Pop Classics

Spartacus War of the Damned: Mors Indecepta

noreply@blogger.com (Juliette) — Tue, 21 May 2013 20:24:00 +0000

Dead bodies in snow. Lots of them. Two guys start trying to crawl away up a hill. They don’t last long.

Spartacus wants to know the exact number of the fallen (that’ll take a while to count). The Artist tells them Crassus’ army are on the way (that wasn’t them?) so Spartacus orders those who can’t fight to go to a safe distance and those who can – well, not to suit up, because even though there’s snow everywhere still none of them are wearing tunics, trousers, nothing. But to get ready.

Crixus gets everyone ready for some violence and bloodshed but Spartacus tells them to calm down because he is a giant buzzkill. Also because he’s realised that Crassus’ army aren’t about to advance. He remembers his time in the Roman army and knows they’re not in a battle formation – they’re waiting for Crassus.

Tiberius tells Crassus that Caesar is still on sick leave, enjoying women. Crassus praises Tiberius for not doing the same thing and Tiberius replies with more creepy innuendos. Crassus asks him to move a very important chest out of sight. I really hope he’s testing Tiberius in some way, but no, he’s given Tiberius his armour back and wants him standing beside him in battle (at least this increases the opportunities for Tiberius to die horribly).

Full frontal naked woman – ah, that must mean we’re joining Caesar. He has two of them on the go, as he usually does, though he’s still nursing a bleeding wound. One of the women flatters him by calling his bits ‘Jupiter’s cock’ which is amusing since Octavian later made him a god (though not actually Jupiter).

Gannicus is all doom and gloom over the fact a freezing storm is coming, and Helga’s response is, as usual, to suggest jumping into bed. Gannicus refuses (she tells him he sounds like Spartacus) and seems distracted by Eponine staring at him. Some random dude finds the pirate guy from last episode, calls him a traitor and punches him, but is stopped by the Artist, who apparently wields some authority by virtue of being Number One’s boyfriend (or random dude is just scared of Number One). The pirate dude tries to flirt a bit, but seems mostly interested in fighting Crassus, or so he says – they seem to have him prisoner and he wants set free.

Spartacus – still wrapped in the Kingly Purple Robe of Hubris – goes to visit Boudicca in what seems to be the hospital tent and persuade her to eat because apparently having ridden all the way from wherever and escaped with her life this is the moment she’s chosen to give up. She is feeling very sorry for herself, but Spartacus points out she’s no worse off than the rest of them. She asks how you move past it, and he suggests ‘live’ and help him.

Back in the city, Maid Marian is cooking when Tiberius turns up to sleaze all over her some more. She makes it pretty clear she doesn’t give a monkeys about him, and is pretty relieved when she hears he won’t yet be coming back to Rome with them – until she finds out she’s to stay there with him. She goes to see Crassus, who is unimpressed that Tiberius told her before he could, but she doesn’t have time to explain why she really doesn’t like that idea nor he to explain just what he was thinking before duty calls.

Number One observes that Crassus has put up stands as if they’re fighting for his entertainment in the arena, because like certain other series that tried to make the climactic battle look arena-like, this one has struggled with what to do with fighting outside of the arena. Spartacus, having analysed the formations, has decided Crassus has got over-confident and wants a small group of the best of them to mount a sneak attack in the middle of the storm and kill Crassus in his bed. Crixus disapproves of killing men in their sleep but Spartacus insists (in a fun nod to the Iliad, in which Odysseus leads a party to kill men in the camp because he’s a brain over brawn sort of guy).

The Roman soldiers are apparently incapable of seeing beyond their noses in the storm, even though we as TV viewers can see reasonably well, so Spartacus’ attack team – made up, naturally, of basically the named characters – do OK until they get into what they think is Crassus’ tent and find a naked crucified man with mors indecepta (death undeceived) carved into his body, looking like a particularly gruesome X-File. Crassus is not that daft, Spartacus. Romans who can see better appear and attack in bullet time, so we know this is an important battle, and the soundtrack is quite excited too.

Naevia takes a spear in the leg and goes down, which of course distracts Crixus. Spartacus goes after her and carries her on his shoulders because he is the Hero. They’re nearly out of there when some Roman yells something unintelligible that makes Crixus really mad and he goes beserk and tries to take on several Romans all at once on his own. To be fair, this has worked well for him in the past. He survives (just) and runs off after the others.

Crassus is unimpressed that Spartacus has got away and decides that he’s had enough of tricks and wants to finish them off in a proper battle. He puts Tiberius in command, including putting him in command of Caesar, which goes down about as well as you’d expect and looks ridiculous. (Romans did not usually follow boys no matter whose son they were. Octavian is the awesome/financially generous exception to the rule). However, since Caesar is already heavily in debt to Crassus, both financial and otherwise, he doesn’t have much choice in the matter. Crassus also insists that he, having commanded Caesar, took the city, not Caesar. Crassus says they equally have the glory of it but Caesar’s not entirely fooled and not impressed. (We need a sequel series about these two and Pompey and the First Triumvirate. Now!) Tiberius decides to rub it in because he is a suicidal idiot.

Caesar, in the middle of a temper tantrum, runs into Maid Marian, who decides to enlist him in getting rid of Tiberius. Caesar is in a foul mood and doesn’t want to be part of her plots and schemes, but she points out if Tiberius does well Crassus will work with him instead of Caesar, so Caesar demands to know plainly what she wants. And the camera cuts away, of course, because if we ever actually understood what the characters were trying to do TV would be much duller and episodes much shorter.

A bunch of Spartacus’ people are sitting around a pile of something (burning? it’s hard to tell), praying. I’m not sure what or why. Crixus is still sulking even though Spartacus saved his girlfriend, so he takes him outside so they can yell dramatically against the wind. Crixus still thinks they should have just attacked Crassus and points out that Spartacus has been outsmarted. Spartacus, on the other hand, points out that if they just attack from the front, they’ll die. Crixus would rather do so than hang around.

They get mad and Crixus punches Spartacus, which the director gets very excited about, all slow-motion and flying blood. They get into a proper punch-up (more slow motion, heavy rock soundtrack) which threatens to seriously damage both of them before they get anywhere near any Romans. Eventually, having reached a sort-of stalemate with Spartacus on top, Gannicus breaks them up and Number One points out this isn’t the time to fight as the storm is still coming (apparently this much talked-about storm hasn’t actually arrived yet. It’s starting to resemble winter in Game of Thrones).

Crassus is actually a bit narked that the rebels might be wiped out by the storm (gods) before he gets the chance to finish them off himself (there’s less glory in that. Though you can always claim the gods were helping you out, that usually goes down well). Caesar brings Maid Marian to see him. Tiberius catches Caesar outside Crassus’ tent and Caesar warns him not to interrupt at that moment and taunts him a bit.

Crassus tells Maid Marian he claimed the city for her, so she can live there and he can visit her freely without his wife sulking, as a proper mistress by the sounds of things (rather than a random slave he happens to be having sex with). He thinks having her around to help Tiberius will be great. She says she doesn’t want to be blamed if Tiberius screws up, which Crassus, having temporarily taken leave of his senses, insists won’t happen. He is bizarrely unperturbed by the fact she’s openly weeping throughout this conversation and proceeds to enjoy this unexpected treat while the storm lasts.

Number One is unimpressed that the pirate guy is still hanging around and threatens him with a knife, but uses it to free him. The Artist smiles and gets, ‘Do not f*cking cast that look’ in response (but with a smile too).

Helga complains that she can’t find Gannicus as Spartacus settles Boudicca in a tent. Eponine appears to be sitting in the middle of a snowdrift, cutting herself and chanting at the fire… bundle… thing. Gannicus is trying to persuade her to come into a tent and get warm, and when she keels over, he picks her up and takes her to the nearest bit of over-hanging something.

When Spartacus can’t find Gannicus, Helga says she’ll go find him, but Spartacus stops her (he insists that, ‘Gannicus will not fall to wind and ice’ and Gannicus is so awesome that might just be true). Boudicca offers to let Spartacus share her blanket so they can, in the grand tradition of romantic dramas, warm each other. Everyone’s hair and facial hair has that fabulous white stuff so beloved of movies like Titanic stuck all over it.

Gannicus gets Eponine huddled under the random bit of something and binds up her cuts (which were a sacrifice for Spartacus, apparently). Even Gannicus seems to be starting to believe in her gods now. They also huddle together and Eponine, who has seen the romantic dramas, sneaks in a snog. Gannicus, romantic that he is, decides to take off her top layer and expose her breasts in the middle of the snowstorm. To be fair, their subsequent activity (accompanied by insanely melodramatic swelling music) is probably keeping them warm, but really. Maid Marian is naked too, but she is in a well heated fancy tent.

After the storm passes, Spartacus and Helga find the group huddled around the tiny fire, dead, all creepy and frozen and zombie-like (but not actual zombies, because this show is crazy, but it’s not that crazy). They’ve lost 1000 people in the storm – but random dude is still. not. wearing. clothes! (I’m sorry to keep on about this but – the plot is all about how everyone’s freezing to death. At least Spartacus has his Kingly Purple Robe of Hubris). Gannicus turns up with Eponine and Helga gives him an ‘I will murder you when I get you home’ look. Eponine decides the fact that the others froze to death when they sat out in as snowstorm is a sign she should have a crisis of faith just at this particular, somewhat inconvenient, moment.

Spartacus says he’s decided Crixus was right after all, while Crixus has changed his mind due to their numbers being 1000 down. Spartacus points out that nothing is ever as it appears with Crassus and suggests that the reason there are unnecessary fortifications on the trench is to hide the fact that Crassus’ numbers are not as great as believed. And if he’s wrong, they’ll embrace glorious death absent Roman swords in their backs, just like Crixus wanted. So our heroes pull down Crassus’ not overly sturdy fortifications and head into battle. It seems there are only a few hundred Roman soldiers there (and Naevia has very quickly recovered from that nasty leg wound). Fighting ensues.

Crassus has to be woken from a bizarrely sound sleep (what did Maid Marian do to him?) and is discombobulated to see a dead Roman soldier just outside his tent. Maid Marian, it seems, has run away to join Spartacus, which of course Crassus blames on Caesar. Tiberius wants to know how Spartacus got over their trench, and it turns out he did so on a huge pile of his own people’s dead bodies. (And now the show has truly become 300). Crassus is grossed out but quite impressed. He is also newly motivated to ‘reclaim what is mine.’

Our heroes attack the Romans from behind their own fortifications, rebuilt on the other side. Spartacus declares that it’s time to get rid of Crassus once and for all and get the heck out of there. End of episode.

A fast-paced episode that keeps things moving fairly well, but only three episodes from the end, I think things really need to start happening now (other than Gannicus exposing Eponine’s boobs in the middle of a snowstorm). Watching Caesar have to defer to Tiberius was almost painful – the little squirt’s horrible, lingering death cannot come soon enough. Still, Spartacus' use of his own people's frozen corpses to get done what needs to be done was both fabulously gruesome and wonderfully practical on his part - a nice, gothic-horror-y touch that lifts the episode a bit and lets it go out with a kick.

Quotes

Crixus: We shall see Roman blood upon f*cking snow! (How poetic).

Tiberius: Caesar at last rises from the dead.

Caesar: Many a giant has tumbled to the afterlife believing himself too big to fall.

Spartacus: I will not march my people to the afterlife.
Crixus: And I will not die with a Roman sword in my back!

Caesar: Cut circle to straightest line and give voice to what you would have of me. (A man after my own heart).

All Spartacus reviews

Doctor Who: Nightmare in Silver

noreply@blogger.com (Juliette) — Mon, 13 May 2013 15:45:00 +0000

Here be spoilers.

I've spent two days trying to work out if there was enough Roman Stuff in this episode to write a blog post about it. There were plenty of bits of Roman decoration in 'Nightmare in Silver's set-up - the Doctor et al emerge into a part of the galaxy ruled by a human Empire with the Doctor's psychic paper claiming he's a 'pro-consul,' the statue of the Emperor found early in the episode depicts him with laurel leaves on his head, the Emperor's spaceship is all marble and columns and bits of Imperial purple. But the story didn't really make that much of the Roman connection.

The position of the Emperor was important, of course. The loneliness of command, the difficult decisions faced by a single ruler and so on were major themes of the episode and Warwick Davis' early sympathy with the person who has to push the button to destroy part of the universe is beautifully played (and, coincidentally, reminiscent of the choice faced by the Doctor in 'The Fires of Pompeii'). But really, his character could equally have been called 'King' or 'Tsar' - in fact, 'King' might have been better. Porridge seems like a reluctant Emperor, which implies he comes from an hereditary dynasty. Roman Emperors were sort of hereditary, sometimes, especially in the early Julio-Claudian period (though even then not a single Emperor was succeeded by their biological son, always adopted sons) but mostly the position went to whoever fought hardest/murdered the most people. This is not a criticism - there's nothing wrong with using existing names and concepts in a fairly basic way to flesh out an SFF world, and vaguely Roman names and concepts makes a whole lot more sense than the random clerical labels Moffat took to using back in 2010 (whose only saving grace was Iain Glenn's fabulous Father Octavian, and even then it would have been cooler to just have him be a pseudo-Roman called Octavian).

What the Roman theme does do which is quite interesting is present the Empire in a positive light. Throughout the history of film, it has been common to depict Empire as evil, an over-bearing hotbed of depravity ruled by a succession of Caligulas. Porridge's good, noble Emperor-in-disguise has much more in common with pseudo-medieval fantasy kings or princes or princesses who like to dress as commoners and run around incognito waiting for brave young stable-boys/peasant girls (delete according to gender and sexual preference) to show them what they're made of. Following the positive references to Rome in Oblivion, the Romanist in me is very pleased, and hopeful that more and more productions will open up representations of Rome (ancient or science-fictionalised) to explore different corners of what being Roman means, beyond 'evil' and 'depraved.'

I was also interested to note that the waxwork from which Angie recognises Porridge shows the Emperor wearing a laurel wreath (along with a more Victorian-looking coat and a fur lining that looked like Blackadder's cat-fur thing). In Roman statues, Emperors are very rarely shown wearing laurel wreaths - though they do wear them on coins (thank you to Penny Goodman for that bit of info). What do you mean, that's not interesting?! OK fine, here's something else - a lot of Roman statues were known for being very 'warts 'n' all,' but there were also phases during which statues, particularly of emperors, would be more idealised, and I did like the idea that everyone was distracted from recognising Porridge because the artist had made him taller.

I hope we see Emperor Porridge again, and not just because I can blog about it - that character, and Warwick Davis' performance, were the saving grace of what was otherwise a bit of a 'meh' episode. I've been a fan of Davis ever since he played Reepicheep (one of my favourite Narnia characters) way back in the BBC Prince Caspian/The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and Porridge is played with a fabulous mixture of humour and pathos (almost enough to save the episode from the negative impact of the two children, whose characters were both intensely irritating, and both badly acted. I feel mean for saying that, but it was really off-putting). My reaction to this episode largely fits how I feel about the series overall - I'm honestly not sure how I feel about season 7 of Nu Who. I've been enjoying it, especially since Easter, and I like Clara, but I find the way she runs off with the Doctor every Wednesday and comes home a bit strange - I miss the days when companions got on board the TARDIS and were trapped, Sliders-style, trying to get home for years and years...

More Doctor Who reviews

Spartacus War of the Damned: Spoils of War

noreply@blogger.com (Juliette) — Mon, 06 May 2013 17:28:00 +0000

I hadn’t forgotten Spartacus! Unfortunately sometimes there just aren’t enough hours in the day, but it’s a bank holiday here today, so what better way to spend it than watching half-naked men attack each other? Properly Roman behaviour, I think.

When we left off, Surfer Caesar had just revealed himself to the rebels and was facing off against a group of our heroes while Crassus’ forces broke down the gate with a huge battering ram. And so the start of this episode is all fighty, fighty, fight. All the named characters still seem to be alive.

Crassus enters behind his battering ram and Surfer Caesar welcomes him. More fighting. Also some fire. Bullet-time fighting. Spartacus fights with two swords, because he is the Darth Maul of ancient Rome (and we all know what happened to him). The Artist is conspicuous by his absence so Number One runs off to find him. Gannicus offers to lead a distraction while the others get away, which Spartacus tries to refuse, but unsuccessfully. No need to worry Spartacus, Gannicus is perfectly capable of taking on half the Roman army by himself, because he is Gannicus.

The soundtrack, which is feeling particularly multiple-personality-disorder-y today and keeps switching genres, sounds kind of like James Horner’s Titanic soundtrack for a moment.

Number One picks up the Artist and a pirate, while Eponine runs whimpering after Gannicus, because that is her job. Our guys have set the city on fire, but Crassus keeps going anyway, because he is quite fond of fire in the right circumstances (he used to have buildings set on fire, then buy the land and the neighbouring buildings cheap, then have his army of slaves put out the fire – that’s how he made his fortune).

Romans attack our heroes as they’re trying to get away, and more fighting ensues. Surfer Caesar tries to grab Spartacus but Spartacus gets away thanks to a portcullis-y-thing. Crassus decides to leave off chasing Spartacus for now in favour of hunting down any remaining rebels in the city. Gannicus and Eponine, having decided that this is not a suicide mission however much it might look like one, hide under some floorboards.

Surfer Caesar cuts his hair and shaves, which is very disappointing. Historical accuracy can take a long walk off a short cliff, I liked the surfer look! Crassus is confident in their victory, though Caesar is concerned that Spartacus is still alive and they are all going to end up like Haldir. Eponine nurses Gannicus’ wounded hand and tries to make him feel better about their impending deaths, while Boudicca is brought back into what remains of the city and taken under Caesar’s pervy little wing.

Sure, it's much more Roman, but is it as cool?

