Plautus
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Posts posted by Plautus
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Rex Harrison was my favorite Caesar too.
But if we're talking BIZARRE, go to your DVD store and look for a French movie called DRUIDS. Christopher Lambert ( Highlander, Greystoke) plays the life of Vercingetorix. The whole film looks like a Braveheart knockoff. And Gaius Julius Caesar is played by a slightly pudgy Klaus Maria Brandauer.
Now I loved him in Szabos Colonel Redl and Mephisto, but as Caesar? Saying in his thick Deutsches accent
" Gentlemen! I zink ve shall invade Englant, no?" Oij Vey!
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Plautus can you give us a link to where you found that press release? It's frightening how bad it is.
Sorry I was out for awhile. The press release was listed on Animation World Network, a on-line magazine for the animation community. www.awn.com last week.
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Ave Citizens,
I heard the other day that ROME copped 4 Emmy awards. Thats some good news to announce from the Rostrum, courtesy of the Caelian Bakers Guild, Real Roman Bread, for Real Romans! Why doesn't HBO print that on a t-shirt!
p.s.- I'm currently in Taipei where they are running Rome here heavily cut for sex and nudity.. It's pretty chopped up, it's a shame people can't see the whole thing. I blame Cato for this whole censorship thing!
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I've been following this project with interest since last year. I know a few people on the production and they say they have something pretty good. As we say, the project has a good buzz about it. I too was concerned about the wild looking Persians in the Miller book, but we'll see.
I don't know how many recall the 1965 sword and sandal epic The Three Hundred Spartans with Richard Egan. As a child I was thrilled when the Spartan shield wall lowered their spears in unison. Only now do I notice the 1960's Steve Canyon hairstyles and clean shaven faces.
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I see in the trades that Hannibal movie release has been pushed to 2008. Vin also knows about Synergy. Here is a piece from Animation World Network about the Hannibal animated tv series, sponsored by Black Entertainment Television.
Vin Diesel & BET Set to Conqueror with Hannibal Toon
July 24, 2006
BET Networks' newly-minted animation unit will join with Vin Diesel's One Race Prods. to produce HANNIBAL THE CONQUEROR, an animated series based on the life of Hannibal of Carthage, universally recognized as the greatest military leader in the history of the world. The project was jointly announced by Diesel and Reginald Hudlin, BET president of entertainment. One Race vp Samantha Vincent and Diesel will exec produce. Last January, BET announced the formation of BET Animation under the management of Denys Cowan, former producer of the hit animated series THE BOONDOCKS.
The series will span the life of Hannibal, from his tutelage as a warrior under his father, the king of Carthage, to his history-making invasions of Spain, England and his legendary scaling of the Alps with his army of elephants. He assembled an army from around the world to challenge the Roman Empire and his techniques and plans are still studied today.
"From my first week at BET, I have been pursuing this project," says Hudlin. "Vin Diesel brings great thought and passion to both character development and storylines, and we are pleased to be the first to be in the animation production business with Vin and One Race Productions. HANNIBAL will be epic storytelling."
"It only took Reginald Hudlin becoming president of entertainment for me to know that BET would be the perfect network to launch a HANNIBAL franchise, the story of the great African general who fought an empire," said Diesel. "Having worked passionately for ten years to develop a film property on Hannibal, this animated series will offer audiences a chance to begin to understand the larger-than-life mythology of this classic figure."
BET Networks, a subsidiary of Viacom Inc. is the nation's leading provider of entertainment, music, news and public affairs television programming for the African-American audience. The primary BET channel reaches more than 81 million households according to Nielsen media research, and can be seen in the U.S., Canada and the Caribbean.
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Just think of what value the movie would gain if just one of us could advise Vin Diesel. Hell I'd work for free.
Does anybody remember there was an early 60s Italian movie of Hannibal? It starred an aging Hollywood star Victor Mature as the one-eyed elephant jockey. I remember even among those cheap Hercules spinnoffs it was pretty bad. They used to run all those old sword & sandal films on local tv on weekends.
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This may be slightly off topic for Roman themes, but if you are craving ancient subject matter, the film version of Leonidas and the Three Hundred Spartans is in post production currently. It is due for release in 2007. It is based on the book 300 by Frank Miller, the author of Sin City. Friends of mine working on the digital post say it's looking pretty good, but knowing Miller it will probably be stylized. Check out the details here:
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Does anybody recall a few years ago a story of some archaeologists in Brazil were trying to get permits to explore what they claimed was the remains of an ancient Roman merchant ship that wound up in a sheltered bay in Brazil? I guess theoretically a ship blown off course off the coast of Hispania could have gotten caught in the transoceanic currents that Columbus and the Portugese knew about and been sent across the Atlantic. What ever happened to that story?
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Thank you Dr. Keavney for this opportunity to ask you questions.
My question is:
How do you think the balance of power would have been altered had Crassus been more successful in Parthia? Do you feel he was already too old to be a factor between Caesar and Pompey?
Plautus, writing from my desk in Taipei, watching Typhoon Chansoo blow by my window.
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He's the Christian killjoy who stopped the Olympic Games, closed The Oracle of Delphi, closed Platos' Academy and had the Books of Sybilline Prophesy burned. Maybe to some at the time he was great, but not to me.
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Don't forget to read Ammianus Marcellinus for the end of the empire and the reign of Julian the Apostate. I also like Florus because his stories are so over the top; and of course, any of the French Asterix comic books by Goscinny and Uderzo. If you must get only one, get Asterix Legionary. The more Roman history you know, the funnier it is.
Ave !
