Byzantium's Shores: chronicling the misadventures of an overalls-clad hippie

I checked the DVD of Camelot out of the library last week, and on Saturday night I watched about half of it.

Now, Camelot has never been my favorite musical. Despite the wonderful songs (as if anything less could ever be expected of Lerner and Loewe), the King Arthur story needs a lot more space than is available in just about any movie. I don't think the definitive filmed version of the Arthurian matter yet exists, although John Boorman's Excalibur comes reasonably close. (I also admire the telefilm Merlin from a few years back, but it doesn't specifically tell the Arthurian story, so it can take liberties as it needs.)

But now, oh my God, Camelot is almost unwatchable. I couldn't believe my eyes. I mean, I always thought the dialog was clunky, but now I think it's just awful. And the casting is staggeringly bad -- Vanessa Redgrave as Guinivere is abominable, and watching Franco Nero perform Lancelot's songs had me reaching for the remote. (Thank God they dubbed his singing. Otherwise I might have done myself in.) Richard Harris is the only good thing about this movie, but even he suffers a bit. I've never been able to really wrap my head around the idea of King Arthur as the well-meaning boob.

I'm just amazed at this movie. Really.

(While I'm on the subject of Arthurian movies, I listened to the score of First Knight the other day. That was a bad movie, too, but it at least tried something interesting with having Lancelot not be this perfect guy tempted by nasty Guinivere. As for the score, well -- it's by Jerry Goldsmith, which means that by definition it's hailed as a masterpiece in film music fandom circles. And for the life of me, I can't understand why. It's competent, but not particularly distinguished, epic music. It really doesn't sound like anything grander or better than any other epic music Goldsmith has done in the last fifteen years or so, and it's not remotely as good as his classic works such as The Wind and the Lion. I think this is more an example of the "Jerry Factor" -- the tendency of any Goldsmith score to be elevated to classic status by virtue of its being composed by Goldsmith -- than anything else.)