Crassus tells Maid Marian she can stay with him now, to her immense relief, while Tiberius taunts her about having raped her with the most horribly inappropriate double entendres the series has yet produced. Crassus, for whom personal relationships are not a strong point, misses everything and gives Tiberius a promotion, but tells him they’ll be honouring Caesar as the victor of the battle, since he wants Caesar’s allegiance. Because Tiberius is still a stroppy, jealous child, he sulks at this.

Further adventures of Gannicus and Eponine under the floorboards. As Romans search the building, Eponine asks, ‘Is there nothing we can do?’ ‘There is but one thing,’ says Gannicus, ‘pray.’ Of course, he doesn’t mean this literally, rather it’s a set-up for a trick, as she prays and then Gannicus kills the guy who comes after her. He leaves her with a knife and heads off to find a way out.

Tiberius threatens Maid Marian some more. It’s very unpleasant.

Boudicca gets a bath from another naked woman, both standing up in knee-deep water while the camera lingers lovingly over both their bodies (it’s been ages since we some full frontal nudity in this series, now I come to think of it). The other woman is still naked even as she’s dressing Boudicca, though it’s the clothed and made up Boudicca that Caesar thinks is a ‘vision’ to rival his ‘beloved wife’ (how beloved is open to debate, though Caesar does seem to have been pretty attached to his first wife, refusing to divorce her when ordered to by a dictator and suffering for it). The soundtrack has now slipped into Memoirs of a Geisha, which might be significant.

Crassus quizzes Boudicca on Spartacus’ character. She is unimpressed when she discovers he won with the help of the Pirate King (or is it another pirate? They all look kinda the same, all long hair and big cloaks). It turns out that Crassus has sold her to the Pirate King as a reward for helping him take the city (which he is not legally in a position to do, but no one’s arguing).

More female nudity! Tiberius finds two random women fooling around with each other – turns out they’re with Caesar, which is unsurprising. At one point Caesar stands in the most awkward position (back to the camera, twisting and pointing so we can see his face but not his meat and two veg) because apparently we’re allowed full frontal female nudity (and get an eyeful of the third such in this episode) but men have to stop at the backside this season. Hmm. Tiberius whines and Caesar explains why he is superior to Tiberius in every way (which, let’s face it, he is) and orders some oysters (of course).

The Pirate King insists that Boudicca would be no better off with the Romans because, as a woman, she’s no better than a slave to them. Since she seems pretty well off, that’s not entirely true, and Crassus really has no right to be bargaining her off the way he has, but maybe the Pirate King isn’t an expert on Roman law. Anyway, the point is rendered moot when he brands her as his slave, thus ensuring that she’ll need a freedman’s ring or equivalent if she wants to move freely and not be crucified as a runaway slave. Gannicus and Eponine turn up before he gets any further and the Pirate King spends an inordinate amount of time trying to justify himself and threatening Eponine, but all Gannicus does is point out that she’s not his woman and go for the attack (one on... several, but it’s Gannicus, he could take on an army of orcs if he had to).

The Pirate King holds a sword to Eponine (proving that Gannicus does care whether she lives or dies), but gets no further because Boudicca jams his own branding iron through his throat, which is pretty cool. Boudicca, well aware that she has little choice now that she’s stuck with a slave brand, tags along with Gannicus and Eponine as they make their escape.

Crassus, Caesar, Tiberius and the others are enjoying watching the few rebels who are still alive and didn’t get away be torn limb from limb because all that James Horner-style background music has put them in a Braveheart mood. The other random Roman who keeps hanging around but whose name and job I’ve completely forgotten asks after Boudicca and is told that she’s left. He is horrified to discover that Crassus plans to keep the entire city for himself, because clearly he doesn’t know Crassus very well.

One of Spartacus’ captured men goads Tiberius about how a Roman should face him in single combat instead of executing him, so Tiberius announces that Caesar will dispatch the guy personally and sneakily unties the dude first. Caesar is less than impressed with Tiberius, but he first declares the honour and glory for the fight to Rome in general rather than himself or Crassus, then successfully avoids being killed, calls Tiberius a boy, and defeats the gladiator dude in an almost fair sword fight (except Caesar’s wearing armour and the gladiator dude is not) because he’s Caesar and he’s awesome. The soundtrack has now switched to computer-game style chords mixed with power chords, and I want to see a version of Street Fighter where you can fight as Julius Caesar against Random Gladiator Dude.

Gannicus and the girls walk through some Romans, Gannicus covered up with an exciting hooded cloak but the girls, unhelpfully, not and of course Caesar recognises Boudicca while the soundtrack goes sort of electric-guitar wild west or... something. Fighting ensues and Gannicus ends up riding away on a horse with Eponine while the soundtrack switches to The Hunt for Red October, looking like a knight in shining armour, because he is even more awesome than Caesar. Boudicca has to follow on her own horse behind them and gets run through the side with a spear, but Gannicus literally tramples the Romans underfoot and rides away, having defeated them through the sheer force of his awesomeness.

Caesar has his various scratches fixed up in a nice warm room, in contrast to our heroes, who have withdrawn to a snowy mountain, which is uncomfortable for them, because although they have found some cloaks from somewhere, they still don’t seem to own too many clothes (Helga is bare-armed). They are all very pleased to see Gannicus, though Eponine and Helga are less pleased to see each other. Boudicca has somehow made it too, bleeding all over her horse and according to the Artist, still with a chance of survival (perhaps the freezing cold sealed the wound?!)

Spartacus shows Gannicus their new problem – Crassus has driven them to this frozen ridge, across which he has built a sodding great wall and ditch, from behind which his army can attack them. Spartacus has by now started to work out that this rebellion may not be going to end well...

I liked this episode, especially Gannicus’ positively heroic escape from the city with Eponine riding behind him like a medieval damsel, though I’ll miss Caesar’s surfer look. Let's face it, any episode featuring copious amounts of Caesar and Gannicus being awesome is going to go down pretty well with me.

I especially love that this series, and especially this episode, has used Crassus’ genuine personality quirks and vices to show his particular brand of dodginess, instead of attributing generalised supposedly Roman degeneracy to him. Crassus in Kubrick’s Spartacus seemed to have little in common with the real Crassus and represented the various ways in Romans were imagined to be degenerate and generally naughty in the 1960s, but this character is recognisably the historical Crassus – he’s ambitious and he’s greedy, and those are his only really major vices (the fact that Crassus’ main flaws are fairly common and socially acceptable in our own society is probably the main reason they aren’t depicted in him so often). This is in contrast to Caesar, about whom there were all sorts of rumours historically, so his voracious sexual appetite is more reasonable, historically speaking, and the producers can get their degenerate Roman sex in there (though I hope we see a better male to female nudity ratio next episode). I just hope Crassus’ horrible and unhistorical son meets a suitably sticky end, preferably at the hands of Boudicca or Maid Marian.

Quotes

Helga to Gannicus: Do not die.

Crixus to Gannicus: You mad f*ck! (I think that’s Crixusian for ‘thank you’)

Crassus: Caesar is blessed with storied name and shall one day rise to shame the very sun.

Boudicca on Spartacus: He is not the beast one would have thought him.

Crassus: And in place of horns and sharpened claw?

Crassus (on himself and Spartacus): Each believes himself the hero, the other villain. It is for history to decide who is mistaken. Till that day we will play our parts upon Fortune’s stage, as each of us must.

Crassus: Greed is but a word jealous men inflict upon the ambitious.

Caesar: Must Julius f*cking Caesar risk life to kill every last rebel himself?!

All Spartacus: Blood and Sand reviews

A Song of Ice and Fire: A Dance with Dragons

noreply@blogger.com (Juliette) — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 17:15:00 +0000

Spoilers for all published books in A Song of Ice and Fire follow. For my thoughts on Book 3, which are free of spoilers for Books 4 and 5, see here.

I have finally finished reading all so-far published books in George RR Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series, the basis for HBO's Game of Thrones. Having lent them to me and pestered me to read them, Brother found himself regretting this decision when subjected to four hours of me analysing them and trying to predict what will happen in the last two books, while I myself am torn between a desperate desire for George RR Martin to write faster and yet, at the same time, a slight hope that maybe he won't bother at all and I can stick with the endings in my head, which I suspect are much happier (and much soppier) than whatever he's got planned. Look out for a predictions thread in which I'll share some of my theories over at Doux Reviews, after season three of Game of Thrones finishes airing.

Having finished the books, I have now allowed myself to look at some of the many websites devoted to the series, particularly the TV Tropes pages and The Citadel. This has brought up a few bits and pieces of Classical hints and allusions that I'd missed because, I have to confess, the only way I was able to get through these books was to skim large sections of them and in some cases, entire chapters. (In books 4 and 5, I skimmed almost every chapter relating to any Greyjoy who wasn't Theon or Asha and didn't pay 100% attention to most of what was going on in Dorne, or relating to people from Dorne, unless they happened to be with Tyrion at the time. Anything involving Jaime and/or Brienne, on the other hand, got read in minute detail, sometimes twice. I am still a twelve-year-old girl at heart).

I got quite interested when I read about a prophecy involving a 'wooden wall' because to a Classicist that means only one thing - ships. (From the famous incident in the Persian War, recorded by Herodotus, when the Athenians were told to use wooden walls, and some argued they should hide behind the walls of the city, but Themistocles convinced them in fact it meant they should rely on their navy and lure the Persians into a naval battle at Salamis). In fact, this particular prophecy does sound like it might refer to an actual wall made out of wood, given that flaming arrows are arching over it, but you never know. I'd love it if it turned out to involve ships (and I'd love it even more if the flaming arrows hit all the ships carrying Euron Greyjoy, Victarion Greyjoy and all the other Greyjoys who aren't Asha and wiped them all out...)

It was also only when the backstory was all laid out for me by the lovely people of the internet that I noticed how close some aspects of the origin story for the war are to the Trojan War. I read A Game of Thrones way back in 2002, so I had completely forgotten the details of how Robert's Rebellion started and what happened to Lyanna Stark, and the small, slow drip-feed of additions to the story had therefore passed me by a bit as well. Looking over the thing as a whole, it's suddenly blindingly obvious that there's more than a hint of the Trojan War in the story of the man who absconds with a woman promised to someone else (with the level of her willingness to go with him varying depending on whose version you're listening to) and the sets of brothers and semi-brothers (Ned Stark and Robert Baratheon having been raised together) who go after her. I'm not sure whether this will have any relevance to the story, other than providing a fun allusion, but it may lend credence to the idea that Lyanna was in love with Rhaegar - versions in which Helen is seduced or chooses to run off with Paris tend to outnumber versions in which she is raped or abducted, though you get both.

One line that jumped out at me from the TV Tropes pages was a very interesting description of the late Joanna Lannister - according to the page on Tywin, it's said that 'Tywin ruled the Seven Kingdoms, but his wife ruled Tywin' (I have no idea which book that's from, I missed it entirely!). That seems to me to be a clear paraphrase of Robert Graves' description of Augustus and Livia in I, Claudius - 'Augustus ruled the world, but Livia ruled Augustus.' Whether this will mean anything or not remains to be seen. So far Joanna Lannister doesn't really have a character - we know Tywin loved her, she died in childbirth, and that's about it. If she was like Graves' interpretation of Livia, you have to wonder if there's all sorts of scheming going on in the backstory that we don't know about yet. Even if not, the allusion gives us a lot more sense of her character than anything else I can remember about her (and is an interesting example of reception of a novel that is itself reception of the ancient world).

Of course, A Dance with Dragons includes one of my favourite ancient motifs, the gladiatorial arena. I loved the way this scene was written so that we, reading it, know that Dany is watching Tyrion and Penny joust, while they are completely anonymous to her. The scene affirms Dany's character and dislike of the Games, and putting one of our favourite characters in peril and seeing him saved somewhat at a distance is a great way of increasing the tension and drama of the moment (and is maybe the fifth time in the entire incredibly long series when someone has done something nice for someone else for no other reason than to be nice - the others being Arya taking Gendry and Hot Pie with her when she escapes, Jaime in the bear pit, Jaime letting Tyrion escape and Tyrion making sure Ser Jorah doesn't end up in the Pits. Dany trying to protect women from the Dothraki and freeing slaves may also count. There's a reason Jaime, Tyrion, Arya and Dany are my favourite characters!).

A Dance with Dragons, like Star Trek's 'The Gamesters of Triskelion,' uses gladiatorial-style Games to demonstrate the evils of slavery - though it hardly needed to, after the horror that is the very concept of the Unsullied. But the dramatic sequence in the Pits also allows for an extra element historical stories can't include - a bloody great dragon landing in the middle of the fight and the queen flying off on it. It is awesome (probably the third most awesome scene in the whole thing, after the Tolkien-echoing arrival of Stannis to join the battle at the Wall towards the end of A Storm of Swords - the only moment of the series in which I actually like Stannis - and the aforementioned bear-pit scene). The wild, dangerous, untamed dragon being attracted by the blood and violence emphasises the horror of gladiatorial combat, as well as giving Dany her moment of glory and, hopefully, indicating that the next book might involve some actual flying around on dragons, which would be a quicker mode of transport, if nothing else.

As a footnote to the gladiators thing, I loved the sequence towards the end in which Ser Barristan is able to defeat a pit fighter because the pit fighter refuses to wear armour and keeps trying to shame Ser Barristan into taking off his. I suspect gladiators were pretty fearsome killing machines, but they were also highly specialised, mostly using particular sets of weapons against particular opponents, so might have struggled against an unfamiliar enemy - and of course, armour, as long as it's not too heavy, is a distinct advantage.

The dragon in question. It gets bigger...

We should get to see more of Meereen and its pyramids and its fighting pits in Season 3 of Game of Thrones, so I'm looking forward to that - though unfortunately we'll have to wait until Season 6 to get the awesome dragon scene! Hopefully it will be worth waiting for...

Plebs: Saturnalia

noreply@blogger.com (Juliette) — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 12:36:00 +0000

For its first series finale, Plebs gives us Christmas in April, telling a story set during one of my favourite Roman festivals, the Saturnalia.

Most Roman-set stories that cover the Saturnalia portray it as the Roman equivalent of Christmas, for the fairly logical reason that it's where some of our Christmas traditions come from, and part of the reason we celebrate Christmas on 25th December. Plebs, however, takes a different approach and assimilates it to the modern Western celebration of New Year's, complete with their own version of Times Square on New Year's Eve and the idea that people kiss at midnight. Having already covered one of the Saturnalia's best known elements - slaves and masters swapping places - in an earlier episode, there's very little of the actual Saturnalia left other than Cynthia's straw animals and the time of year, plus the general party atmosphere, which is pretty accurate.

Part of the reason for this is that the series plays down any religious elements of the festival. There's a nice tension running throughout the episode between poor, superstitious Cynthia's terror at being cursed by a street-corner soothsayer and Grumio's total lack of concern for the gods on the grounds that they don't exist (and it's always nice to see ancient unbelief depicted in popular culture, as popular stories too often assume that everyone in the ancient world believed in every myth and every tradition). Since the writing leans firmly in Grumio's direction, it is perhaps unsurprising that it is current secular celebrations, rather than religious ones, that form the basis of the episode. More importantly, of course, Marcus is driven throughout the story by his desire to get a chance to kiss Cynthia at midnight, leading to a nice final gag which helps prevent this story from feeling too much like Friends in togas.

Grumio's story in this episode didn't work so well for me. It starts off with him stealing meat from religious sacrifices, which makes no sense at all because apart from a few vital organs, the meat from religious sacrifices in Rome was eaten at a sacrificial banquet. The Greeks and Romans were not stupid and they did not throw away tonnes of perfectly good meat on the gods. The Greeks even had a whole myth to explain why the gods got the bones and not the meat. Then Grumio nearly gets taken off to Cyprus by a cult who want to castrate him (which happened in the secretive mystery cult of Cybele, according to a slightly hysterical poem by Catullus). Which is fine, except that Grumio is a slave, so the cult aren't recruiting him so much as stealing him from Marcus. I know I'm not supposed to complain about historical inaccuracy, but this plotline just left me a bit cold, not to mention it included some rather poor taste jokes as well (though I did like the way the costume department had dressed the cult priests half in Christian monk-like robes and half in Buddhist monk-like robes - inaccurate, but rather fun).

Luckily Marcus and Sylax's plot is more successful and involves them teaming up with Water-Man, which is always nice. Cynthia's plot, though thin, is also fun and allows the episode to open with a lovely homage to Monty Python's Life of Brian as we meet a doom-mongering old crone (and there were a lot of prophecies about the end of the world and, if we believe the poets, a lot of soothsaying old crones around in Rome as well, so that works). Her logic concerning the 'accident' that's going to befall her and her conviction that if Landlord had done his job properly she would have had a worse accident was wonderful. There was some nice snappy dialogue in this episode too - I particularly enjoyed Stylax's optimistic assertion to Marcus that soon, 'You'll get with Cynthia, I'll get with everybody else!' and Landlord's insistence that the reason for the damp in one of the rooms was that it's 'a wet room.'

All in all, a fun end to the series, and fingers crossed ITV will give it a second shot, if only in the hope that poor Marcus can finally catch a break and get at least a hug from Cynthia.

All Plebs reviews

Plebs: Bananae

noreply@blogger.com (Juliette) — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 17:15:00 +0000

In this episode, the boys's flat is overrun with Thracian fruit sellers, and Marcus falls foul of a group of veterans of the Roman army.

The essential basis of this episode is the constantly expanding nature of the Roman world. The details are all over the place (neither Thrace nor Britain had yet been conquered in 27 BC, though there were links with them, and I'm pretty sure bananas don't grow in Thrace, which is on the Black Sea, unless the climate was warmer back then). But the essential point is, our characters live at the hub of a world that is constantly changing thanks to the power plays of the higher-ups.

In Cynthia's case, this means accidentally donating money for the conquest of her own country. Cynthia and Metella come from outside the Empire, which is one reason for Cynthia's occasional confusion at Roman customs (like gladiatorial combat). Here, Cynthia is uncomfortably reminded that however well she might be trying to blend in she's not, in fact, Roman and is on some level still an outsider.

