The Not-So-Evil Empire
My movie theater of choice is the AMC Empire 25 on 42nd Street near 8th Avenue. Why? If you sign up for a MovieWatcher card you can reserve tickets on line with no fee. And there are gifts associated with a certain number of tickets: free popcorn, free drink, free ticket, and free night at the movies (all three). Today I earned a free ticket. Also, showtimes before noon are $6, no matter what your age, every day of the week.
Robin Hood, the Prequel
I'm a Robin Hood freak, what can I say. I have all the versions released on DVD, including the silent version, and The Adventures of Robin Hood on Blu-ray, one of the magical three-strip Technicolor films that also include Gone with the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, The Red Shoes, and The Black Narcissus. I watched the black and white Richard Greene series on TV when I was a kid, and purchased the U.K. version of it on DVD because, according to Amazon comments, it is less cobbled together than the U.S. version. But my favorite series with the hooded man is Robin of Sherwood, the Goldcrest/Samuel Goldwyn version starring Michael Praed (Series 1) and then Jason Connery (Series 2), Sean's son. Praed moved through Sherwood like a feral cat, and Marian (Judi Trott), with her strawberry blond hair, was truly a vision. The great Ray Winstone was a perfect Will Scarlet, and the late Robert Addie played a comical Guy of Gisbourne. In fact, the whole damn cast was perfect. When Praed moved to the U.S. to star in Falcon Crest, a blond Jason Connery replaced him. Connery was less charismatic than Praed, but adequate, and he kept Robin of Sherwood on the air.
Another reason I was drawn to Robin of Sherwood was that the Irish folk-rock group Clannad created the themes of the soundtrack. The calling card for their work here was their album Magical Ring, which included a movie theme they had written for a film called Harry's Game. That song caused Bono of U2 to pull his hearse to the side of the road because he was overcome by its beauty. I had the same experience with a car full of students years ago when I was asked to pull over so they could hear it better. The Robin of Sherwood soundtrack was a big hit for Clannad. In the days of LPs and cassette tapes I used some soundtrack tracks to fill out the side of the tape of the short Magical Ring LP.
More recently the BBC brought Robin Hood back for three seasons in a high definition series with a bearded Jonas Armstrong in the title role. Since England is short on black forests these days, Armstrong and his more-crazy-than-merry men roamed through Hungarian forests, and the extras in the villages looked terribly Slavic. The first season was good, and available in Blu-ray, but Friar Tuck was AWOL from the beginning. Richard Armitage played a nasty Guy of Gisbourne, and Keith Allen played a diabolical Sheriff of Nottingham. But when Marian (Lucy Griffiths) wanted to leave the series after Season 2, they had to kill her off, presenting a rather major problem for both Robin and the BBC. It did not survive Season 3.
Hollywood has not done as well as Robin's homeland in honoring his legacy. In the Kevin Costner version of the myth, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Robin passed from the white cliffs of Dover to Hadrian's wall in a short walk. And Costner made no effort to conceal his American accent. Morgan Freeman showed up as Azeem, a Muslim—a role that had no precedent before the assassin-turned-ally Nasir in Robin of Sherwood. Robin Hood: Men in Tights does not bear serious mention. Robin Hood is a serious topic! Mel Brooks would never understand!
Which brings us, finally, to the Ridley Scott-Russell Crowe Robin Hood epic currently in theaters, which I witnessed myself today. At 46, Crowe is the oldest gent ever to play Robin. Even Sean Connery was a bit younger when he reprised Robin in his senior years in the Richard Lester film Robin and Marian, with Audrey Hepburn. According to Entertainment Weekly, Mr. Crowe lost weight and buffed up for the role, but he lacks any definition and looks his age. His "merry men" are just fellow archers in King Richard's army. Will Scarlet has red hair (a first!). Little John is tall (not new!). And Alan-A-Dale does sing songs and play the lute. But all the action takes place before Robin takes refuge in Sherwood. So Little John does not battle Robin with staves, and Friar Tuck does not carry him across a stream. Robin himself is Robin Longstride, son of a mason, not from Locksley/Loxley, and not named Locksley/Loxley, until he assumes the identity of Marian's (Cate Blanchett) deceased husband, Robert Loxley, at the suggestion of her father, Sir Walter (Max von Sydow). The only inspired casting in this Robin Hood is Mark Addy as the bee-keeping, mead-drinking Friar Tuck. And maybe Will Scarlet as a redhead. Avatar did a lot more with two and a half hours of your time than Ridley Scott does, though Entertainment Weekly gave the film a C-.
I might go with a C or C+. The 2.5 hours do not pass as quickly as they do in Avatar, but it is obvious that a lot of money was spent on the film. It was filmed in the British Isles, even if a gray cliff-lined beach in Wales has to pass for the white cliffs of Dover, and until the English greenwood is trampled into muddy oblivion. But it is hard to get used to a salt-and-pepper bearded, gray-backed gorilla of a Robin. At some point soon I will get my Acorn Media DVDs of Robin of Sherwood out to reset the clock back to the real Robin, circa 1983.
Kick-Ass Kicks Ass
Mark Strong is the perfect "baddy." He was a baddy in the recent Sherlock Holmes and also in the present Robin Hood. And he is a baddy daddy in Kick-Ass, too. Today I sat through four hours of Mark Strong and lived to tell about it. Right here.
I really liked the Kick-Ass film. A had never heard of Aaron Johnson, the lead, playing Dave Lizewski. I was surprised to learn, via IMdB.com, that he is English, and that he is not yet 20, so he made a more believable high school student than Russell Crowe did a Robin Hood. His girlfriend, Katie (Lyndsy Fonseca), was also unknown to me, but I really liked her. Nicolas Cage has his best role in many years, and makes the most of it. The rating is an R, probably because of the BLOOD, the masturbation jokes—"When my hormones clear up, stock in Kleenex will drop like a stone," says our hero as he tosses a second handful into a wire wastebasket—and the sex he has with Katie hoisted waist high, bouncing on a handrail outside a restaurant, after he finally gets around to tell her that he is not gay. Did I mention the BLOOD!
In Yorkshire Brit-speak, the initial Dave would be described as "gormless" = lacking intelligence and vitality; dull. But Dave redeems himself nicely in the end. I can see why both Johnson and Fonseca have signed up for a 2012 sequel. (Hopefully the world will not run out of Kleenex in the meantime.) I plan on being in the audience in 2012.
A little research about Mr. Johnson revealed that the 19 year old got the 42 year old director, Sam Taylor Wood, of an earlier film, Nowhere Boy (2009), pregnant. Looks like he's trying to follow the career path of Ashton Kutcher. But Ms. Taylor Wood is not Demi Moore.
P.S.: From a quick search it appears that Lizewski is a real Polish surname. I am sure that, other than the Kick-Ass film Lizewski family, the rest pronounce it "Li-SHEFF-ski" not "Li-ZOO-ski."
