme ( Read more... )