In the Thracians' case, we see the impact of conquest on people's lives, as they introduce the Romans to a previously unknown fruit, the banana. Bananas are Britain's favourite exciting and interesting fruit - they only grow far to the south so to a British audience they seem very exotic, there are jokes to be made when people discover the skin for the first time, and of course, as Plebs is keen to point out, they are... suggestively shaped.

We also see the boys react with extreme discomfort to the Thracians kissing them on the cheeks in greeting. The specifics of this reaction are, of course, transposed from modern Britain - this is the average British reaction when greeted this way by people from other parts of Europe (squirming and not knowing where to look, essentially. We tend to prefer a handshake in a business context, and a barely comprehensible grunt approximating to 'a'righ?' with a nod of the head when greeting friends). But the story as a whole is nice reflection on a world in which freshly conquered new people with new customs, new products and, historically, new religions pour in and shake things up every now and again.

I enjoyed this episode, particularly the terrible puns ('Thracist,' 'bananed'). Again, this is probably a reflection of my terrible sense of humour more than anything else, but I laughed every time someone said 'bananae.' I'm easily pleased.

All Plebs reviews

Plebs: The Herpes Cat

noreply@blogger.com (Juliette) — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 16:22:00 +0000

In the fourth episode of Plebs, Stylax has caught something nasty, and Grumio's lottery ticket may or may not be inside Cynthia's dead cat.

This is probably the least 'Roman' episode of Plebs so far. I probably don't need to say this, but Romans didn't have sexual health clinics, especially not staffed by attractive, single young women (women were midwives, men were physicians), and I'm not aware that they had lotteries either, though I suppose they might have done. What this means is that, more than any other episode so far, this is essentially a modern sitcom in which the protagonists wear tunics.

There was one concession to the setting of ancient Rome - I liked the way the show acknowledged the fact that everything Grumio has, including himself, belongs to Marcus. This was carried right through to the landlord negotiating how to split potential lottery wins from Grumio's ticket with Marcus, rather than Grumio. Slaves were often given an allowance and a close personal slave like Grumio might have possessions, but technically, legally, they all belonged to his master. The references to this situation, as well as giving Marcus a reason to be invested in digging up Cynthia's ex-cat, are a nice reminder that however much people will always be people, ancient Rome was in some ways a fairly alien world.

I'm a cat person, so violence to cats usually upsets me, but luckily the dead-cat moments were kept to a minimum. The cat ('Felix', Latin for good luck, which works rather nicely) is also by far the fattest, healthiest-looking stray cat I've ever seen, which I suppose is a good thing, since I'm glad the animals used seem healthy and happy, though anyone who's been on holiday to Rome knows that this isn't what the cats that prowl the streets of Rome look like. The pets of love interests in Roman-set stories are more often sparrows, to match Catullus' famous poem about how upset his lover Lesbia is because her pet sparrow has died (that's why Miriam's secret admirer gives her a sparrow in The Secrets of Vesuvius). But then, it would be harder for a sparrow to potentially choke on a lottery ticket.

Not as many laughs as the first two episodes, but less weeing and pooing than the third episode, so a step in the right direction!

All Plebs reviews

Oblivion (dir. Joseph Kosinski, 2013)

noreply@blogger.com (Juliette) — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 15:23:00 +0000

Oblivion is a post-apocalyptic science fiction film starring Tom Cruise. Brother and I went to see it last night, and enjoyed ourselves. It's a bit long, and our reactions throughout the film were often along the lines of, 'Hmm, that looks like 2001,' 'this is making me want to watch Wall-E,' 'I've seen Moon too, and Independence Day' and several occasions when one or other of us predicted the next line, plus a moment towards the end where we both ruined the seriousness of the occasion by bursting into giggles at another, clearly deliberate, homage. But overall it was a good night out, pretty engaging considering it's over two hours long and beautifully shot.

Early on in the film, Tom Cruise (his character goes by the everyman name 'Jack', making this the second film this year where Tom Cruise has played someone called Jack) picks up an old book in the rubble of the ruined Earth (this is not a spoiler - the whole of the first few minutes is the biggest info-dump you've ever heard, including the fact that the Earth has been ruined. Do not, as I did, spend too long in the toilet and miss the beginning). The book is Lays of Ancient Rome, a book of Victorian poems by Lord Macaulay (that tells you quite a lot about them) based on ancient Roman legends. Cruise reads and looks thoughtful about part of the most famous poem, the story of Horatius, and particularly the lines,

And how can man die better
than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers,
And the temples of his gods.

Macaulay's poems are based on Roman myths and legends from the early Republican era (and a bit of the Roman monarchy). We don't often see this era represented in popular culture - outside of Spartacus and the fall of the Republic, modern writers aren't terribly interested (Ralph Fiennes' Coriolanus actually goes out of its way to distance itself from the historical Rome). When popular culture tells stories about Romans, its interest is usually in telling stories about evil, corrupt empires which may or may not be defeated by holier-than-thou Christians. The focus is on orgies, gladiators, mad monarchs and blood sports. Romans are usually the evil Other, and those works that do present the Romans as 'just like us,' like Plebs, are more likely to focus on everyday life and unsung heroes rather than big names or famous stories.

These Lays, though, are based on the stories Romans told about themselves, rather than the stories that we tell about them. Just like most cultures, the Romans told stories of their early history that exemplified the values they treasured the most. In this story, when the rest of the army runs away, one man, Horatius (two others help but they give up after a while), defends a bridge against an invading army. He tells the others to destroy the (only) bridge behind him and holds the invaders off until they've done so, then swims over without even losing any of his weapons (this was given some importance by some of the Roman writers). Bravery, military glory and fighting for Rome are all part of this story. The Romans told lots of stories about their bygone glories (many of them involving war or women killing themselves, or both) that used to be quite popular, certainly up to the Victorian era and beyond, but that have fallen out of fashion in the twentieth century, especially since World War Two, as Rome has become synonymous with evil empires and general badness.

This is about to get very spoilery, so stop reading now if you want to go into the film fresh.

There's a really interesting moment at the end of the film, when Tom Cruise confronts the amusingly-designed alien thing and quotes Macaulay's lines back at it. He starts by saying that these words are from a story about 'a place called Rome' (or something to that effect - the film's too recent for transcripts to be available and I wasn't taking notes!). I found that particularly interesting because the last time I read a reference to a 'place called Rome' in a futuristic dystopia, it was in the third Hunger Games book, Mockingjay, and the reference was not meant to be particularly complimentary to Romans. But here, Rome is held up as an example. We as the audience are asked to identify with the Romans - and not with slaves like Spartacus, or downtrodden schlubs like the Plebs, but with a hero of Roman legend, fighting to preserve Rome. Of course, the reason this works is because the story is a defensive one, set far back in the Republic, so we're not being asked to identify with the Empire but with a smaller, democratic state fighting enemies who've allied with their evil ousted monarch. But I'm betting a lot of the audience don't know all that - they're simply being asked to identify with 'Rome' as a shining example of the bravery of humanity against a nasty, de-humanised alien threat. It's very unusual - and for a Romanist like me, quite nice!

More film reviews

Plebs: The Erotic Vase

noreply@blogger.com (Juliette) — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 13:55:00 +0000

It's Grumio's birthday, and Stylax has bought him the titular (hehe) vase, which happens to include a picture that looks like Cynthia. I liked the vase - there are lots of vases like that from the ancient world (though possibly not detailed enough to look like a specific person). I liked the way everyone kept calling it 'vintage' too, as it would most likely be a very old Greek vase, judging by the style.

I also liked the detail that Grumio doesn't know how old he is, which is played for laughs but reflects what must have been a pretty common reality. Marcus has forgotten to get Grumio a present, so he offers to swap roles for a day - this is also something some Romans really did, as part of the Saturnalia. It would be up to the master whether to participate or not (and some, like Pliny the Younger, refused to swap roles but did go away to the country and leave the city slaves to have a holiday) but it was definitely a real thing, so that was fun too.

Much of this episode was concerned with Stylax's relationship with his cousin, and I was very happy to see incest depicted as something thoroughly disapproved of by almost everyone else (even between cousins, which is more often considered OK in some cultures). One of my biggest pet peeves about popular culture interpretations of Rome is the notion that Romans were prone to having sex with siblings, parents, aunts and uncles all over. The truth is, historical writers accused certain emperors - the ones they didn't like - of having sex with their sisters, mothers and so on in order to show up how bad they were. (And Claudius did marry his niece, but he had to get special permission to do that). Historians also routinely accused bad emperors of being effeminate, thinking they were gods and being fond of money and luxury. Basically, all bad emperors were accused of being Cleopatra, which is probably where the whole notion came from in the first place (well, and Caligula might genuinely have been a bit off his rocker - it's debatable).

All of this means it's really refreshing to see a large number of Romans reacting with appropriate horror to the idea of incest - this time, Plebs actually reflects Roman reality more than popular culture tropes. The reference to how 'the royal family do it all the time' is a bit problematic because of the date - 'the royal family' would have to mean either Egyptian or Hellenistic monarchs, who were all gone by 27 BC (Cleopatra having killed herself three years earlier) or the Julio-Claudian emperors, in which case it would certainly be true as far as cousins and step-siblings go, but too early (Augustus is still only about 35). I do wonder if giving the series such a precise date was a good idea - I suppose it doesn't matter much since hardly anyone will notice, but if you do know the history, it does take you out of the comedy when you're distracted for several seconds thinking 'hang on, that doesn't work.' If the series was simply set in 'the Roman Empire' none of this would be a problem (nor would the fact Cynthia and Metella's home of Britain isn't a province yet, though there were trade links) - I rather hope something is made of the date to justify it at some point.

A bit slower than some earlier episodes, but Marcus walking around in a yellow dress was very funny, and talking of Cleopatra, Flavia bathing in asses' milk was a nice touch. Marcus clearly hadn't thought through his offer to buy Grumio a pointy hat, since a cone-shaped hat is the symbol of a freedman, but then I imagined it as the Roman equivalent of giving Dobby a sock, so that was quite funny too. And now we know how all those Greek pots ended up getting smashed...

All Plebs reviews

Plebs: The Gladiator

noreply@blogger.com (Juliette) — Sat, 30 Mar 2013 13:16:00 +0000

The second episode of Plebs stays true to the first in dealing with one of popular culture's favourite things about ancient Rome, but it also demonstrates the unique opportunities offered by Rome as a setting for a broad comedy.

Unlike orgies, gladiatorial combat is a real Roman thing, though popular culture prefers to conveniently ignore the fact that not all fights were to the death (not even potentially to the death) because gladiators are expensive. A popular culture gladiatorial combat will only rarely be an execution of a criminal, but will always be to the death, at least in potential, with the audience asked to indicate by doing something with their thumbs whether the loser should live or die. This episode represents gladiatorial combat as a popular sport complete with chants and flags and things - probably not a million miles off, though if you want team colours and that football-match sense of rivals up against each other in a Roman context, you really want to go for chariot racing (which was almost as dangerous).

The great advantage to using gladiators in a comedy is that the Roman context here allows the writers to indulge in the blackest of black comedy without actually making our heroes murderers (though Marcus comes pretty close). Black comedy can be great fun but it usually requires a really dark tone that a standard, light-hearted sitcom might struggle with (see for example some of the reservations expressed over at TV Tropes concerning How I Met Your Mother's 'murder room'; Community's depiction of Jeff's encounter with Pierce's father is slightly less dark but still not overly comfortable).

In ancient Rome, however, gladiatorial combat is simply a fact of life (though Cynthia's conviction that it's all a show was very funny). Marcus' attempt to nobble Cassius the gladiator is a bit close to the line, but here all our heroes can agree at the end that they all killed him and move on with their lives, because they live in a society where they're surrounded by abandoned babies, gladiators, chariot-racing accidents and wars, not to mention the lives some slaves led, and so their accidental complicity in poor Cassius' death doesn't actually mark them out as psychopaths. It's a neat use of the setting to do the sort of comedy that just wouldn't work as well in another context.

Cassius is a 'net-man,' a retarius, which is one of popular culture's favourite types of gladiator, probably because it looks distinctive and very Roman, and sets gladiatorial combat apart from fencing or other forms of sword-fighting. Pop culture will generally go for a retiarius whenever they need a fighter to look nimble and clever (as opposed to occasions that call for brute force, which tend to produce the short sword, generally without a helmet because we need to see our manly actor's face). Of course, this comes in especially handy here when poor Cassius, heart-broken, forgets his net...

Cassius is played by Danny Dyer, an actor I only know from Mark Kermode's impressions of him, which did add an extra level of amusement to Marcus' attempts to nobble him. Dyer projects the perfect combination of charm and vulnerability mixed with taking pleasure in killing 'people from France' for the part - we share the characters' regret when he dies, reduced to an emotional wreck by Cynthia's rejection (Propertius would sympathise) but we'll get over it.

I'm not generally bothered by historical inaccuracies in a show like Plebs, though I confess I was slightly distracted by Grumio specifically identifying Cassius' tattoo as the mark of a gladiator despite the fact it was of an eagle and clearly said SPQR (Senatus Populusque Romanus, 'for the Senate and the People of Rome') which would suggest he was more likely a legionary, rather than a gladiator. It's not really a big deal, but it is a bit distracting when the plot draws attention to it.

Once again, this was daft but made me laugh, and Grumio's epic battle netting chickens at the end was very funny, though the less said about Stylax's fondness for a rotting, bloated severed hand the better...

All Plebs reviews

Plebs: The Orgy

noreply@blogger.com (Juliette) — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 18:38:00 +0000

Here's the thing with Plebs - it's daft, cheap, predictable, unsophisticated, puerile and incorporates some jokes I'm really not sure about taste-wise - and I laughed out loud. Quite a lot.

Plebs is a new sitcom that premiered with a double bill on ITV2 in the UK last night (review of episode 2 coming soon). It follows the misadventures of Stylax, Marcus and their slave Grumio, and Marcus's attempts to romance their British new neighbour Cynthia, without her slave Metella getting in the way (the argument about how to pronounce 'Briton' made me laugh). It's this generation's Chelmsford 123, featuring actors from Twenty Twelve, The Inbetweeners Movie, Friday Night Dinner, Smack the Pony, Gavin and Stacey and so on.

The show is chock-full of inaccuracies, of course, but that's because it exists in the same sort of surreal netherworld as Tony Robinson's Maid Marian and her Merry Men, a fantastic children's show I grew up with in which medieval peasants sing about pancake day and the Sheriff of Nottingham's guards have a pet elastic band (in fairness, one guard did object that this was impossible because they hadn't been invented yet). So there's no point worrying about ancient Romans eating corn on the cob, because that's really not the point. It's not all inaccurate, anyway. The close relationship the main characters have with their slaves might have shocked some of the snobbier elite authors of the surviving Roman texts, but is actually pretty reasonable I suspect, especially for poorer citizens with only one slave, living in close quarters with each other.

Plebs is set in the year 27 BC, which is interesting. Unlike AD 123, which is a pretty random year that sounds kind of funny and is conveniently situated during the reign of Hadrian, he who built the wall, 27 BC is an incredibly significant year in Roman history. It's the year many scholars choose to mark the end of the Republic and the beginning of the Empire, because it's the year in which Octavian Caesar took the name Augustus and set in place the political systems by which he would govern the Roman world, giving himself lifelong powers at the same time. (Others would cut off the Republic at 31 BC, when Mark Antony and Cleopatra were defeated at the Battle of Actium, or 30 BC, when they died, but 27 BC is significant however you look at it). The writers insist that our heroes won't meet the emperor or anything of that nature (though they clearly haven't seen Up Pompeii!, which very rarely featured the emperor either except in the movie, and they imply that the emperor at the time was Nero, which obviously it wasn't) but surely they can't have happened upon quite possibly the most significant year in Roman political history by accident. Whether they do anything with that fact remains to be seen.

(It's also a bit early for Britons - Julius Caesar had invaded and gone away again, but Britannia wasn't yet a Roman province. But that's by-the-by).

At least one of the writers has clearly been to a school that taught Latin, because the boys' slave Grumio is named after the cook from the Cambridge Latin Course - Metella is a name from that course as well, where it was the mother's name (which does rather fit Metella's slightly naggy, slightly protective character). Cynthia, meanwhile, is named for Propertius' probably-fictitious lover from his love elegies, and I wondered if Flavia was named for the heroine of The Roman Mysteries (though she's a very different character). I love the use of job descriptions as names as well which is very Roman - mostly coming from Flavia (who calls the boys Copier and Shredder, along with their Roman water-cooler Water Boy or, as he insists, Water-Man) but also in reference to The Landlord (useful for story-telling as well as a fairly Roman thing to do).

As a comedy, and one aimed at an audience with no knowledge of Rome, this series is of course about 'Roman' popular stereotypes more than actual Romans. And so it should come as no surprise that the first episode focuses on everyone's favourite Roman thing (that owes a lot more to twentieth century film and television than anything else), the orgy. The episode didn't really do anything new with the concept of orgies but hey, people talking about having sex is always funny (and it was firmly established that neither Marcus nor Cynthia were especially keen, thus setting them up as an appropriate lead romantic couple).

Another thing that's always funny - men in bad attempts at drag

And that's the real strength of the show - it's funny. Perhaps this is an indictment of my terrible sense of humour, but as much as I was prepared to hate Plebs, I laughed. In fact, I laughed far more at a single episode of Plebs that at half a dozen episodes of Malcolm in the Middle (which I have been watching on DVD for the first time). Ultimately, that's all I really ask of a sitcom - so I'll be watching the rest of the series with pleasure, no matter how daft it gets.

All Plebs reviews

Spartacus War of the Damned: Blood Brothers

noreply@blogger.com (Juliette) — Sat, 23 Mar 2013 20:27:00 +0000

Red stuff drips artistically. You know that scene in Gladiator, in Morocco, where Proximo walks through a butcher’s knocking aside the dangling bodies of animals dripping blood all over the place? It’s like that, but with people.

