Movies, Literature and Art

Mountains of the Moon | Prose | Poetry | Art

Mountains of the Moon

Amazon. Mountains of the Moon, VHS also available on DVD. (Both are quite cheap, actually.)

Film.com, "Rafelson's big 'mountain' keys on characters" by John Hartl.

"Rafelson's one failing is that he never makes the environment a central character, as Lean did in Lawrence. It might have helped if he had shot the picture in a wide-screen format, but he's more attracted to the psychological terrain (his previous pictures include the introspective Five Easy Pieces and The King of Marvin Gardens). Occasionally Michael Small's music props up what should be the big visual moments, inflating them beyond their value."

Deseret News, Chris Hicks. Three stars.

"It's not fair, I know, but when 'Mountains of the Moon' concluded, it occurred to me that David Lean could have made a magnificent epic from this material."

"Mountains of the Moon Reaches into the Past -- and Misses" The Tech [MIT school paper] by Manavendra K. Thakur.

Hamilton City (New Zealand) reviewer Dr Richard Swainson gives the top 100 movies of the 1990s brief reviews. (Mountains... gets #94)

Kathy Amen (homepage/personal). She gives it four stars.

"Both the difficult adventures in Africa (illness, hostile natives, inhospitable countryside, ancient tribal conflicts) and the occasionally equally hostile environment in England are given superb treatment by the production design and special effects departments. The excellence of this technical side of the picture, plus the unfamiliar faces of the actors, makes Mountains of the Moon seem almost like a documentary."

Web Archive: The 1999 Aspen Film Festival rescreened the Mountains of the Moon

Prose

William Neal Harrison papers. Information on the papers of the author who wrote Burton and Speke. At the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville.

Poetry

Web Archive: Poetry by G.M. Fitzsimmons.

The poet-explorer / Robert Burton / reminds me of my / youth - / walking tall in my / smiles and / swaggering between / the terms / "faggot" and / "bastard". / Captain Burton is / the Eye in the / Masonic Pyramid, / the tip of the / cock, / the sharp voice / of a castrado.

Art

Four portraits of Burton (Edwards, Lord Leighton, Collier and Carlo Pellegrini) from the National Portrait Gallery.

Burton's Kama Sutra "being copied onto large sheets of paper, along with illuminations to create a single tome, or contemporary illuminated manuscript" by Brainard Carey, an East Village artist.