Sometime in the middle of the first season of The Tudors we added A Man for All Seasons to our movie queue. This is the “classic” account of the confrontation between Sir Thomas More and Henry VIII, and won Academy Awards for best picture of 1966, best director (Fred Zinnemann), best adapted screenplay (Robert Bolt, from his play), and best actor (Paul Scofield as More). We watched it a couple nights ago. It's quite a wonderful movie. A gigantic and pasty Orson Welles has some early scenes as Cardinal Wolsey, Robert Shaw has one vibrant and tumultuous scene as Henry VIII, Wendy (“I'm a good girl I am”) Hiller played Thomas More's wife, and Susannah York played his daughter. The young John Hurt is almost unrecognizable in a pivotal role as court weasel, and who else could do a cameo of Anne Boleyn but Vanessa Redgrave? At one point I felt that this portrayal of the battle between principles and political expediency was really about the growing public opposition to the war in Vietnam. But Read More...