Number One is still sulking at the Artist for daring to have other friends but has bigger problems; he and Spartacus observe Crixus giving Spartacus the side-eye. Number One affirms his allegiance to Spartacus. I have to say, I’m liking him more this season, baseless jealousy aside.

Gannicus is wearing clothes! Things must be serious. Helga is insulting him and everyone else in German, but no one really minds. The Pirate King is still calling Spartacus ‘King Spartacus’ which is kind of cool. They have a Plan which involves Spartacus sailing off for a little while, taking Gannicus with him and hoping Crixus doesn’t stage a mutiny in his absence.

Meanwhile, back with the Romans, Tiberius is sulking over his dead friend’s short straw (white stone, technically) while Maid Marian attempts a look of mild concern. Trumpets and music a bit like the score on Caesar IV herald the arrival of a senator called Metellus, who is wearing Lucilla’s fox-fur from Gladiator. He tries to tell Crassus what to do, which gets him nowhere since Crassus is paying for the whole army, but his news that Pompey has won his war in Spain and is on his way has more effect. Crassus calls Pompey an ‘adolescent butcher’ which is pretty funny. I so badly want to see a series that follows Surfer Caesar, the so-far-unseen Pompey and Crassus fight their way through the First Triumvirate. We’re reminded that Crassus admires and respects Spartacus, unlike everyone else. Crassus gets fed up of Metellus and goads him into a mission which I bet has more than a sniff of kamikaze to it.

Beardy German now trusts Surfer Caesar enough to give him a sword, so Surfer Caesar repays him by stirring up more trouble between Crixus and Spartacus. Crixus stomps off to yell at Number One, who is feeding and protecting Boudicca and the last few remaining Romans, though reluctantly. Crixus wants to know why Spartacus has sailed away with the pirates but no amount of whinging about Number One’s brother and Romans in general will sway Number One’s loyalty – that’s why he’s Number One. He has fabulous spiky hair in this episode by the way. He’s obviously raided some Roman hair gel.

Gannicus is on the pirate ship with Spartacus, who is reminiscing and plotting to steal Crassus’ army’s supplies. Spartacus, who is clearly not giving Number One enough credit, is now trying to persuade Gannicus to be his second, but Gannicus is having none of it (I so, so want Gannicus to survive this series, though it seems spectacularly unlikely).

Spartacus and his gang find the Romans with a very small cart carrying nothing like enough to feed Crassus’ army and the rock soundtrack kicks in to signal some blood and mayhem. Crassus, blissfully unaware, sulks about the fact that his son is strangely unimpressed at being forced to murder his best friend and then go live in the lower people’s camp and watch his dad come in for a booty call with a slave he clearly fancies himself.

Sexy time – Crassus and Maid Marian, orange glow and soft focus as usual. Surfer Caesar is having a considerably less romantic flirtation with a bare-breasted woman in an ancient Roman pub (I suppose I should call it a tavern, since it’s Roman. It’s basically a pub). He gets his wooden spoon out again to encourage the Pirate King to distrust Spartacus as well and to extract some information from him, and Beardy German kindly offers to help him find out what Spartacus’ plans against Crassus are.

Number One is busy glaring at the Artist and Boudicca together, but the Artist points out that he doesn’t follow orders and Number One can’t tell him who to hang out with, plus he had bigger problems at the time, like Crixus and Naevia slaughtering everyone in sight. Their domestic is interrupted by the news that some Romans are coming and Crixus, over Number One’s protestations, is about to mount an attack when the King himself shows up and declares his intention to release the last few Romans. Apparently when they got off the ship, Spartacus and Gannicus didn’t even stop to wash the blood off, though given what Crixus was about to do that was probably wise.

Maid Marian tries to make Tiberius feel better, on Crassus’ orders. It doesn’t work.

Spartacus and Number One escort Boudicca and the others out of the city. Spartacus and Crixus give each other Significant Looks while some of Spartacus’ men pee on the Romans as they go. Crixus complains that Boudicca will be able to share information with the Romans, but is forced to back down when Spartacus points out that was the plan in the first place. Having convinced the Romans of how divided they are, they’ll take advantage and trick Crassus. It’s a great plan – or it would be, if the divide between Spartacus and Crassus weren’t a bit too genuine.

The Pirate King is leaving, but I’m distracted by the fact Gannicus is wearing actual trousers! No shirt though. ('Trousers' - of a sort - did exist in the ancient world, Persians wore them). He calls Spartacus’ plan mad, which he means as a compliment.

Boudicca tells Crassus Spartacus is heading for Sicily and Crixus is staying in the city, though all that achieves is to get her snarked by Crassus for still being alive (he frowns on that). Meanwhile Tiberius rapes Maid Marian as a way of getting petty vengeance on his father and Spartacus’ people pack up and move out. Naevia tries to apologise to Gannicus about Trojan Horse, but he remains unmoved.

Gannicus rocks ancient-style trousers (this pic is from another episode, but they're probably the same trousers)

Surfer Caesar reaches the end of the road and reveals himself to Beardy German, who tries to negotiate, since he doesn’t care about Spartacus and just wants to get home. Surfer Caesar is about as taken by this idea as you’d expect and Beardy German is given the honour of a slow-motion death.

Helga goes off to find Number One and Eponine takes advantage of the opportunity to accost him again. Spartacus’ carefully laid plans are interrupted by the Pirate King going over to the Romans (who had more money – of course, being led by Crassus) and Surfer Caesar and Gannicus get to throw a few blows at each other before splitting off to run in dramatic slow-mo across the city. Surfer Caesar takes on Number One and Helga, who are guarding the gate, and one of these three is an historical character with another 27 years to live, while the other two are not. Hmm.

Lots of slo-mo fighting. It all looks a bit like an especially bloody version of tai chi. The Artist does pretty well for himself. A Roman gets his face smashed in, of course, and the Pirate King gets his cut off. Crixus gets a bit over-enthusiastic about finishing off the pirates, but he and Spartacus make up, covered in the blood of their enemies.

It won’t do them much good, though, because Surfer Caesar burns down the gate. I love Crassus’ battering ram, which has an exciting animal head that is probably a dog but looks a tiny bit like a dragon to me (it’s probably pretty accurate – I confess, I have no idea what Roman battering rams looked like. I have a vague notion they might have had dogs' heads). ‘Now would be time to run,’ says Surfer Caesar. End of episode.

Not a bad hour – it’s nice to see Spartacus and Crixus making up and it’ll be good to see our nominal heroes band together against a common enemy again. Surfer Caesar continues to be pretty awesome, though Tiberius has put himself straight on the ‘die horribly as soon as possible please’ list – which probably means he’ll hang around for ages, but eventually die horribly in the finale. And Crassus somehow remains sympathetic despite ‘exhuming the putrid spectre of decimation,’ largely because he’s so much more intelligent than anyone else on the show. Good stuff – though the most pressing hanging question is, how long will Helga and Number One last, and will Gannicus and The Artist throw themselves into mad vengeance kicks if and when they die? We’ll have to wait and see…

Quotes

Spartacus: I am done with words.

Metellus: Is it true that you exhume putrid spectre of decimation? This might be my favourite line in all four seasons to date.

Gannicus: A man must do what he can to brace against the shit of a simple day.

Nasir (on Agron running away from an argument): Is it a common trait of men east of the Rhine to run from a fight?

‘The die has been cast’ comes up again. It’s no wonder it sprang to Caesar’s mind all those years later…

All Spartacus: Various Subtitles reviews

Fan-made Silmarillion trailer

noreply@blogger.com (Juliette) — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 14:56:00 +0000

More Spartacus reviews are on their way, but I saw this today and was really intrigued. This is a fan-made trailer for a sadly non-existent film of Tolkien's tome of Middle Earth mythology, The Silmarillion. I have to confess, I'm a bad Tolkien fan - The Silmarillion is sitting on my shelf but I haven't read it. I have read Christopher Tolkien's edited version of some stories from it, published as The Children of Hurin with beautiful illustrations by Alan Lee. Based on what I've read from that novel, The Silmarillion would be a lot more like Game of Thrones than The Lord of the Rings, but I digress.

This 'trailer' is, of course, made up of clips of other films, edited together to look like one really kick-ass film without including too many story-specific elements. I spotted quite a bit of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader in there, which is sort of nice and weirdly appropriate given JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis' friendship (and ignoring the fact that Tolkien didn't like Narnia). I spotted bits and pieces of King Arthur and Robin Hood in there as well, I was delighted to see the sexy guy who went off with the mermaid from Pirates of the Caribbean 4 and I recognised Gemma Arterton's voice from Prince of Persia. The maker of the video has listed the films he or she used on You Tube, and some others I didn't recognise included Legend of the Seeker, The Time Machine, Diablo 3, WoW Wrath of the Witch King and WoW Cataclysm (I assume that stands for World of Warcraft?).

What really intrigued me, though, was the use of Clash of the Titans for much of the first part of the trailer. I guess this was largely because it provided the astrological imagery needed for the opening section about the universe, but it got me thinking. Because The Lord of the Rings is pseudo-early-medieval (the Rohirrim use words from Old English like theoden, prince, and eorl, warrior, while Tolkien's description of the faded glory of Gondor could be sort of Byzantine), I tend to imagine all Tolkien's mythology as taking place in a pseudo-early-medieval society (except, of course, the hobbits, who live in the early twentieth century. They're ahead of their time). But logically, of course, if Gondor is Byzantium and the Rohirrim are the Old English, then surely their immediate predecessors should be pseudo-Romans and their distant ancestors should be pseudo-ancient Greeks, Egyptians or Mesopotamians.

Tolkien fans, what do you think? If, by some miracle, the whole situation with the rights were to be sorted out and a movie made of The Silmarillion or The Children of Hurin, what sort of look should it have? Should it look pseudo-Greek, or pseudo-Roman? Egyptian or Mesopotamian? Or should it look pseudo-medieval, to match up with the currently existing films?

More posts on JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis

Top Five Deaths of Julius Caesar

noreply@blogger.com (Juliette) — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 10:30:00 +0000

OK, so this one is perhaps a little morbid. And Caesar was a real person who was really murdered, which is not nice and nothing to celebrate even if he was a power-obsessed tyrannical dictator. But somehow the 2056th anniversary of his bloody, vicious death still seems worth commemorating. I'm sure he would appreciate the eternal fame aspect of the whole thing.

5. Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar (dir. Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1953)
Famous last words: Et tu Brute? Then fall Caesar.
Et tu Brute... The guilt written all over James Mason's face as he stabs the already dying and blood-covered Caesar is both very well acted and, for me, makes Brutus look essentially cowardly (almost as if he's been persuaded into doing this by peer pressure, rather than believing he's doing the right thing).

The really great set-piece in this film is Marlon Brando as Mark Antony giving the famous 'Friends, Romans, Countrymen' speech, but for someone to give Caesar's eulogy, Caesar first has to die, and the film captures the scene simply and effectively. The black and white visuals and the conventions of the time limit the amount of blood and gore on display, but somehow the streak of blood running down Caesar's face as he approaches Brutus is especially effective and makes him look particularly vulnerable.

4. Caesar, by Alan Massie
Famous last words: Not you, my son.
Et tu Brute... with the twist that here, Caesar is not addressing Marcus Junius Brutus, ex-supporter of Pompey, famous assassin and son of Servilia, but Decimus Junius Brutus, up until this point a staunch Caesarian and one of the main beneficiaries of Caesar's will (after Octavian and Mark Antony, of course). 'Markie' is depicted in a not particularly flattering light in the novel, and although the reluctance to join the conspiracy stays with him, the guilt over betraying Caesar belongs to Decimus, which makes sense, since Decimus was much closer to Caesar. This results in a neat twist on the famous line, combining Suetonius' ambiguous 'boy' (though Suetonius does actually specify Marcus Brutus) with Shakespeare's 'Brute' and thus keeping everyone happy!

Caesar's assassination is the focus of Massie's novel, but takes up very little space in terms of the word count. After an enormous amount of build-up, Casca suddenly stabbing Caesar in the neck, for all their careful preparation, almost seems to come out of nowhere and the whole thing is over very quickly - which is probably pretty realistic. Massie's description of the murder and the body is suitably brutal without needing to go into great detail on either the struggle or the gore - phrases like 'a piece of bleeding flesh' and 'what had been the Perpetual Dictator' briefly but effectively conveying the ultimate metamorphosis of living being into dead body. The decision to focus on Decimus, rather than Marcus, Brutus pays off brilliantly, driving home the emotional resonance of Decimus' turning on Caesar from him being the one persuading Caesar to attend the Senate to him being the last to leave the body. The shock and sense of betrayal the reader imagines Caesar must feel as Decimus stabs him in the chest is that much stronger for the fact that, unlike Marcus, Decimus never fought against him in a civil war and his betrayal was presumably, therefore, more surprising.

3. Carry On Cleo (dir. Gerald Thomas 1964)
Famous last words: Et tu Brute! So dies Caesar. Let me just say these last words to you. Friends, Romans - (Brutus: Countrymen!) I know! Oh, what's the use...
Et tu Brute... After Bilius, Agrippa and Mark Antony's failed attempts to murder him, it's Brutus (with help from the rest of the Senate) who finally succeeds.

Poor Caesar. He spends the whole of Carry on Cleo surviving various assassination attempts and has already given us the immortal lines, 'Infamy! Infamy! They've all got it in for me!' and 'I came, I saw, I - conked out' before he is finally offed by a bunch of extras and a bit-part character, having lost his British bodyguard. This is the big payoff for the 'Friends, Romans, Countrymen' running gag, as poor Caesar is denied the chance to display his competence one last time and gives up. I would suggest that he shouldn't worry, as Mark Antony is about to get it right, but since in this version Antony is in Alexandria, busy leaping fully-clothed into Cleopatra's bath, that's probably not the case.

Coin issued by (Marcus) Brutus after the assassination, depicting a freedman's cap (to symbolise Rome being freed from slavery to Caesar) in between two daggers, labelled 'The Ides of March'. Subtle. (Image taken from the British Museum, © Trustees of the British Museum).

2. Julius Caesar (dir. Gregory Doran, 2012)
Famous last words: Et tu Brute? Then fall Caesar.
Et tu Brute... Not so much 'fall' as 'get violently shoved to the ground.' Paterson Joseph as Brutus gives a fantastic display of grim determination, his guilt tempered by his conviction that this must be done, played out in the ferocity of his attack on Caesar. It's usual to depict Caesar as badly injured but still staggering around until Brutus stabs him, at which point he goes down (though, given that he gets firmly stabbed in the back first and Roman medicine was limited, I suspect he was doomed anyway) but this version really goes for it - Caesar isn't too bloodied (and we can't see the wound, as it's in his back) until Brutus gets at him, at which point all hell breaks loose.

Is there a spookier way to kill someone off than on a broken-down escalator, with a spooky witch-doctor type caked in clay or white mud of some kind gazing on with a look of 'I told you so'? If there is, I don't know it. As if the abandoned, eerily-lit escalator by itself wasn't X-Files-y enough (escalators have never been the same since 'Tombs'), after the requisite famous last words, as Caesar is thrown to the jagged surface, his face is pushed up against the clear glass side and blood spurts out of his mouth like something from a quarantine episode of a science fiction programme (these nearly always involved people spewing blood, potentially infecting everyone around them. I'm particularly fond of Fringe's 'What Lies Below'). This is an angry, brutal version of Caesar's death and all the better for it - even Caesar himself throws 'then fall Caesar' at Brutus like an accusation, full of rage, rather than the usual resigned horror.

1. Rome, 'Kalends of February'
Famous last words: None. He's been stabbed, like, 20 times. Both lungs are probably punctured.

Et tu Brute... He does give Brutus a really piercing look as he goes down, though. Caesar is definitely a goner before Brutus gets to him in this version, and Brutus' blow is more of a mercy kill, ending Caesar's suffering as much as driving home the final blow.

Freed from the constraints of the ultra-famous Shakespearean lines, this is the gritty, down and dirty version of Caesar's death, to go with Rome's grimier, earthier approach (OK, that's something of a euphemism for 'there's a lot of sex and violence in it,' but it's more than just that). It seems unfair to praise this one for being especially realistic against the other four listed here, since it's a modern production not constrained by 1950s convention, it's a motion picture not a novel, it's made for television and not adapted from a stage production so everything is designed to be captured by the cameras rather than seen by a live audience and it's not a comedy. But even leaving all that aside, this version is exceptionally well done, the tremors taking over Ciarán Hinds' body as he falls to the floor a gruesomely effective touch. Brutus is a bit wet, perhaps, but then, Brutus is always a bit wet (except when played by Paterson Joseph, who should play Brutus is all adaptations from here on in). Caesar's (and Niobe's) death marked the end of season 1 - the only thing missing from this clip is the equally effective scene from the very beginning of season 2 in which Caesar's slave Posca, seen here being distracted and restrained along with Mark Antony, weeps over his body, probably the one person who will genuinely miss Caesar the most.

More Top Five lists

The Roman Mystery Scrolls: The Thunder Omen

noreply@blogger.com (Juliette) — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 19:28:00 +0000

The Thunder Omen is the third in the spin-off series to The Roman Mysteries, The Roman Mystery Scrolls, aimed at younger readers (about 7-10). In this story, Threptus and Floridius find out what happens when you play god(s)... (spoilers follow).

The Thunder Omen is set during my favourite Roman festival, the Saturnalia. I loved the way all the characters greeted each other with, 'Yo, Saturnalia!' This is a perfectly sensible transliteration of the Latin Saturnalia greeting, 'Io Saturnalia!' - 'Io,' contrary to the way it's used in 'Ding Dong Merrily on High,' should be pronounced 'yo' (just like Julius, spelled in Latin as Iulius, should be pronounced 'Yulius') - and 'yo' is much clearer to read for young children. But I have to confess, the '80s baby in me really got a kick out of everyone saying 'Yo!' to each other! It reminded me of Terry Pratchett's brilliant books about Johnny Maxwell, in which one of Johnny's friends is known as 'Yo-less' because he refuses to say 'Yo.' So that made me very happy!