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I agree with everyone here that although the history was off- I kept drawing parallels to that Samuel Bronston epic from the 1960s called DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. Richard Harris was good, but in that film Alex Guinness portrayal of Marcus Aurelius was fantastic. He physically looked like his statues. Your just had to believe Sophia Loren could be his daughter and James Mason could be a Greek. Historian Will Durant was an advisor on that film.
I think Ripley did a very good job of recreating the feel of the Roman Empire. Ridley is a history fan and former art director, so visuals are very important to him- The colosseum and forum scenes are inspired directly out of paintings by Jean Jerome and Alma Tadema. Russell Crowe's Maximus hairdo reminded me of the surviving statue of Caracalla.
But the most important thing is this movie did for Roman pictures what Dances with Wolves did for the moribund Western genre. Before Gladiator you couldn't get anyone in Hollywood to seriously consider a "sword & sandal film" unless it had Xenia or Arnold in it. Now there coming out all over the place. Someone earlier mentioned doing a film on Thermopylae. Well, its being filmed as we speak. based on the Frank Miller graphic novel 300.
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One question I had after viewing Cato's demise, was that I thought he did it differently. That Cato stuck himself on shipboard and his friends bound up his wounds so he would live. Then as Caesars arresting officers came on shipboard Cato thrust his fingers in his own wounds and ripped them open again. "All is well with the general " he said, then died. Is this true?
Io Saturnalia and Happy Feast of Mithras everyone!
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The editor of Variety here in Hollywood yesterday called HBO's ROME one of the "few bright spots in an otherwise lackluster tv season".
Io Saturnalia everyone!
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I'm from Los Angeles, the land of brushfires, artificial busoms and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Oh Tempes, oh mores!
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I have not heard anything new since I had dinner with a development executive who told me HBO greenlit a second season to lock down the actors before they scattered and to justify all the expense they already spent.
I heard HBO was originally concerned but liked the ratings the latter episodes were getting. Some shows need to slowly build audience. I didn't really get into the Sopranos or Star Trek Next Generation until season two.
I heeded Primus Pilums advice to show support by getting on the website and buying something. The Rome coffee mug is quite nice.
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I was again sad that there were no epic battles in tonights episode.
Unless you count the battle between Pullo and Cleopatra. Reminded me of Apuleius' The Golden Ass. When the hero Lucian describes making love to the servant girl " She locked her legs about me like a gladiator and we wrestled in sweet unarmed combat.."
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Speaking of unique time periods, does anyone recall an obscure Italian epic made in the 1960's called THE LAST ROMAN. It takes place during the Byzantine-Ostrogoth battles for Rome. Lawrence Harvey as a late empire senator who wants to bring back the empire. Orson Welles is Justinian, Sylvia Koscina is Theodora, Michael Dunn the famous little person actor is Narses, I forgot who played Belisarius. At the end the Goths look like the goodguys.
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It might be fun to do an I Claudius style BBC miniseries about Emperor Julian the Apostate. The court of Constantine and his family: Julian the bookish scholar taking command of a rebellious army and turning out to be a pretty good general, then out of self-preservation having to rebel against his cousin Constantius II, Julian the Apostate trying to turn the Empire back away from Christianity back to the Old Faith. Then, struck with a spear in the side in Persia. As he was dying he looked heavenward and declared "You Have Won, Galaleeian!" It has sex, violence and Christianity, but something tells me Mel Gibson wouldn't direct it.
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I love Spartacus, even despite Kirk's 60's flattop haircut. Alex North's score was wonderful. Here's some fun facts about the film.
If you hunt down a copy of Peter Ustinov's out of print memoirs DEAR ME, he gives a very good inside look into the filming of the picture. Ustinov played the Lanista of Gladiators. He said a feud between Sir Lawrence Olivier and Charles Laughton may have been the reason why a lot of Gracchus scenes were cut from the final.
Spartacus was also the film credited with breaking the Hollywood Blacklist. When Kirk Douglas as producer brought screenwriter Dalton Trumbo out of hiding onto the set for rewrites, and didn't get in trouble, that was considered the end of the blacklist. It's also mentioned that director Stanley Kubrick, who was brought in half way to replace Anthony Mann, had such a bad time on the film he resolved to quit Hollywood forever. He made his home in England.
Spartacus was also the film with one of the great Hollywood gaffs. During a montage of marching legionaries, you can see plainly one man wearing a Timex metal band wristwatch. I guess they figured it was too much trouble to reshoot.
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I'd like a film about Vercingetorix building rebellion, with the second half of the film dedicated to Alesia, the final scene would be him laying his arms at Caesars feet.
Believe it or not in 2001 there was a French movie called Vercingetorix starring Christopher Lambert ( Highlander, Greystoke) that was released in video stores in the English speaking world as DRUIDS. It had nice art direction but wasn't particularly good. It was the whole story. Lambert was stiff and Klaus Maria Brandauer played Caesar with his German accent:" Gentlemen, I zink ve shall invade England, no?"
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Recently in the HBO Rome section, we were talking about how it's a shame no one is making a movie about Marius & Sulla. That got me to thinking. What if you had Ridley Scott's ear? What dramatic if overlooked moments in Roman History would YOU want to see made into a movie?
With Varro at Teutoberger Wald? With Titus Regulus deciding to return to Carthage and certain death? With Horatius at the Bridge?
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I saw the season finaly over my vacation, honestly I was disapointed.
Thats okay. As Horace said: De gustibus, non est disputandem- You can't agrue personal taste. Forgive me, all the Latin majors out there. I'm just riffing off the top of my head at work.
I wish some day someone would do a film on Marius & Sulla. That would be an interesting story.
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