The Man who killed Don Quixote

[Drunk Monk]

Twas gifted to me by my learned and judicious DOOM brother Bob knowing full well my fascination and delight of Dali, so learned the peculiar manner of which beguiled and inspired us both, entrusted me to examine this classic epic volume of knight errantry for the innocent pastime.  Upon my adventure to Spain, the first thing I did was to scour my library, now mostly in storage, for this exquisite volume that had lain time out of mind, carelessly accruing dust in a cardboard box, and began to peruse its pages in preparation for the journey, having only before sampled some of the yet for a humanities course at the university well over a quarter century prior.  Sadly, this literary expedition was embarked upon too late, for the many distractions of preparing for this Spain excursion were so overwhelming that little time could be allocated to the venerable volume and its marvelous sentence striation, so eloquent and verbose, mastodonian in weight and bearing, was so sufficiently arduous as to distract me from the verb by the time Cervantes's paragraph-long sentences realized their inevitable conclusion.  So the book lay dormant for many months after our return, despite its exuberant poetry and extraordinary illustrations, the like of which many I had never seen before, until such time as I had opportunity to read again for pleasure, ironically at the Zen monastery of Tassajara where the quixotic visions of Cervantes stand as the very antithesis of Zen, and yet, through the sheer genius of the author, some truth emerges about the plight of man and his madness and delusions.  The tale is compulsively tangential, often detouring into other tales told by supplementary and irrelevant characters with so little to do with the Knight of Woeful Figure beyond crossing paths; furthermore, the tale somewhat abruptly concludes after hundreds of pages with little resolution for poor Sancho Panza, the over loyal, folie à deux-ridden, yet cowardly servant.  And yet, it is an extraordinary read, couple with Dali's exquisite and scribblesome illustrations, that I cannot but express my sincerest and deepest gratitude for a gift given so many years ago form a very dear old friend.

[King Bob]

Forgot that I had given you that. In those days I think it may have been remaindered, but now copies are rare and it goes for $75 and up.

There is also a Dali illustrated version of Benvenuto Cellini's Autobiography FYI.

[Drunk Monk]

I know. I treasure that book. Reading it with the illustrations unlocked a lot. 

I was blown away by how much work Dali did that I had no idea about during my Spain trip. I would say that I was only aware of maybe half of his stuff. He was insanely prolific.

[Drunk Monk]

yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaasssssssssssssssss!

DECEMBER 17, 2018 12:52PM PT
Terry Gilliam’s ‘The Man Who Killed Don Quixote’ Bought for North America
By DAVE MCNARY
Dave McNary
Film Reporter@Variety_DMcNaryFOLLOW

[img=635x0]https://pmcvariety.files.wordpress.com/2018/09/the-man-who-killed-don-quixote.jpg?w=1000&h=563&crop=1[/img]
CREDIT: COURTESY OF AMAZON STUDIOS

Screen Media has bought North American rights to Terry Gilliam’s troubled “The Man Who Killed Don Quixote,” starring Adam Driver, Jonathan Pryce, Stellan Skarsgard, Olga Kurylenko, and Jordi Molla.
The film had its world premiere as the closing night film at Cannes 2018. Directed and written by Terry Gilliam, the film is co-written by Tony Grisoni and produced by Mariela Besuievsky, Amy Gilliam, Gerardo Herrero, and Gregoire Melin.
Amazon had been set to handle U.S. release of the film, which was embroiled in an ongoing legal dispute over its ownership, but backed out earlier this year. Gilliam started shooting the picture in 1998 with Jean Rochefort as Quixote and Johnny Depp playing a marketing executive who is sent back in time. But shooting stopped after Rochefort became ill and the film was riddled with financial difficulties and insurance problems.
The movie was the subject of a 2002 documentary “Lost in La Mancha.” The director tried to re-start the film at several different points with Robert Duvall, Michael Palin, John Hurt, Ewan McGregor, and Jack O’Connell all getting attached to the production and subsequently falling out.
Screen Media, in partnership with Fathom Events, is planning a national theatrical release for March. The deal was negotiated by Seth Needle at Screen Media with the filmmakers.
“Terry Gilliam is a true auteur and his latest film does not disappoint,” said David Fannon, president of Screen Media. “It is the perfect pairing of a film with a filmmaker, the story of Don Quixote, a man who believes in things that seemingly no one else believes in, until finally, they share his vision. Screen Media is thrilled that U.S. audiences will finally get to see Terry Gilliam’s quest.”
The film received mixed reviews from critics and achieved a 64% score on Rotten Tomatoes. Variety‘s Peter Debruge called it “lumbering” in his Cannes review.

[Drunk Monk]

The Man Who Killed Don Quixote

I'm biased.  I luv Gilliam's work almost as much as Greg luvs the MCU.  I'm not a fan of Adam Driver - he lost me with Star Wars, but won me back in this.  He was spot on.  I think I like his comic style best.  And Pryce, well, he still reminds me of ED, not so much here but there are moments, something in the expression in the eyes, recalls the mischievous ED of our youths.

But beyond that, this film starts slow and builds its Gilliamesque visions steadily until the end, where Terry falls somewhat victim to his own style.  It's a great take on Quixote - Terry really gets it - but it's lugubrious, and goes in some odd tangents, so much so that I'm not quite sure it all made logical sense in the end, but that didn't really matter given the message - the eternal universal of Quixote. This is not a masterpiece by any means, not even worthy of the quarter century battle.  It stands among one of Terry's lesser films, entertaining but not mind blowing.  Enjoyable tho, at least for me.  There were some very Pythonesque moments, and Terry's love for the fantastic comes barrelling through.  Shot in Spain and Portugal, there's some amazing castles. And nice to see a shout your to Michael Palin in the credits.  

And there are swordfights.

[Greg]

You would think with a twenty five year development schedule Terry Gilliam could have done a little more work on the story. But alas no. I've always argued, though, that Gilliam is better at visuals than he is at story telling. 

It's starts off fine with Kylo Ren directing a commercial in Spain. He's an arrogant fool who hates the project he's working on. Basically they are doing something with Don Quixote and they are tilting at windmills surrounded by a modern wind farm and it's windmills. At first I thought it was going to be an insightful take on creativity and film making so I got kind of excited. Then I realized it was going to be a growth story as Kylo learns to be a better person. But he's a douche throughout the film, so that wasn't it.

Maybe if I knew the story of Don Quixote better the film would have made more sense. But it's mostly Quixote running around with Kylo Ren and Kylo telling Don he is not Sancho. And he does call him Don a lot which is odd, because isn't Don a title like Lord or Sir?

I would also hope for better visuals out of Gillaim but there wasn't anything too fantastic. He did like blur the line between what is real and what is fantasy and then he would make the fantasy being the reality. It wasn't very well accomplished.