The book also introduces children to how the sacred chickens actually work, which Lawrence wisely simplifies for young readers. The rule was, if corn fell to the ground from the chickens' mouths when they were feeding, that was a good omen, i.e. if the chickens were so hungry they gobbled up the corn too quickly and some of it fell from their beaks, that was the good omen. Lawrence sensibly simplifies this to make just the chickens eating a good omen, since the whole business with dropping the corn would be too complicated for young readers who, if they're anything like I was at that age, haven't the faintest idea what chickens eat anyway. Floridius and Threptus then explain exactly how ancient chicken keepers would manipulate the omens, by keeping the chickens hungry so that when the time came to look for an omen, the chickens would eat greedily. It's an example of how their trade is occasionally a wee bit close to that of a conman, but an excellent history lesson.

This book does also deal with Threptus and Floridius' distinctly dubious (and historically accurate) practices, as here they go too far, trying to trick a young woman into entering a marriage she doesn't want by faking Jupiter's thunder. Their story is paralleled with the story of Phaethon, who tried to drive his father Apollo's chariot, lost control and set half the earth on fire. Threptus decides that playing god is not a good idea, and confesses everything to the girl (luckily, after he takes her on an outing and she sees her suitor in his natural habitat, she decides she likes him after all, based on his personality and good reputation). It's a good development - a certain amount of trickery is part of Floridius' trade, but Threptus learns here not to go overboard, which ensures that our heroes remain likable and sympathetic.

Perhaps my favourite bit of history in this story though, was the explanation of what a 'vomitorium' is. This is framed by a device in which an older bully has tried to scare Threptus away from the theatre by telling him that rich Romans keep vomitoriums, where they go to throw up during a feast so that they can eat more food - a real misconception about the Roman world that comes up occasionally. Of course, Threptus is relieved to discover that 'vomitorium' is just a fancy word for an entrance or exit (the word 'vomit' is related, for obvious reasons, to words for 'exit'). It's an ingenious use of a real and common mistake to liven up the story at the same time as educating readers on what the word really meant.

As ever, this is a fun and lively visit to ancient Ostia. There are lots of familiar characters that keep the world of the Roman Mysteries rich and well developed; Ostian magistrate Bato's story progresses, Narcissus the handsome pantomime dancer from The Beggar of Volubilis makes an appearance fresh from his tour of North Africa, and we discover a softer side to Naso the bully. There are the usual fun references for grown-ups as well - Bato's mother, for example, is frequently referred to as the Lady in Lavender, so of course I pictured her as Judi Dench. But none of these are needed to understand the story, so young children picking up the book for the first time won't be lost - and hopefully they'll have sneakily been taught a lot more about ancient Rome by the time they've finished!

This was a review copy sent to me by the publisher.

All Roman Mysteries reviews

Spartacus War of the Damned: Decimation

noreply@blogger.com (Juliette) — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 10:30:00 +0000

Well, the title is promising anyway. The word comes from a nasty Roman habit of killing every 10th soldier to punish the army for a mistake or disobedience, which according to Plutarch Crassus did indeed revive while fighting Spartacus, after a lieutenant called Mummius did exactly what Tiberius did in the previous episode (Appian mentions it too). Caesar may have gone in for it as well, so it's actually reasonably accurate, as well as being perfect for Spartacus, since it involved unnecessary violence on a large scale.

The pirates have brought some supplies, but only wine, as the greedy Romans are hording their grain for themselves. When one of the few barrels of grain spills on the ground, they all go after it like the peasants after wine in A Tale of Two Cities (brilliant film, check it out if you haven't seen it).

Boudicca is sneaking some of the precious bread to feed her little group of escaped prisoners, while Crixus and Naevia are still whining that they should kill them all. Number One is struggling with crowd control and checking people coming into the city for weapons and slave brands. Helga is helping, but her version involves getting to 2nd (3rd?) base with the bare breasts of incoming ex-slaves (OK I confess, I'm not clear on exactly what the bases are! I'm British, we don't do baseball metaphors). A discussion of whether or not to attack Crassus’ army is interrupted by the discovery of some Romans who are, needless to say, quickly dispatched. Except Surfer Caesar, who uses the oldest trick in the book, killing his own men, to blag his way in. He tells them he cut out the brand on his leg and shows them the gash from his pseudo-vampiric sex with one of the slave-girls a couple of episodes ago.

Tiberius, meanwhile, is not as nearly dead as I had hoped, and for some reason wears no underwear while having a wound in his abdomen treated. Crassus is mad at him but he does confide in him about Surfer Caesar’s mission (which is the reason he ordered the goatee to stay).

Spartacus is smart enough to realise that Crassus is using their own strategies against them and that they probably have a mole, while Gannicus’ main concern is that if Spartacus dies, Crixus will be in charge (Number One is too busy agreeing with Crixus that they should attack Crassus to complain about being passed over for promotion). Gannicus also points out that Naevia killed the blacksmith and now they have no way to make weapons, because he is the only character on Spartacus’ side, apart from Spartacus himself, with two brain cells to rub together. As Crixus walks off, Number One does indicate that he probably doesn’t want to be led by Crixus, but his solution is to make himself Spartacus’ personal bodyguard in an attempt to ensure that Spartacus lives forever.

Eponine is still hanging around and moping when Gannicus challenges Surfer Caesar, who tries to explain away his skill with a sword by claiming his old master trained all his shepherds to be that good (he then deliberately loses, which seems a better idea). Beardy German points out that Crixus and Naevia are watching Surfer Caesar suspiciously as he pulls out a tooth (hope he doesn’t lose many more, I don’t think Roman dentures were that great) and they decide to enter into some dodgy dealings together.

Boudicca is cheered a bit by the news that Crassus is after Spartacus, as she thinks he might actually win, though she also gives him some intel. that leads to Spartacus realising that Crassus played him in Episode 1. Not cool, Boudicca. Crassus finally lays into Tiberius for disobeying orders and, even worse, for being so un-intimidating that his men fled Spartacus rather than obeying Tiberius, and orders the titular decimation to make sure they never do it again. Tiberius' friend (who name-checks Marius in his horror at the order of decimation - yay! History!) is in the drawing of lots despite standing with Tiberius and hauling him away, so of course, he’s going to die, just like Neighbours Reject before him.

Surfer Caesar is still cosying up to Beardy German, while Eponine helps Boudicca with her sneaky prisoner-feeding. Gannicus catches a random beating up a prisoner who keeps asking about his sister, Fabia, and puts a stop to it. Helga whines at him in German, which does no good of course as he doesn't understand a word she's saying, and she also uses German to express her desire to see Eponine’s head on a pike.

We interrupt your regularly scheduled plotting and scheming for some random sex because this show used to be called Blood and Tits for a reason, and the tits have been sorely lacking this season. Crassus is having romantic, soft-focus, clean-sheet sex with Maid Marian, because he may be a vicious b-word who kills a tenth of his own men but he's still the closest thing we have to a sympathetic protagonist this season. This goes on for a while (presumably to make up for cutting away a couple of episodes ago). Apparently he’s particularly good in bed when removed from his wife. Maid Marian tries to stick up for Tiberius (who she may actually prefer, it's hard to say), though with limited success.

The pirate king becomes the latest to whine at Spartacus that he wants to kill all the Roman prisoners. Crixus, after an unnecessary vomit shot, talks to Beardy German about Surfer Caesar, whose loyalties Beardy German has been ordered to test. Crixus is rather unnecessarily harsh in the play-acting, risking actually turning Beardy German against him. Surfer Caesar, while all this goes down, is just after another drink (in another life, he and Gannicus would get on famously).

Beardy German decides to test Surfer Caesar's loyalty by making him rape and then scar a naked and terrified Roman woman who’s been taken prisoner – something Spartacus knows nothing about, making it extremely unclear exactly which loyalties are being tested. (Surely what Surfer Caesar should have done is run and tell Spartacus, thus proving his loyalty to their nominal leader? But then, this is Crixus' test, not Spartacus'). Surfer Caesar is not made for undercover work, and tells her everything - luckily for him, no one seems to be listening at the door. Still, it’s nice to know that while he’s a womaniser and his relationships with house slaves are very dubious, he draws the line at raping a bleeding, weeping woman. She begs him to ‘free’ her so he does (she is of course the sister of the guy who kept asking about her, Fabia). So Surfer Caesar kills her, then actually reveals his true loyalties, but this goes unnoticed because he says ‘I set her free, as I would all Romans held by Spartacus,’ which Beardy German just takes as a sign he wants to kill them all, like everyone else does.

Crassus is preparing to decimate his men, which Jupiter or the weather gods of television have heard about so the sky is appropriately dark and stormy. Even those not killed in the decimation will be sent to the followers’ camp with the slaves. Tiberius objects but he shouldn’t have spoken – Crassus apologises for not seeing him as a man and sends him off to join the lots for decimation. Lovely. Tiberius is OK but, as predicted, his bosom buddy is for the chop.

Boudicca tells the ex-prisoners that Crassus is on his way, but Eponine has blabbed to Gannicus and Helga and they are all in very big trouble. Meanwhile at the villa, Beardy German turns up with Fabia’s body claiming she came at him. Gannicus, who is now really mad at Naevia for killing Trojan Horse (since it was Boudicca who freed the prisoners) and calls her a mad bitch, leading to an inevitable showdown between Gannicus and Crixus. Beardy German has to pull Gannicus off Crixus, but opens himself to being half strangled by Fabia’s brother using his chains. Surfer Caesar kills Fabia’s brother – he’s getting the hang of undercover now – and Gannicus and Crixus get up, while Surfer Caesar, getting into the swing of 'undercover means lying' now, takes advantage of the moment to speechify – no one’s done that for ages, this is obviously where they’re going wrong. At his instigation Crixus stirs everyone up to kill all the Romans, leaving Gannicus lying on the ground and probably thoroughly depressed.

Tiberius has to kill his buddy himself of course, because we actually are replaying Spartacus and Neighbours Reject here. Apparently decimation involves beating the soldiers to death with sticks in gangs (I always thought they just stabbed them or something). So Crassus’ men kill each other while Crixus, Beardy German and the others kill every Roman they lay their eyes on. The soundtrack gets very excited and the makers of fake blood celebrate another year in solid business.

Surfer Caesar looks fairly broken up about all the dead Roman bodies around him, while Crassus looks thoroughly satisfied until Tiberius comes to snark at him about a lesson well learned, at which point he seems momentarily worried about his relationship with his son. But it passes.

Spartacus is planning one last as-yet-undisclosed intrigue with the pirate king when The Artist turns up to tell him Crixus and the others have gone mad (Number One thinks this is an appropriate moment to snark The Artist about liking the pirates - he is wrong, as his relationship drama is totally lost among all the killing). Helga has clearly got tired of all the blood too and is sneaking Boudicca and her gang of refugees back to Spartacus when they get caught. The pregnant woman’s husband is killed but Spartacus turns up just in time to save Boudicca from Crixus, at which point Crixus declares open mutiny. Everything comes out about Boudicca helping the others escape and Spartacus complains about having been merciful and getting betrayed in return, but Boudicca tells him what for re: dead husband, sacked city etc. He points out that he doesn’t want to become the thing he’s fighting and spares her. He also informs Crixus in no uncertain terms that Crixus is no longer his second (Number One looks a tiny bit satisfied there). Crixus and Naevia decide they need to leave Spartacus once and for all, and Surfer Caesar smirks as they walk away.

This was better, with Helga, Gannicus and Surfer Caesar (plus Boudicca) being the most fun, interesting and sympathetic characters in this episode. I'm really starting to warm to Helga, and I'd like it if she and Gannicus were able to walk off into the sunset together at the end, though I doubt that's going to happen.

I've always liked stories about Julius Caesar, so I'm thoroughly enjoying the young, sexy version.

Crassus undercuts the sympathetic character he’s been shown to be so far by not only reviving the vicious practice of decimation (historically accurate) but also nearly killing his own son and forcing said son to kill his best friend (not accurate). He's still managing to be more likeable than Crixus, since he a) has a reason, albeit a bad one, for what he's doing and b) looks slightly ashamed when snarked by Tiberius. If it was just the decimation, this episode would be a thoroughly accurate protrayal of his character, plus a foreshadowing of his eventual crucifixion of thousands of Spartacus's followers at the end, but having him include his son and his son's best friend in the decimation, then force Tiberius to kill said friend, is going a bit far. Crassus has a reason for the decimation - but there's no reason to involve his own son in it, which just seems melodramatically vicious in the manner of Paris Hilton (and look how that turned out for her).

Caesar comes out of this episode best of the Romans, as all his actions, while extremely violent, are either mercy kills or part of maintaining his cover. If only he and Gannicus weren't on opposite sides, we could just have them and Helga go off and drink and have kinky sex with each other, happily ever after.

Quotes

Caesar to Gannicus: I shall re-match, upon a day. Sadly, probably true.

Crassus: Death at the hand of Spartacus pales against the wrath of the house of Crassus.

Laeta (to Spartacus, re: Agron): I did not think the slayer of the shadow of death had need of a protector.

Random to Saxa: I do not see Gannicus among you, nor cause to heed his bitch.
Saxa: I give cause, bitch!

All Spartacus: Insert Subtitle reviews

Spartacus War of the Damned: Men of Honour

noreply@blogger.com (Juliette) — Sun, 03 Mar 2013 16:33:00 +0000

...As in, there aren't any.

Spartacus et al, with their new friend Trojan Horse the blacksmith, are melting down shackles. There’s lots of dramatic pounding of hot metal into sharp objects, and I keep expecting them to re-forge the ancient sword Narsil and re-name it Anduril, the flame of the West. Despite all the exciting weaponry, Number One is not happy. He wants to slaughter the captured women and children to save food and free up some more shackles.

Crixus and Gannicus have found a nice villa with a courtyard to train in that looks just like Batiatus’ villa and training ground. Funny, that. (It has Doric-looking columns, though I would have thought Corinthian more likely in this period. Maybe Doric were cheaper). The Trojan Horse wants to join in and is still whining about being paid more, so Crixus glowers at him and sends him off to Naevia for training.

Gannicus and Helga are still a thing, which causes the girl who fell madly in love with him last week to stand by a wall and sulk. She’s following him around the way Rue follows Katniss in The Hunger Games, except in a dodgier way and looking more pathetic; I was going to call her Rue, but naming anyone in this show after a character from a children's novel is just too icky, so I'll call her Eponine instead. She has Eponine-like hair. Meanwhile, Spartacus’ less pleasant men are busy taunting and stealing from pregnant women in chains, until Crixus steps in and suggests they should make the men fight each other like gladiators for bread. Trojan Horse protests and Gannicus points out the hypocrisy, but no one cares. I sort of expect one of the men to start singing ‘I stole a loaf of bread!’ Instead the woman’s husband reaches for a sword to attack Crixus or possibly to grab the bread, Naevia cuts him down, Trojan Horse calls her a see you next Tuesday and bandages the guy and everyone yells at everyone else. Naevia tells Crixus about a particularly unpleasant guy who tortured her after she was sold by Batiatus (who sounds like the bad guy from The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) and claims this is why she doesn’t trust Romans who seem nice, because apparently she thinks everyone who seems nice is secretly a villain.

Apparently there are ships at the coast and I'm getting quite bored now. Where are the Romans? What’s happened to Crassus and Caesar? They’re much more interesting than this lot. Sadly the ships do not contain Romans, but pirates who embrace Spartacus and tell him they want to join him against Rome.

Huzzah! Romans! Boo! It’s Tiberius and his squeaky friend. But Surfer Caesar is with them so it’s all good. Tiberius sulks because Camp Commander Guy would rather talk to Surfer Caesar than him. Meanwhile, the pirates want to be compensated for the loss of their arrangement with the town’s aedile since Spartacus stuck a sword through his throat. The pirate calls him ‘King Spartacus’ which is kind of cool, but Spartacus badly needs better advisers, since Number One and Crixus are all for killing everybody at random, it seems, and have no idea why alliances are useful or necessary.

Don't be a messenger on this show. Your blood ends up spattered all over Tiberius' face.

Gannicus is hanging out with Trojan Horse, who is still sulking (given that they’ve essentially destroyed his whole life, you can’t really blame him). A messenger finally turns up to tell Tiberius that Spartacus has taken the city, which apparently only the pirates had noticed. The messenger calls Spartacus the bringer of death, which is kind of funny given how he and Crixus first got together. Surfer Caesar is so unimpressed with the messenger for surviving the city’s sacking that he chops up his skull, which the poor guy was still using, getting blood all over Tiberius in the process Tiberius tells Surfer Caesar ‘you serve beneath me’ which doesn’t seem like a good idea. He keeps calling him Gaius too, which seems pretty disrespectful. Even if Tiberius survives this series - which seems unlikely - there's no way he's going to keep breathing once Caesar is consul.

Spartacus summons the aedile’s wife from last week, having realised that his own advisers are so useless he needs to ask his prisoner for help. (She needs a nickname - her character is called Laeta, which is fine but dull. The actress played Jules in The Cabin in the Woods, but since I'm reluctant to give anyone on this show my own name, considering the sort of thing that usually happens to them, I shall christen her Boudicca, because she has red hair and she's a sort of freedom fighter on the sly). Despite her protests that Spartacus killed her husband last time she helped him, not to mention what Crixus and Naevia have been doing, she’s bizarrely swayed by the revelation that her husband had a deal with the pirates and helps him anyway, on the promise of freedom.

