Halls of the Dark Muse

I recently started watching the new series Camelot, just finished Disc one of the first season today. As many may know from prior posts I am a huge fan of Arthurian Legend, and I have to say I find the show to be completely captivating. I cannot quite put my finger on what it is about it, but it is just so well put together, and action packed, it seems every episode ends on a climax, you cannot wait to see what happens next. If it had the entire season (I am watching them via Netflex so have to wait to send this one back to get the next one) I could just about watch the entire season in one sitting.

I love the portrayal of Merlin in the show, one the one hand he is a but unconventional and not quite what you would expect, or the traditional old wizard type figure, but on the other hand it still holds true to the essence of Merlin. He reminds me a bit of how Merlin is portrayed in the Mary Stewart King Arthur series. And Morgan is just fantastic, they are presently my two favorite characters and I love the dynamic in their interactions with each other.

Have not yet met all of the knights of the round table, but Gwain was recently introduced and he is pretty cool. The one major complaint I have is I do not think the Arthur character is very buyable, I think it was bad casting there. They were obviously trying to make him appeal to women (particularly younger women) viewers, but he seems to weak and kind of a young punk and too scrawny. I think Morgan would be able to kick his *** without even having to use magic.

Also though I know the show wants to be sexy, and appeal to a modern, young (relatively speaking) audience but I do not find the character of Geneivere very believable either. She comes across as too modern, feisty, and outspoken. She does not even really feel like she fits into the time period. It is as if they just took the two main characters to use as lures for the Twilight audience, but the rest of the characters are for more realistic, and better developed.

I also just watched the move Sucker Punch, which I thought was awesome. The basic of the movie is that a girl attempts to shoot her cruel step-father and ends up being placed into a mental institution run by a crooked doctor, and so to escape she creates this fantasy world for herself in which she is in control, and has power and is on a quest to find her freedom. And it is really cool because there is actually a fantasy within a fantasy. In her fantasy world, she creates yet another fantasy. And she takes things and people from the real world and weaves them into her fantasy. I love things which bend reality and questions are perceptions of the world and what in fact is really "real."