The Green Knight
Bringing arthouse cool to Arthurian myth, David Lowery’s fantasy promises another unexpected cinematic trip
YOU ALWAYS KNOW what to expect from David Lowery. Which is to say, you never know what to expect. The Green Knight takes the ancient legend of gallant medieval hero Sir Gawain (played here by Dev Patel) and lends it a strange, artful quality, as our exclusive pic attests. It’s a handbrake turn from his last film, the gentle caper The Old Man And The Gun; or the film before that, his minimalist existential drama A Ghost Story. Or before that, cuddly Disney adventure Pete’s Dragon. With Lowery, expect only the unexpected. THE GREEN KNIGHT IS IN CINEMAS FROM 6 AUGUST
Middle-earth is going anime. The recently announced The Lord Of The Rings: The War Of The Rohirrim will tell the story of Helm Hammerhand and the fortress of Helm’s Deep, set 250 years prior to the main trilogy. Animation is not a new medium for the franchise — the legendary Ralph Bakshi was the first to adapt J.R.R. Tolkien’s much venerated story in 1978. But while there’s plenty of overlap, there are also pronounced differences between the narrative and aesthetic priorities of Western animation and anime. The most exciting news is that the film will be directed by Kenji Kamiyama, best known for his work on anime series Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex. Based on the same source material as the film, the show is equally worthy of praise for its emotional and rhetorical sophistication and incredible craft (plus a timeless soundtrack from Cowboy Bebop’s Yoko Kanno). Kamiyama tends to attract fascinating talent to his projects — it’s likely that War Of The Rohirrim will do the same. Not only does Kamiyama’s helming of the project represent a rare chance for international perspectives on the series and its rich mythos, but there’s an inherent control and flexibility to animation that live action simply can’t match. Anime often flaunts visual freedom in ways that Western animation studios still take notes from. LOTR could use that imagination, especially after The Hobbit, which watered down the texture of the original with overabundant CGI. War Of The Rohirrim is the chance for a clean slate; set against the billion-dollar live-action series, this promises to be something totally unique.