Spartacus strikes a deal with the pirates, though they’re unimpressed when he refuses them Boudicca because he doesn’t trade in slaves. Everyone drinks a lot and has a lot of sex to celebrate in a scene that’s sort of half a Roman orgy and half the party scene from The Matrix Reloaded. Eponine is still gazing adoringly at Gannicus, when Helga catches her. Crixus and Naevia are lying back and watching the whole thing like Antony and Cleopatra in their court. And suddenly we're all distracted by some full frontal male nudity, though not from a regular.

Boudicca is still upset that her husband was doing things she didn’t know about, but Spartacus unchains her and tells her to take charge of feeding the prisoners and reporting mistreatment back to him. She refuses to sleep in the villa because the people wouldn’t like it and heads off to the stable, giving Spartacus a little smile on her way out because when your husband is killed and turns out to have been involved in some dodgy business dealings, naturally you start contemplating jumping into bed with his murderer.

One of the pirates comes on to The Artist, which is not a good idea and puts Number One in an even worse mood than he already was. He proceeds to beat the guy senseless, which does not do wonders for Spartacus’ and the pirate king’s alliance, though The Artist seems to find it romantic and inevitably, sex ensues.

Gannicus stumbles into a random villa to find Helga waiting for him, wearing actual clothes for once – a really rather pretty dress. She’s brought Eponine too, in a slightly skimpier dress (with sparkles!) and appears to have spent the whole time doing all their make-up. She quickly deprives Eponine of the skimpy dress and her and Gannicus make an Eponine sandwich briefly, but Gannicus sends the girl off because he prefers a tougher, less jailbait woman.

Later, Eponine is sitting outside, still waiting to thank Gannicus for saving her life, which she is determined to do despite Gannicus’ protestations. He tells her to stay away from him and everyone like him in an attempt to protect her from herself that will almost certainly fail.

Everyone meets up at dawn, all the worse for wear for all the drinking and brawling and most of them hoping the pirates betray them so they can kill them. Meanwhile, Tiberius and his friends watch the pirates approach the city and Tiberius decides to attack the pirates, against his father’s express orders (what a surprise).

A series of misunderstandings leads to Helga telling Naevia that Trojan Horse is freeing some Romans, and Naevia going after him. I'm not wild about what they've done with Naevia's character this season. Her motivation has been reduced to that of a straight-to-video- slasher protagonist, and she was never stupid before.

In the middle of arguing with each other (out in the open, clearly visible from above) Spartacus and the pirates are interrupted by Tiberius' attack. Long story short, Naevia kills Trojan Horse (by smashing his face in, natch) and when Camp CommanderGguy turns up to reinforce Tiberius (who does pretty well for his first fight, slitting people’s throats and everything) the pirates attack the Romans with flaming cannon balls from their ships. The music even sounds a bit like the score for Pirates of the Caribbean. Camp Commander Guy goes up in flames and Tiberius et al. are forced to retreat. Tiberius is wounded by some random with a beard who I think is one of Spartacus’ men, kills beardy guy and leaves his sword in him. Tiberius’ friend helps him stagger away but it’s not looking good. Spartacus and the pirate king cement their alliance and Crixus finds Tiberius’ sword in beardy guy and sees the label Legio IV.

By this show's standards, this is a surprisingly tame and restrained shot of face-smashing.

The Artist whines that Beardy German (a different, still living beardy guy) wouldn't let him out to play but Spartacus says he was only following orders. Everyone believes Naevia when she says Trojan Horse betrayed them (which of course she genuinely believes, albeit incorrectly), though in fact Boudicca has freed a small group of Romans including the pregnant woman and her husband and is hiding them under some floorboards, WW2-movie style. Gannicus, mourning the loss of Trojan Horse, bows his shoulders under the weight of being the only character with any common sense whatsoever.

A bit boring, this one. Far too much of Spartacus and the others being unpleasant – even Crixus, though Gannicus remains awesome – and no Crassus. Tiberius is still alive at the end, but surely not for long, after that sword wound. All the series' nominal heroes except Spartacus and Gannicus are becoming increasingly unpleasant, but in a plain nasty way rather than Batiatus' gloriously evil way, and in the absence of anyone to root for, we at least need some major Roman action to form a prequel to Rome, if nothing else.

Quotes

Spartacus (on not paying people): Knowing effort serves higher purpose is reward enough. Yeah right.

Pirate king: You are Spartacus?
Spartacus: I stand so named (still no 'I’m Spartacus,' but a nice, subtle reminder that 'Spartacus' isn’t his original name).

Random naked guy: My cock is magic!
Crixus: Then see it vanish from sight.

Gannicus (hungover): There was a fight. It was very loud.

All Spartacus reviews

Spartacus War of the Damned: Wolves at the Gate

noreply@blogger.com (Juliette) — Sun, 24 Feb 2013 21:12:00 +0000

Episode 2 of Season 3 of Spartacus brings us what will presumably be the series' last major character introduction, unless they actually show Pompey later - Gaius Julius Caesar himself. With surfer hair and a goatee.

Flash Harry is called away from sparring with Naevia (who soundly beats him) because Spartacus wants to know how he can conquer Flash's home city. Flash looks slightly uncomfortable with the idea of ransacking a town that was his home and that presumably contains a number of people he's quite fond of, but he helps anyway. They keep going on and on about how winter is coming as if they’ve all been adopted by Starks, and yet still, none of them are dressed properly. Seriously, Helga is in a bikini. Italy in autumn is just not that warm.

Spartacus and Gannicus head off to the city, as Gannicus knows a Trojan Horse who might be persuaded to let them in the gates at night, since they aren't allowed to enter with weapons. Crixus comes too, presumably because he's bored and fancies a day out. Spartacus is wearing clothes! Actual, Eastern-style clothes! In fact, he's wearing a purple cloak, the sign of royalty and kingship. Ah, hubris, followed by inevitable doom. The same thing would eventually happen to Caesar. Crixus is dressed too, and even Gannicus, though he's wearing a sleeveless tunic, just to make the point that he still doesn't need clothes, and to show off his rippling muscles.

We meet the soft-hearted wife of a guy who seems to hold a lot of sway in the city, Ennius. The next few minutes are designed to show us how unpleasant he is, and how nice she is (she's a fan of the 'treat animals and slaves well and they'll work well' philosophy). We see a supporter of Spartacus (who, much to Spartacus' discomfort, keeps yelling his name) get his tongue ripped out, then be stoned to death, which Spartacus puts an end to pretty quickly by throwing a biggish rock right at the guy's head. Stoning is a new form of death for Spartacus - we hear of it a lot in New Testament stories from the Roman Middle East, less so from Italy, where runaway slaves are more often threatened with crucifixion.

The biggest problem with this series is that I'm enjoying Crassus and the actual Romans so much, I get impatient when faced with long scenes devoted to the increasingly dim-witted and emotionally numb Spartacus. But at this point, Yay! Romans. Tiberius is still useless, now sowing his inability to haggkles out a good price when shopping for swords.

Aaand... we meet Point-Break-Patrick-Swayze-Julius-Caesar! (Thanks to Hasan Niyazi from Three Pipe Problem for pointing out the resemblance). I think for brevity’s sake I’ll call him Surfer Caesar. He gets into a fight with a couple of Crassus' slaves before being introduced by name with a teeny little rock-guitar solo of sorts. Crassus' wife doesn't like him, but that's just a point in his favour. Caesar expresses affection for his own wife, but that could just be horniness.

This headstrong 20-something will eventually take over the world

Caesar here is a rebellious thug with a '90s haircut. It’s perfect. It’s also kinda funny given that he’s famous for going bald early. It’s a very different portrayal of the dictator and evil genius in youth than Rome’s Octavian, but that’s because Julius and Octavian Caesar were very different characters. Although Caesar was a brilliant general, the flaws in his politics eventually led to his assassination, whereas Octavian, barely a general at all in practical terms, ruled the world for half a century. Young Caesar as brutal, headstrong and pugilistic is perfect. Crassus introduces us to Caesar’s history and supposed legendary ancestry and sets out the basis of their alliance – Crassus’ wealth and Caesar’s name, together unstoppable. Killing Spartacus is where they'll start.

Spartacus chats with the dude’s wife about slaves, stoning, trade and whether there’s room for a bunch of his slaves within the city. It's pretty dull.

Surfer Caesar is being bathed by topless women, because we don’t get scenes in the arena any more so we have to some boobs out somewhere (unlike the over-excited spectators at the arena of earlier seasons, this is at least historically plausible). Crassus has, for reasons passing understanding, demanded that Caesar keep his ridiculously unhistorical goatee, presumably because the director has had a word about his desire to make Caesar resemble a model from Fat Face’s catalogue. Crassus' slave girl for some reason thinks that pointing out that Caesar is married will make the slightest different to whether or not he wants a shag with her, but Crassus is distinctly unimpressed when he walks in on them, partly because she’s a favourite of his and partly because, unlike Batiatus, he knows the difference between a household and a brothel.

Crassus’ deeply unpleasant wife yells at the slave girl – whose name, it seems, is Kore, which refers to a maiden and I suspect is Symbolic, so I’ll call her Maid Marian – for looking too attractive and showing off her boobs and her backside, which is nonsensical, given that as the lady of the house, she herself is in charge of clothing her slaves. When Maid Marian tells Tiberius, he gets really mad, because this woman is clearly Spartacus’ equivalent of Sookie Stackhouse, beloved of every male in the vicinity.

Spartacus encounters a cute little girl and starts to wonder about the ethics of storming cities. But then Laurus shows up to be unpleasant and reinvigorates him. Their Trojan Horse has worked out what Spartacus and Gannicus are up to and is browbeaten into helping them.

Crassus’ wife wants to come with him on campaign, which isn’t an idea Crassus is wild about, probably because she’s a gigantic pain in the bottom. (Some wives did follow their general husbands on campaign, including Germanicus’ wife, Caligula’s mother, who brought the children – which is how Caligula, growing up with the army, got the nickname, which means ‘Little Boot’). Tiberius is sulking because he thinks Crassus prefers Caesar to him. Crassus really needs to explain political alliances to that boy.

Crassus apologises to Maid Marian for leaving her with Surfer Caesar, since he already knew Caesar’s reputation. Maid Marian nags him about putting Caesar above Tiberius, but cheers up when Crassus assures her that he’s not letting his wife come with him, but he will take her. His extreme fondness for her even results in him asking her to call him ‘Marcus’. They get as far as stripping her top and snogging and then the camera cuts away – did I accidentally turn on the wrong show? Where’s the sex scene?!

Spartacus’ Trojan Horse lets them in to the city and blood and throwing torches in people’s faces commences. Also some stabbing people in the groin. This goes on for a while.

Symbolic purple cloak. Aah, sweet hubris.

Flash Harry is stabbed by his master, who gets his head sliced in half by Gannicus, which earns Gannicus the immediate and everlasting love of one of the guy’s slaves, expressed through a particularly longing look. Naevia comforts the dying Flash Harry, who promises to piss upon his master’s shadow (excellent last words there).

Surfer Caesar is getting some downstairs service from a random woman (this appears to involve a knife and some bleeding – is he a vampire? Is she a vampire?) and carries on a bit of a chat with Tiberius at the same time, though he is eventually forced to conclude that Tiberius is killing the mood and get rid of the woman.

Spartacus, having run into the soft-hearted wife of the other guy - the one that wasn't Flash Harry's master and hasn't just become shorter by half a head - takes her back to her house, where everyone appears to have been killed, including the cute little girl from earlier. Despite the fact this has been his M.O. for two years, Spartacus has a sudden attack of conscience and orders the not-dead-yet Romans to be put in chains instead of killed. Apparently the dude the soft-hearted woman is married to is threatening to set the grain on fire, which everyone needs, so Spartacus blackmails her into coming with him to stop the man. Midway through her passionate plea, Crixus and Gannicus jump down from above and kill the guy, at which point Spartacus announces a ceasefire and has the wife put in chains.

Crassus gives Tiberius a sword (this appears to be Symbolic – like a carving knife?) and sends him off to find out where Spartacus is, but orders him not to engage anyone until he turns up to back him up. I can see that going well. Surfer Caesar is unimpressed at being placed below the pipsqueak, but mollified by the promise of Crassus’ bribery getting him a position as military tribune.

Then they go out to address a whole CGI army! The music goes all imperial-Rome and we end on Crassus’ satisfied face.

A bit of a slow episode, but the introduction of Caesar just about keeps things interesting. More and more, the series is driving us towards sympathy for the Romans, and away from sympathising with Spartacus, whose ‘animals’ are behaving no better than the Romans they’re fighting. And now, having put all the living prisoners in chains, Spartacus is coming close to having slaves of his own. Meanwhile, they’re certainly working to make sure Crassus is the most likeable character, not just in this season, but probably in the whole series so far. He has romantic relationships (OK, not with his wife, but that’s not the point), he uses his brain before any other organ, he loves his son even though he can see what an annoying little pipsqueak the kid is and, of course, he’s the last word in Roman capitalism. Crassus is far closer to the assumed ideals of the audience than Spartacus and even his attitude towards his slaves is respectful.

Caesar, meanwhile, is just fun, which is great. Most films and TV shows dealing with Caesar show us a much older Caesar, already one of the two most powerful men in Rome, often even jumping past Pompey and going straight to his dictatorship. This, on the other hand is young Caesar - the Caesar who was rumoured to have been the catamite of King Nicomedes, who was kidnapped by pirates, made them love him, then had them all executed, who was an infamous womanizer, who ran away and defied the dictator Sulla rather than divorce his wife. Caesar wasn't, as far as we know, involved in putting down Spartacus' revolt, but otherwise his alliance with Crassus is accurately represented - Crassus bribed enough people for Caesar to win elections, Caesar's high social standing and Julian name got them both taken seriously (also Caesar's military expertise, but we haven't got that far yet). It seems plausible enough to me to insert Caesar into the story here, and Pompey is off in Spain and his rivalry with Crassus is not being covered (yet), so we need Caesar to give Crassus someone serious to bounce off, besides his whiny son, irritating wife and slightly cloying slave girl.

A bit slow, but still promising. Roll on episode 3...

Quotes

Spartacus' trademark use of abbreviated English to represent Latin is still going strong - they've almost forgotten what the definite article ('the') is by this point. It's a good thing no one in this series is supposed to be speaking Greek, as Greek speakers were quite keen on the definite article...

Caesar: I require no lesson in my fucking heritage! He doesn’t appreciate the use of the As You Know... trope.

Ennius: I would not see more blood spilled absent cause.
Spartacus: Nor I... absent cause.

Tiberius: I am proud reflection of my father! Caesar laughs

Laeta: You - you aid Spartacus!
Spartacus: No - I stand the man himself. That’s no fun! You’re supposed to say ‘I’m Spartacus!’

Crassus to Caesar: Stay upon path I have set and see greater glories bestowed at journey’s end. Oh, how very true...

All Spartacus: Blood and Sand reviews

Spartacus War of the Damned: Enemies of Rome

noreply@blogger.com (Juliette) — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 14:25:00 +0000

Blood. Brains. Dead horses. Spartacus is back.*

You can tell this season is going to be different straight away, as we open on actual Eagle-bearing Roman soldiers, who shift into turtle formation as Spartacus the one man army rides towards them. The opening fight scene between our favourite ex-gladiators and the Roman army contains more ‘traditional’ screen Roman imagery in its five minutes than the whole of the first two seasons as we see Roman soldiers cut up in all sorts of interesting ways, their Eagle used as a weapon by Spartacus so it ends the scene covered in Symbolic blood. This is still Spartacus though; Spartacus uses this symbol of Roman power to smash people’s faces in.

Spartacus’ army includes happy couples Number One and The Artist, and Crixus and Naevia, plus the blonde German woman. First nudity of the season, though, belongs to two random blood-drenched Romans, who catch us up on Spartacus’ activities over the last couple of years while being bathed by naked women. Why are they naked? Something to look at I suppose. (It’s quite likely that this random pair are ‘real’ generals who fought Spartacus, in name at least, but honestly, they’re not important enough to go and look up, they’re not going to last the episode). They’re discussing strategy with an actual toga-ed Roman, and they realise that they need more money, something ‘one among us’ can provide – huzzah! Crassus! We’re getting to the good stuff now, starting to meet actual famous Romans.

Number One and Crixus report to Spartacus while Gannicus is enjoying himself. Our guys have been on the run for a couple of years and have gathered such a huge following that they’re dragging a small town around with them, but somehow, Crixus still hasn’t managed to find himself any clothes.

Finally, we introduced to Crassus himself, in a villa substantially fancier and less grimy-looking than any we’ve seen yet. He’s training with an ex-gladiator slave (both shirtless, of course) who accidentally injures him, which Crassus reassures him isn’t a problem, as it’s his own fault for not fighting well enough. Crassus uses two swords, because why bother fighting with sword and rectangular shield like an actual Roman soldier when you can look cool with two swords and pretend to be a gladiator? They’re watched by his slimy son Tiberius, who doesn’t see the value of learning to fight because it involves too much grunting (good thing he’s several centuries too early to watch women’s tennis). As everyone else in the scene expresses contempt of Crassus for learning from a slave, we can see that Crassus is something different because, unlike the rest, he won’t underestimate anyone for being a slave or a gladiator.

Crassus offers to send his own messengers to tell the other random two Romans that he’ll come and help them. He sends the nervous emissary off, but not before we get a mention of Pompey and his desire for titles – Crassus insists he only wants titles and honours properly earned. The mention of Pompey is interesting – I would have thought the tussle for glory after Crassus defeated Spartacus and Pompey finished off the remnants of Spartacus’ army would be too much detail after the main event is over for the series, but perhaps they are planning on referencing it. Either way, the hint of it is nice.

Back at Spartacus’ camp, Gannicus is drinking and swapping war stories with some random people, and the German blonde appears looking for wine and bringing some friends for a quick low-budget orgy. Gannicus shoos away the other two men (‘It’s my f*cking tent! protests one) and gets down to business with three attractive ladies including the German, who tells him Spartacus is still looking for him, though neither of them let that slow them down. The German is speaking English/Latin with a heavy German accent extremely reminiscent of ‘Allo ‘Allo, so I shall name her Helga.

