"KEEP BUSTIN'."

Posts Tagged ‘Ben Cross’

Exorcist: The Beginning

Tuesday, October 10th, 2023

At the turn of the century, as we discussed yesterday, Morgan Creek set out to make a prequel to THE EXORCIST, and wound up making two of them instead. We already took a look at Paul Schrader’s DOMINION: PREQUEL TO THE EXORCIST, the first one made, but initially shelved by the studio. When they test screened it they were so unhappy they decided rather than trying to salvage it with reshoots and recuts they would build a church on top of it and bury the church, by which I mean hire Renny Harlin (A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 4: THE DREAM MASTER) to start over.

The script was heavily rewritten by Alexi Hawley (a first timer who has since written for TV shows such as The Following, Castle and The Recruit), but it’s still about Father Merrin uncovering an early Christian church found mysteriously buried in the Turkana district of Kenya. Stellan Skarsgård continued, as he put it in an intro for the premiere of Schrader’s version, “carrying the cross for Merrin for another year.” And Julian Wadham and Ralph Brown will later show up as Major Granville and Sergeant Major. But Father Francis is now played by James D’Arcy (HITCHCOCK, OPPENHEIMER), and Clara Bellar’s Dr. Rachel Lesno has been replaced by Izabella Scorupco (GOLDENEYE) as Dr. Sarah Novak, so even when Skarsgård’s dialogue is the same he had to refilm. (read the rest of this shit…)

First Knight

Tuesday, July 7th, 2015

tn_firstknight

RELEASE DATE: July 7
RELEASE DATE: July 7

FIRST KNIGHT is a movie I never would’ve watched without an excuse like this series, but it’s not bad. Directed by AIRPLANE!’s Jerry Zucker (his followup to NAKED GUN 2 1/2, but not his first serious movie, having already done GHOST), it’s basically a love triangle between King Arthur (Sean Connery), Sir Lancelot (Richard Gere) and Guinevere (Julia Ormond). Connery and Gere play two different types of handsome while Ormond makes the movie with a more human, layered portrayal.

The story begins with Lancelot, a dreamy, long-haired drifter going from town to town showing off in sword-fighting demos. His path happens to cross young Queen Guinevere’s when her caravan is ambushed on the way to Camelot to marry King Arthur. So he rescues her.

Before he disappears he plants a kiss on her, and she’s got that BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY look of suppressed lust on her face, but she tells him to cool it, she’s engaged. And when she gets to Camelot we see that she’s not just being chaste, she really does love Arthur. Yeah, it’s an arranged marriage, and he’s old enough to be her ancestor, but in his defense he does give her a sincere opportunity to back out, pledging to defend her kingdom of Lyonnesse regardless of marital arrangements. You want him to be a sleazy old bastard so you can root for her to kick him to the medieval equivalent of a curb, but he keeps being a gentleman, god damn it. She tells him she’s not gonna back out, she really wants to marry him, and she seems to know what she’s doing. (read the rest of this shit…)