Roman review...

Well, it was an interesting introduction... I think it would have made more sense at the end if they had aired a two-hour premiere, instead of just the first hour though because it ended on a kind of "quoi?" note.

They've done very well with the sets and costumes that I've seen so far. I know that the costume designers said that they were being careful to use only period materials, but I'm not sure that they had double-weave silk in the 1st century BCE. Silk, yes, but double-weave? I just don't know. I've heard that they did have that in Europe by the mid-1500s, but I don't know about the Roman period. At least there's no gold lame! And the city really does look more like Calcutta than the Rome of movies like "Cleopatra" and "Gladiator." It's dirty and colorful and dare I say, exotically beautiful. (Paradoxes, I love them!) The language is also very interesting... "Impudent whelp" instead of "S.O.B." and the like... Excellent job there. There were a lot of other interesting idioms that I thought at least sounded very authentic... Things that modern people probably would find awkward in everyday conversation. I'll have to watch it again to come up with specific examples. I liked the lack of explanation... There was a feeling that everything that was going on with the characters was very everyday for them, so why would they need to explain anything? I love it when movies do that.

I also liked the vulgar pagan superstitious nature everyone casually possesses... and yet there's a touch of... what would it be called... Cynicism about it, very like Romans are reputed to have had. Like when Atia goes through this elaborate ritual involving the sacrifice of a black bull. She gets completely covered in blood, and she just turns around and looks expectantly (as if to say, tiredly, "Is that enough? Are they appeased?") at the priest when it's all over, and he tells her that now Octavian will be protected while he's traveling to Gaul. Or when Pullo is desperately praying to every god he can think of in front of a makeshift alter he scrambled together to get himself out of prison, and he says something like, "...If you are the right god to address this to and you get me out of here, I'll sacrifice a white goat to you... Or, if I can't get one that's good enough... or at the right price... at least six pidgeons!..." Great! The man's going to die in the arena if he's not pardoned and he's basically got his fingers crossed behind his back while making promises to the gods for their help. (Incidentally, he is released right after he finishes that little speech.)

The contrast between the common Roman citizen and the nobility is also striking. From what I understand, this is to be expected since this is the end of the Republic and corruption was rampant at the time. There is Octavian, though a child, casually threatens and slap slaves around for every minor "mistake" they make, and Atia, who throws her money and power around like it's dirt to gain even more, blatantly using her own children as pawns. Then there is Vorenus, who though a soldier is not of the nobility and is surprisingly conservative in his behavior, and is appalled by the very idea of being disloyal to his wife, Niobe, eventhough he hasn't seen her in nearly 8 years. At the same time, completely turning that stereotype on its ear, there are vulgar theatrical performances in the street which delight the common people who have come to watch it, but shock Cornelia, a nobleman's widow of at least 30 years of age, so much that she asks her father to take her home before her reputation is ruined.

The one thing that was slightly erksome was that the Germanic tribes were looking a bit like a cross between 12th century British peasantry and unwashed Highlanders after Culloden... I didn't get a terribly good look at them though, just glimpses; they were very background, so there might be nothing at all wrong with the way they looked. At least I didn't see any horned helmets. I'm not sure what sources they are using for them, but at least if they're using the Roman writings about the Germanic tribes they aren't taking them seriously because they tend to be about as accurate as the National Enquirer. Also, I think that the number of people writing and reading their own letters is strange... especially that all the high-born women seem to be able to read and write. I'd have to double-check in my text books to be totally certain, but that doesn't seem correct. I could be wrong though. And I'm not terribly sure that they used arsenic in cosmetics... White lead, yeah... But arsenic? I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that arsenic wasn't isolated by chemists as an element and not a compound until the Renaissance in Italy. Honestly, if they are going to go this over the top trying to be historically accurate the least they could do is get little things that don't require huge amounts of money correct. (I do nit-pick, don't I?)

Overall though, I liked it very much and I'll be sure to watch the new episode next Sunday.

"Rome"

It is a series with 12 1-hour parts... They are still being somewhat ambiguous as to whether it will come back for a second season or not. It can be seen just about every night this week on HBO, and then new episodes will premiere on Sunday nights at 9pm, eastern time. Check your local listings for time and channel. I haven't seen it yet. It won't be airing on the West coast feed for another hour and 45 minutes in my time zone. I caught the last 5 minutes of the premiere airing a little while ago, just in time to see 14-year-old Octavian bludgeon to death this guy who was the lone survivor of a gang of men who had apparently kidnapped him and then the few scenes left after that. It looked pretty good, but I was a little confused about what was going on since I missed the first 55 minutes of the show.

The actor playing Octavian looked really familiar, so I looked him up on imdb.com. He's Max Pirkis and he played "Midshipman Blakeney" in "Master and Commander." Good actor! He had a really scary, vicious look in his eyes while pretending to bludgeon that guy to death. Strange thing though is that another actor of the same age, Aaron Johnson, is also listed as playing Octavian in "Rome"... So I don't know what's going on there... His mother "Atia" also looked familiar. I looked her up too, and found that I recognized her because she's Polly Walker, who played the elegant "Jane Fairfax" in "Emma" (the one with Gwyneth Paltrow).