Helga

Number One and the Artist are also having rather more romantic, monogamous sex while they discuss killing Romans. Gannicus eventually shows up, days late, to talk to Spartacus. Spartacus tries to get him to join Crixus as a leader, but Gannicus is a proper communist at heart and doesn’t wish to be set above others. He also points out that the Romans will keep coming, and wonders what Spartacus will do if he ever does lay waste to the Republic (love the correct use of Republic rather than Empire). He tries to point out that now that they have avenged their lost loves, there’s no more reason to fight. He also ‘fesses up about DSG’s wife and says it was DSG’s forgiveness that really mattered, much more than revenge, but Spartacus has no one left to offer him forgiveness, so he’s planning to end slavery and destroy Roman civilization instead. Gannicus gives him a look that says how likely that is, and heads back to the wine and the women.

We meet Crassus’ wife and younger son, and see that his wife is mildly jealous of a slave-girl who is presumably his mistress. The wife wants their son Tiberius to be given the title of tribune, which is weird, since tribunes were elected, had to be plebeian, it was a political position, not a military one, and as Crassus points out, Tiberius is far too young. Tiberius has a friend called Sabinus who promises to stay by his side, so he’s gonna die pretty soon I should think.

Spartacus goes wandering among his people to watch a training session and visit a black market dealer, because his following is now so huge and his rationing so intense that people are selling horse meat on the edge of the camp (possibly disguising it as beef burgers). The horse guy, whom I shall name Flash Harry after the black market dealer from St Trinian’s, complains about ‘King Spartacus’ and whines that he would rather be a slave again than live without a plan for how to clothe and feed everyone. He is a wee tad embarrassed when Crixus turns up yelling for Spartacus and gives away his customer’s identity, but luckily for him Spartacus is also a believer in freedom of speech, as well as the abolition of slavery and probably emancipation for all while we’re at it, because if you’re going to believe in one political ideal not held by anyone for another 1500 or more years, you might as well believe in them all.

Our heroes use Naevia as bait to ambush and kill Crassus’ messengers. Naevia’s fighting skills have come on in leaps and bounds, as she sends one guy’s head flying right off his shoulders. Seriously though, Crixus, put some clothes on. Naevia finds Crassus’ message, which luckily Spartacus can read. The message includes reference to the fact that the two randoms Crassus is supposed to be helping are holed up at a villa, so Spartacus decides to attack the villa and take off their heads while Number One provides a distraction with their main forces. Naevia is not wild about this plan, but Crixus distracts her with sex and praising her fighting ability. There are far too many happy couples (and foursomes) around, this can only end badly.

Tiberius whines because he can’t understand why his father thinks it might be a good idea to prepare to fight an ex-gladiator by training with an ex-gladiator. Tiberius insists that they are above slaves in every way so Crassus sets him against his ex-gladiator, which inevitably ends with Tiberius getting punched in the face (which is very satisfying).

One of the randoms says ‘the die has been cast’ while discussing their next move, which amuses me. They send off their soldiers to meet Number One’s distraction-army. Our heroes break into the villa, while back at Casa de Crassus, Tiberius is still whining and being comforted by a slave-girl who may or may not be the same one from earlier (probably is). Crassus is fed up of his gladiator-slave holding back, partly thanks to a chip on his shoulder about the Senate not giving him a proper command, so he decides to fight the guy to the death, promising him freedom if he wins (witnessed by Tiberius, though I wouldn’t trust that little toe-rag an inch). Their final fight is intercut with Spartacus’ attack on the villa. Crassus wins by grabbing the slave’s sword with both hands and jamming it into the guy, followed by a touching death scene in which Crassus promises him a monument, the slave says it was a honour to serve him, and Crassus says the honour was his. On Spartacus’ end, everything is a bit less honourable, as the randoms complain about him attacking like a thief or cutthroat and Spartacus beheads both of them, and watches their shortened torsos splash into a bathtub.

Crixus has grown a beard to keep himself warm, but why is he still not dressed properly?! Italy is not that hot...

Toga Guy brings the news to Crassus, and observes that his messenger went awfully close to the known location of the rebel encampment with the message telling him where the randoms were. Crassus now gets sole command and the title of imperator, and Toga Guy is not fooled for one second by Crassus’s insistence that he serves only the glory of Rome. Even whiny Tiberius isn’t completely daft and is quite impressed by the magnificent bastardy of the plan, wanting to know how Crassus knew that Spartacus would go after the randoms instead of running away from Crassus’ advancing army. Crassus replies ‘Because it is what I would have done.’

Spartacus has, in fact, decided to run away now to avoid facing hunger, cold and Crassus all at once, but he has ominously decided only a city will hold his army. His plan, therefore, is to take one from Rome, instead of sailing away to Britain or the desert or hiding in the Alps or really any other plan that would be more sensible than this one. End of episode.

One episode in, and I’m already enjoying this third season far more than any of the second. I think perhaps the decision to make this the final season was a wise one, as the plot is already moving forward even in this first episode, and we’re at last getting to the really interesting bit. Of course a big part of what interests me is Crassus – finally, we’ve got to a character who is not just a name from a brief history of battles with Spartacus, but a well-known and powerful figure for whom we have plenty of other evidence, who has a whole life story outside this one war.

I love the portrayal of Crassus here. Historically, Crassus was known for having only one vice, which was greed for money, and his wealth is clearly on display, as well as being the reason he gets the command in the first place. Crassus’ financial greed and simultaneous lack of other vices was so well known in his lifetime that he was apparently found not guilty of the capital charge of having sex with a Vestal Virgin (his cousin Licinia, who appeared in a rather different form in the show in Season 1 and probably isn’t going to make a return appearance, unless posthumously) because his claim that he was only hanging around her because he wanted to buy her villa at a knock-down price was completely convincing. This episode suggests that he’s having an affair with his slave-girl, but that wouldn’t be considered especially immoral for a Roman, and his lack of sexual deviancy is clearly demonstrated by the fact he doesn’t have a single sex scene in this episode (though he is shirtless almost the entire time). Having said all that, it’s pretty clear from his actions historically, especially his involvement in the First Triumvirate with Caesar and Pompey, that was also extremely politically ambitious, and that is clearly his motivation here.

Crassus’ respectful attitude towards slaves also fits reasonably well with his historical character. Crassus saw slaves as a valuable commodity that would bring greater profit if trained up and treated well, so it’s not a complete stretch to imagine him treating his slaves reasonably well and respecting their abilities. It also works brilliantly for the drama, as Crassus is clearly shown to be the man to bring Spartacus down, because he is the only Roman who doesn’t underestimate Spartacus and his army on the grounds that they are ex-slaves. He is also wonderfully set up as Spartacus’ equal and the sort of man Spartacus might have been if he’d been a Roman, knowing how to predict Spartacus’ moves because the two are so alike. That sets up a fantastic rivalry between the two, with Season 3 the story of how two equal forces come up against each other. It also helps that Crassus is the most likeable Roman we’ve seen so far, given that we know how the story ends.

Crassus was really the main interest of this episode, as the scenes with Spartacus and our heroes, beyond the conversation with Flash Harry, were mainly about reminding us where we are. Spartacus’ aimlessness now that his wife is dead and avenged is clear and seems to be translating itself into foolish ambition, which only Gannicus can see is going to take them on a road to nowhere. First, though, it’s time to take bets on which will be the first happy couple of meet a horrible end...

Crassus - too awesome for shirts. Or tunics.

A fantastic start to the final season. There’s only one thing still missing – next week, we get CAESAR!

*I use nicknames to refer to some of the characters in Spartacus, partly because it’s not always easy to catch their names, mostly because it amuses me. For new readers, or as a refresher, here are the main ones:
Number One = Agron, because he’s the Will Riker to Spartacus’ Captain Picard
The Artist = Nasir, short for The Artist Formerly Known as Tiberius
DSG = the late Oenomaus, stands for Drill Sergeant Guy

Quotes

Roman soldier: Who is with you?
Naevia: Death

Crassus: The house of Crassus bows to no one

All Spartacus reviews

Xena Warrior Princess: The Prodigal

noreply@blogger.com (Juliette) — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 17:41:00 +0000

Gabrielle, suffering a crisis of confidence, rather abruptly abandons Xena to return home, only to discover that inevitably, her village has been attacked by a gang of generic, swarthy bad guys in her absence. The warrior hired to defend the village being about as sober as Denzel Washington's character in Flight (which was rather good by the way), Gabrielle and her sister are forced to take charge of the village's defences. Naturally, they succeed, Meleager the alcoholic warrior talks about his own crisis of confidence with Gabrielle and turns good in the end, and Gabrielle's sister encourages Gabrielle to go back to Xena and live the life of adventure again.

'Meleager' is an appropriate name for a character who admires Gabrielle as a female warrior. Mythologically, Meleager was the son of King Oeneus, one of a number of kings lords and other characters who managed to annoy one of the gods, in this case bringing down the wrath of Artemis on himself by not bringing her enough offerings. Artemis sent the Calydonian Boar, a huge boar intended to destroy the countryside of Calydon, to punish him. Meleager led the hunt for the boar and eventually killed it, but dedicated the skin - the trophy from the hunt - to the female huntress and runner Atalanta, who in some versions had drawn first blood from the boar. Either way, Meleager being in love with her usually comes into it somewhere. Atalanta was a huntress rather than a warrior, and Xena's Meleager isn't in love with Gabrielle (so far as we can tell) but still, it's a nice choice of name, and appears to be a genuinely meaningful choice, which is more than can be said for some names on this show (the bad guy is called 'Damon,' which sounds neither ancient nor Greek to me, though I could be wrong, it could be a derivative of Damonides or something. But I don't think so).

As Gabrielle's sister Lila advises her to go back to Xena at the end of the episode, she says that Gabrielle's life will never be complete and she should live life, not let it pass her by. Gabrielle replies that she thought she was the only oracle in the family, and her sister says it doesn't take an oracle to realise the Gabrielle belongs with Xena. I can't decide whether this is an irritating misrepresentation of oracles or not (I suspect it is). Oracles answered questions or made predictions about the future. The could give advice in the sense that they could answer direct questions (e.g. 'Should I get married?') or they could predict things (e.g. 'If you go to war, you will destroy a great empire'). If Lila is predicting literally that Gabrielle will be 'incomplete' in some measurable way, that would be an oracle-like thing to say, or if Gabrielle asked her 'Should I go back to Xena?' and she said 'Yes,' that would be sort of like an oracle I suppose, but this sounds more like generic advice to me. An oracle is quite a specific thing, it's not a guidance counselor.

There are a few other Classical references scattered around - Gabrielle is (unconvincingly) playing pan pipes at the beginning, which was cheesy but sort of fun. She seems to be doing her best impression of the scary-cute fauns and satyrs from Fantasia: The Pastoral Symphony. Her home of Potidea on the other hand, aside from having completely different geography to the Greek version, looks like a medieval castle for some reason.

Generic bad guy Damon

There's a nice idea behind this episode, in which Gabrielle doubts some of the choices she's made and goes home, and sees how much she's changed in her time away. Unfortunately the execution is a little bit too hurried, and Gabrielle's sudden panic during a confrontation with some random bandits at the beginning feels very forced. Freezing up and being disturbed by that is fair enough - one of Buffy's best episodes ('Fool for Love') was kicked off by a similar plot, albeit with more 'getting horribly stabbed,' less 'freezing up' - but Gabrielle seems to have rather an extreme reaction to it, given what's already happened to her while travelling with Xena. Come to think of it, it would have been more believable if Gabrielle had been stabbed or broken an arm or something. After that, the action in her village follows a series of predictable beats, with little real depth, though her conversation with Meleager about freezing up is a good moment, and it's nice to see her connect with her sister. In the end, though, the most touching bit of emotion was probably the sad little wave Xena gave Gabrielle as she walked away right at the beginning.

Quotes

Gabrielle, stalling the bad guys: ...And as for what we want, I think it was Sophocles who once said - (here she's abruptly cut off).

Disclaimer: Meleager the Mighty, the generally Tipsy and Carousing Warrior-For-Hire, was not harmed during the production of this motion picture.

All Xena: Warrior Princess reviews

5 Awesome Moments from Spartacus: Add a Subtitle Here

noreply@blogger.com (Juliette) — Sun, 27 Jan 2013 14:03:00 +0000

Spartacus: War of the Damned, the third and final season of Spartacus: The Show with Constantly Changing Subtitles, premiered in the US last Friday and is coming to UK screens on 11th February, and I'll be recapping/reviewing it here as usual. This is the season that promises us Caesar and Crassus, death and glory, and hopefully one heck of a finale.

It may be that some of you have yet to try Spartacus: Make Up Your Own Joke Here, perhaps because it's on too late, perhaps because the 300-style graphics are off-putting, perhaps because the ending is, it has to be said, something of a foregone conclusion. Spartacus is loud, brash, sweary and ridiculous, its depiction of sex and violence not so much 'graphic' or 'realistic' as 'what we'd get if Quentin Tarantino remade Caligula,' but it is also loads of fun. What other programme would give us a completely realistic depiction of a Roman toilet?! The characters are compelling, the scripts and both gripping and witty (I will not watch a show with no sense of humour) and the drama, while extreme, is also very human. If you haven't yet given it a go, and as long as you can tolerate cartoon-ish violence and graphic sex scenes, I'd urge you to tune in for its swansong.

Unlike other shows, Spartacus will be easy to join for its final season, because we already know what's going on with Spartacus and his rebels (they escaped slavery and are roaming the countryside) and because - spoiler alert! - all the the Roman characters are new, since the old ones all died. I'm really excited to see what this show does with Caesar and Crassus, and now is, I'm sure, as good a time to jump in feet first as any.

If you're thinking of trying Spartacus out, this list should give you a sense of whether or not the show is for you, and if you're a fan gearing up for the new season, here are five reasons to be excited about it.

5. Spartacus and Crixus take down Theokoles, 'Shadow Games'
Who's being awesome? Spartacus, Crixus and, to be fair, Theokoles, the 'SHADOW OF DEATH!'
Why are they being awesome? Pretty much in the course of being gladiators, paired up together against an opponent who has killed every man he has ever fought except for Oenomaus.
How awesome? Pairing up two men who hate each other against a stronger enemy is hardly a new idea but it's done well here. Spartacus and Crixus will never quite reach buddy-movie levels of friendship but their mutual respect and their ability to work together throughout the rest of the series is built on this fight. It's also the first time we see Spartacus' trick of jumping off of Crixus' shield, which would reappear in the season finale.
Minor Awesomeness: Theokoles' ability to keep going despite multiple fatal wounds is... impressive.
Crowning Moment of Awesome: Crixus uses his helmet to blind Theokoles. Also Spartacus chopping off Theokoles' head to the roars of the crowd, of course.
Quotable:
Ilithyia: Do you fear being in the arena with Theokoles?
Crixus: I long for it.

4. The arena is burned down, 'Libertus'
Who's being awesome? Spartacus, Mira, Gannicus, Agron, Crixus, Oenomaus... basically everyone.
Why are they being awesome? Crixus and Oenomaus have been sentenced to death in the arena and have been given rubbish swords to put on a bit of a show. Their executioner is, of course, Gannicus, because Lucretia likes to mess with them. Meanwhile, Spartacus and Agron sneak in to rescue them and Mira sets the (historically accurately wooden, temporary) arena on fire.
How awesome? This is the last episode to feature our heroes fighting as gladiators, and it ends in spectacular and symbolically appropriate fashion, with the the arena collapsing around them while their loyalties and tested and re-affirmed.
Minor Awesomeness: While all this is going on, Spartacus kills a particularly unpleasant character from Gods of the Arena and Glaber smashes his irritating father-in-law's face in, which is nasty but quite satisfying.
Crowning Moment of Awesome: Really any shot featuring the fall of the burning arena.
Quotable:
Gannicus: I am for wine, and the embrace of questionable women (that was earlier in the episode, but it's a great line).

3. Naevia kills Ashur, 'Wrath of the Gods'
Who's being awesome? Naevia. Crixus and Spartacus offer moral support.
Why are they being awesome? I'm not usually a fan of rape-revenge dramas, but Naevia slicing Ashur in the balls is extremely satisfying.
How awesome? Poor Naevia was somewhat victimised for much of Season 2, with Mira taking on the Action Girl role. But in this moment, with Mira dead and having persuaded Crixus to train her, Naevia becomes a force to be reckoned with in her own right. Yes, Ashur is injured, but that just keeps it plausible (since he can apparently take on several Roman soldiers by himself).
Minor Awesomeness: The looks on Crixus and Spartacus' faces as they watch the fight unfold and resist the urge to help are wonderful.
Crowning Moment of Awesome: After telling Ashur what's what, Naevia hacks at his head until, eventually, it comes off. The balls-slicing moment is also pretty awesome.
Quotable:
Ashur: My death will not heal the scars you bear...
Naevia: No... but it is a f*cking start!

2. Lucretia reveals her nefarious plan, 'Reckoning'
Who's being awesome? Lucretia, in a Magnificent Bitch sort of way.
Why are they being awesome? Because she's a Magnificent Bitch.
How awesome? Lucretia is a softer character for much of Gods of the Arena, and one of the fun things about the prequel series is seeing her become the ruthless person that she is in Blood and Sand. It is in this moment that she reveals that she has always been a schemer, a wicked female poisoner in the grand TV-Roman tradition. Here, she shows just how far she is willing to go, explaining to her father-in-law that she made him sick when he lived with them, and that she has stepped up to murdering him in order to frame Tullius and avenge the death of her friend Gaia. The scene is beautifully played between the two and could almost be a scene from I, Claudius - high praise indeed.
Minor Awesomeness: Titus' death is inter-cut with the sudden, shocking and tragic death of Melitta - not awesome from the characters' point of view, but a great piece of writing and direction.
Crowning Moment of Awesome: See Quotable.
Quotable:
Titus: Tell me you're not the serpent I thought you to be.
Lucretia: I am not. I'm far worse.

