King Arthur

Action-adventure (July 7) Touchstone Pictures With: Clive Owen, Keira Knightley, Stellan Skarsgard, Stephen Dillane, Ray Winstone, Hugh Dancy, Til Schweiger, Ioan Gruffudd The idea: The reluctant ruler teams with the Knights of the Round Table, Merlin and Guinevere to lead Britain into a new age.

Behind the action of Simon Armitage's marvelous translation of the Middle English epic "The Death of King Arthur" (W.W. Norton: 306 pp., $26.95), there's an unmistakable mood of bitterness. It has nothing to do with Arthur's fate -- yes, there's plenty of bitter sorrow after Arthur's last battle against Mordred, but that's not what I'm talking about. There's another, different bitterness here that belongs to the anonymous maker of this poem, which appeared long before Thomas Malory ever celebrated the legendary warrior-king in his prose "Le Morte D'Arthur.

Buttermilk powder used to be available on supermarket shelves, but for some inexplicable reason it's now as difficult to come by as a box of kosher salt. Liquid buttermilk is readily available in supermarkets, but who wants to buy a quart of it just to bake a few biscuits? Thanks to King Arthur, America's oldest flour company, biscuit-making can be as simple as it used to be.

There may be a more congenial spot for happily-ever-aftering than Royce Hall, where the national tour of "Camelot" rematerialized Wednesday. It's not the venue's fault. This revised incarnation of Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe's 1960 musical addresses some contradictions that its La Mirada premiere revealed in January, yet paradoxes linger. Certain oddities in Michael A.M. Lerner and director Glenn Casale's staging of this unkempt classic are now less glaring.

On a sunny day in the San Fernando Valley a nervous 14-year-old, Calvin Fuller (Thomas Ian Nicholas), steps up to bat and strikes out. Suddenly, an earthquake hits and a fissure opens up in the ground, with Calvin falling into the void only to plop down in a 12th-Century English countryside.

Camelot is alive and well, tucked away among the ancient hills and jagged cliffs of Cornwall. The magic has been enshrined in Tintagel, a coastal village 275 miles southwest of London in a setting so enchanting that it might have been designed for the artist's palette or the photographer's lens. But to attract a steady, year-round stream of visitors, Tintagel relies not on nature but on romance.

What's next, "The Sword and the Skateboard"? The hottest hero in Hollywood this season appears to be King Arthur. At least 10 studio projects are being developed around Arthur and his knights of the Round Table. "I think it's everybody's fantasy to be a king and there's a tremendous interest in King Arthur," says former Hollywood Pictures executive Andrew Z. Davis, explaining His Majesty's sudden popularity.

A ruined castle in wind-swept northern England may mark the birthplace of King Arthur, its owner believes. Farmer Raven Frankland has spent almost 30 years painstakingly restoring Pendragon Castle since buying it at auction for a bargain price in 1963. Amid the tangle of fact and myth surrounding Arthur, he believes Pendragon's claim to the legend is as strong as anywhere else. "It's the legendary home of Uther Pendragon, father of King Arthur," Frankland said.

With all the patience of an archeologist excavating an ancient site, writer Norma Lorre Goodrich spent years unearthing the story of King Arthur. For centuries the story was thought to be a fable, with British roots and a powerful appeal to generations. But beneath the legend of Camelot and Queen Guinevere, the Knights of the Round Table and Lancelot, Goodrich discovered what she called the true story: King Arthur was not a myth but an actual person, born to a royal family.

What someone once called the Arthur Industry goes on, riddling its riddles, presenting myriad solutions, selling books. Unlike two other recent Camelotian exercises, Norma Lorne Goodrich's philological "King Arthur" (Franklin Watts, 1986) and Geoffrey Ashe's archeological "The Discovery of King Arthur" (Anchor/Doubleday, 1985), Richard Barber's slim work isn't theoretical but summary.

IT'S a dark and crowded theater in New York. The curtain has only been up five minutes, and Steve Wynn, the billionaire owner of the Wynn Las Vegas hotel, leans in, grips my knee and whispers in my ear: "Eric," he says, "this will be great in Las Vegas." "Yes," I say, "it will." Then I realize, slightly disappointedly, he means "Spamalot." My future as a billionaire's date is still up for grabs. "Can I give you a ride home?" he asks nicely. I'm thinking 6th Avenue, but he means L.A. Well, OK.

Something strange happened to this critic's ears on the journey home from this weekend's Arthur Nights concerts at the Palace Theatre downtown: they pricked up. Every song flowing out of the car radio sounded fresh and full of potential. Forty acts sampled over three long evenings should have produced exhaustion, but instead the pageant was restorative, thanks to music that kept raising questions about what it means to make music at all.

With all the patience of an archeologist excavating an ancient site, writer Norma Lorre Goodrich spent years unearthing the story of King Arthur. For centuries the story was thought to be a fable, with British roots and a powerful appeal to generations. But beneath the legend of Camelot and Queen Guinevere, the Knights of the Round Table and Lancelot, Goodrich discovered what she called the true story: King Arthur was not a myth but an actual person, born to a royal family.

DOWN through the centuries, the legend of those bygone days when knighthood was in flower has maintained an enduring hold on the imagination. King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table have been the subjects of countless poems, stories and novels. Tennyson's exquisite "Idylls of the King" and William Morris' powerfully dramatic "The Defence of Guenevere" are among the greatest of the Victorian poetic re-envisionings of the story, while the 20th century gave us T.H.

Those big screens at the Hollywood Bowl have rarely felt so organic to the hillside amphitheater as they did Sunday night, when they blazed with a live feed of Jeremy Irons portraying a king given to soul-stirring speeches. The well-regarded movie actor headlined a one-night-only presentation of "Camelot" that also benefited from the reunion of key talents from the Bowl performance two years ago of another Alan Jay Lerner-Frederick Loewe musical, "My Fair Lady."

It might be an experience British actor Jeremy Irons would just as soon forget: bluffing his way through a mid-'80s performance in London as "My Fair Lady's" Henry Higgins, with conductor John Mauceri feeding him his lines onstage. Mauceri, conductor of the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, recounted this tale of theatrical woe the other day during a break from rehearsing the musical "Camelot," which will open and close Sunday night at the Bowl and star Irons as King Arthur.

The legendary King Arthur and his wizard Merlin actually existed, two recent books suggest, although much earlier and in far different form than in medieval romances about Camelot and the Round Table. "The Discovery of King Arthur," by Geoffrey Ashe, contends that Arthur was in reality a king called Riothamus, who is known to have ruled the British and campaigned on the European continent in the middle of the 5th Century, 50 years after the Romans left the British Isles.

This fall, the Family Channel will premiere its 26-episode animated series "The Legend of King Arthur," featuring the voices of Robby Benson, Efrem Zimbalist Jr. and Tim Curry. Also: Family Channel's original series, "The Adventures of the Black Stallion," "Big Brother Jake," "Maniac Mansion," "Rin Tin Tin K-9 Cop" and "Zorro," have been renewed for the fall. Showtime has ordered 13 additional episodes of its wacky comedy series "Super Dave," in its fourth season on the cable network.