This got me curious about who else is in "Rome" that I'm going to recognize, so I scanned through the list of actors, and this is what I found. Kerry Condon is in "Rome," playing "Octavia of the Julii." She was in "Ned Kelly" as Ned Kelly's eldest sister, "Kate." Lindsay Duncan is playing "Servilia." She played "Mrs. Price/Lady Bertram" in "Mansfield Park," and "Lady Markby" in "An Ideal Husband." Ciaran Hinds is playing "Julius Caesar." He's been in a ton of stuff, including "Calendar Girls" as "Rod Harper," "Lara Croft 2" as "Jonathan Reiss" (the bad guy), "Jane Eyre" (1997 TV mini) as "Edward Rochester," "Persuasion" (1995) as "Captain Wentworth," "Circle of Friends" as "Professor Flynn," and "Excalibur" as "Lot." The oh-so-lovely James Purefoy is playing "Marc Anthony"... And boy, if Anthony looked like that, I'm surprised it took Cleopatra so long... seriously... He played "Brendan" in "Bedrooms and Hallways" (opposite Kevin McKidd [who is also in "Rome"] and Jennifer Ehle - it's a very strange movie that is, I think, pretty much the product of British people coming out of their Victorian repression), "Tom Bertram" in "Mansfield Park," and "Sir Thomas Colville a.k.a. Edward, the Black Prince of Wales" in "A Knight's Tale." Kevin McKidd has done almost everything... except something set in ancient Rome, which he has now covered with "Rome" (and with "The Last Legion," which will be released next year). He's playing one of the "every man" Roman soldiers, "Lucius Vorenus." Other things I've personally seen him in are "Bedrooms and Hallways" as "Leo," "Hideous Kinky" as "Henning," "Topsy-Turvy" as "Durward Lely (Nanki-Poo)," "Nicholas Nickleby" as "John Browdie," and, most recently, in "Kingdom of Heaven"... where he was somewhat in the background as "an English Sergeant."

The official site can be found here: http://www.hbo.com/Rome/

Stay tuned for my review of the first ep.

Topics... topics... topics...

I don't know what this entry is going to be about... I've got a lot on my mind. That is not to say that I've got problems. Thankfully, I don't right now. ::knocks wood:: But this is going to meander.

Zinzi graduated this evening. Well, she had her nursing college convocation anyway. Tomorrow, is the official graduation at the Sundome, where she will receive her degree cum laude. We're all very proud of her.

Note to self: Do not wear shoes that are 2" or higher without stockings again for any amount of time. Bad idea if I don't want blisters.

Andrea is flying up to Chicago tomorrow. She will miss Zinzi's graduation by mere hours. She's taking most of clothing up there to partially move. We're all very worried about her. She was only released from the hospital this afternoon. She's been having severe abdominal issues for most of the week.

I am flying to South Carolina on Sunday. Quite excited about this... and I need to pack tomorrow at some point... and go shopping...

I'm watching a show on Discovery Science Channel right now. It's called "Metropolis" and is a series about the great ancient cities: Athens, Babylon, Carthage, Rome, etc... This one is about Rome. It's very interesting as it doesn't deal with the history or influence of the city as much as how the city operated day-to-day and the culture that ran it. It's been talking about the night life, the sewer system, the aqueducts and who got the water from them as opposed to from the Tiber, the diseases that Romans were plagued with because of the size and consequent filth of the city, the garbage dump (aka Rome's eighth hill)... All quite interesting and *none* of it was covered in my Roman Civilization course last Spring semester. tsk, tsk, tsk... This would have been more interesting than watching Ben Hur with Charlton Heston, let me tell you! (I would also add "Spartacus" and "Gladiator" to that, but I actually like those movies, historical inaccuracies notwithstanding. Tony Curtis, Lawrence Olivier, Kurt Douglas and Russell Crowe... Can it get much better than that? I don't think so...)

But this brings me to another topic: HBO is going to be airing a new mini-series/series (they talk about it like it's both at the same time, so I'm not sure if we're getting multiple seasons or what) called "Rome." It begins during the Caesar vs. Pompey civil war. Cleopatra will become involved before the end. It's going to get up close and personal with these historical figures and many others, as well as common people who are mentioned in the biographies of the famous ones. The producers are getting meticulously and obsessively historical, no matter what previous theatrical depictions of Rome would have us believe about her and her people. The set designer for example went and talked to archaeologists and historians about what Rome looked like and then rebuilt all the major sets on a five-acre lot outside of Rome in Italy. There won't be white marble everything like we've seen in every other historical film involving Rome because Romans were, in fact, obsessed with color and painted everything in bright, beautiful colors. It's going to look more like what people would think Babylon looked like rather than Rome. One of the designers said, "think of Calcutta today, and you have ancient Rome with cars and bicycles." They made all of the costumes out of the materials they would have been made of in the 1st century BCE. No polyester rags for the peasants, no aluminum breastplates for the soldiers. And this truly impressed me... Not only did they find an actor who looks pretty close to a middle-aged Caesar, but Caesar is going to actually live up to his reputation as the "wife of every husband and husband of every wife." Scandalous by Hollywood's and Middle America's standards, but accurate! Not only that - and this truly shocked me - but Atia, the mother of a 14-year-old Octavious (Caesar's great-nephew) will be trying to nudge him into Caesar's sights, among other things, in order to gain favor with Caesar. Utterly horrifying on a number of levels by modern standards, but it happened and often in ancient Rome, and that's honestly not the half of it as far as the messed up, torturous, agonizing ordeal that Roman children were subjected to for what was believed to be their own good by their parents (There were reasons that the mortality rate of children under two was 70%, and 50% from 2 to 10. Only 15 out of every 100 children born safely lived to see their 11th birthday. And since it had a population of approximately 1 million, it boggles the mind how many children were born but didn't live. "Brutal" doesn't even begin to cover it.). This unflinching dedication to extreme accuracy can only, in my opinion, deepen the modern understanding of the past (in this case, the - debatably - greatest ancient civilization of the Western world). I will be watching for more info on "Rome."

I am hoping that this will usher in a trend in historic film; that they will become obsessive in their accuracy and show the past with all its flaws and foibles, as well as all its wondrous, magical moments and beauty. Perhaps their is hope for "The Iliad" as I see it afterall...