1. The climax of 'Kill Them All'
Who's being awesome? Everyone, but especially Andy Whitfield's Spartacus.
Why are they being awesome? This is the event the whole of Season 1 has been leading up to - the rebellion and escape from Batiatus' ludus.
How awesome? Where to start? Crixus stabbing Lucretia in the abdomen, given that she's pregnant, is more unpleasant than awesome, but pretty much everything else from Spartacus' super-human leap from Crixus' shield into Batiatus' balcony to the final moments is awesome. After thirteen episodes of building tension, the entire audience knowing that this was what it was all leading up to, the execution of the escape/massacre is brutal, bloody and thrilling.
Minor Awesomeness: There's lots of awesomeness going on, but Aurelia murdering the little snot who had her husband killed deserves a special mention.
Crowning Moment of Awesome: Covered in blood, the slaves walk, determinedly but not hurriedly, out of the ludus and off into freedom (in different directions).
Quotable:

Spartacus: I have done this thing because it is just. Blood demands blood. We have lived and lost, at the whims of our masters for too long. I would not have it so. I would not see the passing of a brother, for the purpose of sport. I would not see another heart ripped from chest, or breath forfeit for no cause. I know not all of you wish this, yet it is done. It is done... Your lives are your own. Forge your own path, or join with us. And together, we shall see Rome tremble! (The last lines of Season 1, and Andy Whitfield's last lines as Spartacus).

Spartacus: Various Subtitles reviews

Doctor Who: Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead

noreply@blogger.com (Juliette) — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 22:34:00 +0000

What is there left to say about River Song's debut? Well, for one thing, I liked it a lot better than I remembered. I remembered this two-parter as my least favourite of current showrunner Steven Moffat's Russell T Davis-era Doctor Who episodes (my favourites are his first, 'The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances,' and they go downhill from there. Yes, 'Blink' is a bit low down. I'm a rebel). And I still have problems with it, but I have to admit, when I re-watched it, I cried. And that's always a good sign. Spoilers follow. (Haha. See what I did there? I actually like spoilers though...)

Professor River Song is an archaeologist. One of my favourite things about this episode is that it offers a vision of future archaeology that feels real. Archaeology tends to be thought of as 'digging' but it doesn't have to be. Archaeology is the study of all the material culture of the past, including perfectly visible material culture like buildings. And so an archaeological expedition to a standing library, with the archaeologists wearing space suits in case there's no atmosphere or something, feels pleasantly like this really could be the future of archaeology. The team feel plausibly like archaeologists as well - their exact roles are undefined, but the money/landowner is there (Lux) with his assistant, and presumably the others include a pilot/technician for their spaceship and some more archaeologists. Even River herself behaves much more like a Professor and less like a super-soldier in this episode.

Of course, River's character changes quite a lot in later episodes, which tend to represent River as the gun-toting archaeologist of fantasy who never seems to do any actual work - indeed, for much of her time on Moffat-era Who, her primary identity is as a prisoner convicted of murder, not an archaeologist. 'Convicted murderer' is a very, very different character description than 'archaeologist' and River's character is correspondingly different: more violent, more aggressive, much less inclined to talk about history (not that she does that much here either, unless you count her personal history, which she talks about a lot). The River we meet here seems, frankly, a bit softer than the later incarnation that is actually a younger River. She does carry a gun, but only gets it out once and in extreme circumstances. She seems very shaken by Miss Evangelista's death despite all the horrors we now know she's seen (though that might be down to the super-horrible 'ghosting' that's going on at the time). She does mention that she's 'always lying' though, which certainly does fit the River we know and love. Perhaps 'Professor' Song has just mellowed in her old age. (And since she's part Time Lord, how old is she? Does she get centuries?).

That's about it for the blog-relevant content in this episode, though it's worth noting that Strackman Lux and his family are called 'Light' in Latin, as every Harry Potter fan knows. How very symbolic. Also, I think most Classicists, historians, archaeologists and other academics would be very happy with the idea of a library that covers an entire planet (though perhaps we could live without the continent of Jeffrey Archer books). Interestingly, the Doctor observes that no matter what technology came along as humanity developed, 'people never stopped loving books... you need the smell,' showing that like many of us, he likes the smell of proper paper books. And just recently, the Wall Street Journal has suggested that perhaps reports of the death of the print book have been exaggerated. Sure, e-books have their place and they're here to stay - but that doesn't necessarily mean that print books will disappear all together.

I have whole problems with the end of this two-parter that have nothing to do with Classics or archaeology. I get the impression that it's supposed to be a happy ending, with everyone living forever in this fantasy world. But I find the whole concept unbelievably creepy. Basically, they're all trapped in The Matrix forever? OK, a nice Matrix that they can bend to their will, but still. Anita told the Doctor that she'd like an old age, and that's exactly what none of them will get - they're frozen at the point they died and CAL's been a child for a century. Plus, I find the idea of spending eternity in a computer programme really unpleasant. Maybe if you're an atheist, and it's the computer or nothing, that seems like a good thing, but since I believe in an afterlife, the idea of my soul being trapped in a computer instead of going there (wherever there is) is chilling. I suppose it could be read the same way I've always understood Rimmer's hologram on Red Dwarf (the soul goes wherever it goes, the hologram is a separate entity - which makes his quest to be alive again rather pointless) but still. Creepy.

If you haven't seen the episode, I should probably mention that the Vashta Narada are also really creepy.

Random Who-type observations:

River's chronology really doesn't work now that we've seen more of it - why would she think Ten might have done the Crash of the Byzantium? Surely she must know the order of her husband's regenerations.

If the dust in sunbeams was a flesh-eating monster, I think we'd have noticed.

At one point, the Doctor and River appear actually to be using the sonic screwdrivers as screwdrivers. At other times, 'screwdriver' becomes a much dirtier-sounding euphemism than 'dancing' was.

At one point, River and the Doctor are both distressed at Donna's apparent death - presumably River's also thinking 'I guess the universe is pretty screwed now too.'

The whole Lee-stammering-and-missing-Donna thing is so spectacularly irritating and such manipulative story-telling that I pretend it didn't happen.

Is it worrying when you start recognising perfectly respectable actors as 'hey it's that guy from Strictly Come Dancing'?!

Miss Evangelista looking like the woman in black is rather cool. The effects when she takes off the veil, less so.

The Doctor and River are remarkably un-bothered about the fact they got Other Dave killed. This is why Nurse Redfern is my favourite.

It's handy that the guy who actually knew what was going on didn't get got by the Vashta Narada isn't it?

I miss Donna.

Quotes:

Doctor: Head's too full of stuff, I need a bigger head!

River: Got a problem with archaeologists?
Doctor: I'm a time traveller. I point and laugh at archaeologists!

Miss Evangelista: My dad said I have the IQ of plankton - and I was pleased!

Doctor: She's a footprint on the beach, and the tide's coming in.

Doctor: I don't give my screwdriver to anyone.
River: I'm not anyone.

Donna: This isn't my real body? But I've been dieting!

Also, 'We're going to need a chicken leg' is almost as good as 'Get the cheese to sickbay!'

More Doctor Who reviews

The Roman Mysteries: The Secrets of Vesuvius

noreply@blogger.com (Juliette) — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 13:00:00 +0000

It's Volcano Day - Vesuvius erupts while our heroes are staying nearby at Uncle Gaius' farm in an exciting if sad installment of The Roman Mysteries. Spoilers follow for this book and for The Assassins of Rome.

When a volcano erupts and kills thousands of people, you have to include some death, even in a children's novel; but at the same time, you don't want to drift too much into tragedy (hence Doctor Who saves the named characters, the family the audience care about, making up for the Cambridge Latin Course being less kind!). The Secrets of Vesuvius strikes a very nice balance by killing off only one named character that we care about, and that one is Pliny the Elder, a real person who actually died during the eruption of Vesuvius. At the end of the book, it looks like Lupus' girlfriend Clio and most of her family have also been killed, but this is not certain, and in The Assassins of Rome, it turns out that they escaped, which I think is a good thing (especially as Clio had already had a miraculous escape/faith healing in this book, and it would seem a waste to kill her off almost immediately afterwards).

The death of Pliny keeps the book grounded and acknowledges the real life tragedy without being too traumatic for sensitive child-readers (I am always thinking of this because I was ridiculously over-sensitive as a child. Seriously, I used to cry through every Friday assembly and bury my head on my best friend's shoulder because I was upset by our headmaster's tales of survival against the odds. And those stories always had happy endings! For some reason I still loved A Tale of Two Cities though. And A Night to Remember...). If any children are upset, it can gently be explained to them that this really happened and Pliny really died (i.e. there's not a lot anyone can do about it!).

The book's description of Pliny's death follows Pliny the Younger's account exactly, and the characterisation of Pliny is beautifully done and very funny ('It does appear to be getting a little worse,' he says as the earth quakes, ash and pumice rain down on them and Vesuvius prepares to cover all of Pompeii and Herculaneum with a pyroclastic flow). The book states outright that Pliny had asthma, which is how I've always interpreted Pliny the Younger's reference to his uncle's chest complaint as well. Pliny the Elder is one of my favourite ancient authors so although it's sad to read about his death, it's nice to see him appear and get a moment in the limelight.

The story is carefully constructed to follow each stage of the eruption as closely as possible, Lupus travelling all over the Bay of Naples while the others watch from Stabiae. The Author's Note at the back mentions that there is some debate over the precise sequence of events, but the story follows a probable scenario and fits with the best evidence we have, Pliny the Younger's description. There are several exciting sequences and the story gets into the heads of Roman children who have no idea what's going on very effectively.

There are other subplots in this story - the children don't know that a volcano is about to erupt, and spend the first two thirds of the novel pursuing mysteries as usual. The central mystery features an appropriately named blacksmith called Vulcan, which is quite fun, and the solution plays an important role in everyone's movements during the eruption, so the novel hangs together properly - it doesn't just stop the mystery story to pay attention to the volcano, but makes the eruption and everyone's reaction to it part of solving the mystery. Flavia also solves a riddle in Latin - it might be a bit frustrating for young readers to be unable to solve the riddle themselves, but hopefully it might encourage them to learn some Latin! Really, though, all other plots fade into the background in comparison with the eruption of the volcano, which is the big climax both this story and, to an extent, The Thieves of Ostia as well have been leading up to.

Dog lovers should be warned that there is more violence to dogs here! Luckily Ferox still appears to be alive at the end of the story. Ferox, Uncle Gaius' ferocious guard dog, must have been inspired by the famous mosaic from the House of the Tragic Poet in Pompeii that shows a fiercesome black dog and says 'Cave Canem,' 'Beware of the Dog.' It's a really nice touch and I have a very clear mental picture of Ferox!

I've always been fascinated by the AD 79 eruption of Vesuvius, and hopefully children who read this book will be too. Although our heroes can't possibly understand pyroclastic flow (or get caught in it, as that leads to certain death) the eruption is described as clearly as possible and culminates in poor Pliny's real death, and may, hopefully, get children interested in finding out more, geologically or historically!

All Roman Mysteries reviews

The Day Aberystwyth Stood Still (by Malcolm Pryce)

noreply@blogger.com (Juliette) — Sat, 05 Jan 2013 14:39:00 +0000

What do you get if you cross The X-Files, Raymond Chandler, an ancient epic poem and the Welsh seaside town of Aberystwyth?

Malcolm Pryce's Aberystwyth books are Raymond Chandler pastiches set in Aberystwyth, a small town in mid-Wales where my parents met while at university. (It's pronounced Aber - IST - with by the way, or sometimes Aber - UST - weth). Private Eye Louie Knight takes on cases from a collection of weird and wonderful characters with the help of his young assistant Calamity, his father Eeyore (a retired policeman who now leads the donkeys on the beach) and his friend Sospan the philosophical ice cream seller. I absolutely love these books - they're fantastically quirky and brilliantly funny, and when you spend so much time reading about exotic foreign places, it's nice to read about horrible murders happening around the crazy golf course at Aberystwyth every now and again!

Sometimes Pryce moves things around a bit (we think he moved the railway bridge from Barmouth to Aberdovey at one point) but for the most part these stories are set in towns and lakes we know well, but with a twist. Aberystwyth is overrun with shady Druids who manipulate the naive girls who pose for the pictures on the Welsh fudge boxes, haunted by the ghosts of the long ago Patagonian war and while the students at Aberystwyth university are peculiar enough, nearby Lampeter is full of gloomy student undertakers. The books are capable of rather beautiful prose at times and some real poignancy (one death scene in a damp underground prison cell was particularly memorable) but mostly they're just very funny.

The Day Aberystwyth Stood Still is the sixth book in the series, and probably the most out there genre-wise, dipping its toe into science fiction just a little, as well as detective noir (Last Tango in Aberystwyth came close, but ended in a more Scooby-Doo style twist). It's also the first to have a distinctly Classical theme running through the novel. From the Prologue's re-writing of the Biblical story of Jezebel to the introduction of a character called Ercwleff (Welsh for 'Hercules,' supposedly - if I had to guess at pronunciation I'd say Er-coo-leff) in the first line Classicists know they're in for a treat, and Pryce scatters little Classical references throughout the story - he makes great use of the handily named Coliseum cinema, for example (which is a real cinema in Aberystwyth, of which my parents have very fond memories. It's still going). Beyond the smaller references though, the whole story takes on some of the structure of an epic poem. Spoilers follow.

The most obvious link to Classical myth is, of course, Hercules, and that's the reference Pryce really expects his readers to know. Ercwleff's link to Hercules is his physical strength. The character himself, who accidentally kills rabbits by hugging them too hard, is more like the big guy from Of Mice and Men (I think - I've never read Of Mice and Men, it sounded miserable), but a bit more dangerous and nastier. His unfortunate tendency to attack innocent people isn't entirely unlike the mythical Hercules, who was famously driven mad by Hera and killed his wife and children (and there are several other myths about him murdering other random people as well). Ercwleff ends up in a fight with a character from previous books called Herod, who was named for his tendency to cause the death of small children, and the way the whole book ends up with a fist fight between Herod and Hercules is rather amusing.

Aberystwyth Prom at night. 'Neon is the ink of heartache scribbled across the night sky...'

The other major Classical link is more significant and brings in the epic poem structure that crops up every now and again throughout the book. Early on Sospan the philosophical ice-cream seller introduces Louie to Katabasis ice cream, explaining that its named after the Greek word for a journey to the underworld and opens the doors of perception, and that it was recommended by Hunter S. Thompson. There is, of course, only one way this is going to end. Louie's katabasis comes rather later in the book than its usual position in an epic poem (where it tends to appear about halfway through) but his story in this novel follows a basic structure of prophecy - katabasis - fight - victory and new leadership position, easily recognisable to anyone who's read the Odyssey or the Aeneid.

First we have the prophecy. In the opening chapter, the mayor has Ercwleff bust up Louie's desk because his 'soothsayer' has told him Louie will be poking his nose into the mayor's business - that turns out to have a mundane explanation, but not long afterwards, Louie and Calamity come across a mysterious old lady with cat called Eightball who tells Louie she's only too happy to make a cup of tea for the next mayor of Aberystwyth. Regardless of whether a given work is genre fiction or not (this is something I'm doing some work on at the moment!) if you hear a prophecy like that, especially from a mysterious old woman with a cat called Eightball, it will come true. And sure enough, a little later an old friend of Louie's asks him to consider running for mayor and although he declines, when he interrupts the fist fight between rival candidates Herod and Ercwleff, Louie ends up acclaimed as mayor by the crowd.

(I suppose I should reassure everyone that this is not, in fact, how the mayor of Aberystwyth is chosen, but I think that's obvious. I don't know who the current mayor is but they're properly elected - a few years ago it was Judith from Monty Python's Life of Brian).

The katabasis eventually occurs near the end of the story, and you really have to love a book with lines like:

Doc Digwyl pressed his lips together... as if this was the final confirmation of what he had long suspected: Erik XIV poisoning. 'We have no choice,' he said... 'We must use the Katabasis ice cream.'

Having been administered with the hallucinogenic ice cream, Louie goes on a journey in which he is swallowed by a giant Herod Jenkins and ends up in its innards, before having to climb once again to daylight, out through the ear. The purpose of a katabasis in ancient epic poetry, other than gothic imagery, is to remind the hero of the past and reunite him with a dead colleague or two, and to provide a more specific and useful prophecy of the future than the one that got him to the underworld in the first place. And so Louie encounters the witches from Macbeth who address him as 'Mayor of Aberystwyth,' sees his current girlfriend leave in the manner she plans to, and sees Ercwleff turn the other cheek in the fist fight (having been told several times already that Ercwleff will take a dive in the fifth round). While in Herod's insides, Louie is reunited with Marty, the old schoolfriend Herod drove to his death many years before, echoing Odysseus' encounter with Agamemnon and Aeneas being reunited with his father (Marty reassures Louie that he and the other dead boys plan to give Herod indigestion).

View of the town from the top of Constitution Hill

Naturally, Louie emerges from this experience stronger and wiser, breaks up the fight and ends up being made Mayor of Aberystwyth, and his epic journey is complete. What this means for the series I don't know, but I hope Pryce plans to write more about Louie in his new role - and if he could throw in some more Classical references in the next book, that would be even better!

5 Suggested New Year's Resolutions for Historical Writers

noreply@blogger.com (Juliette) — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 22:28:00 +0000

It's that time of year when other people make resolutions about how they will improve their lives over the next twelve months. (I don't, I'm afraid, I gave up long ago. The only New Year's Resolution I've so far managed to keep was Project 365, which was rather fun). So in the spirit of the season, I thought I'd offer the writers, producers, directors, artists and all others involved in producing films, TV shows and books based on the Classical world a few suggestions for their 2013 New Year's Resolutions.

1. Remember that there are languages other than Latin.
Plutarch wrote in Greek. The inscription at the Oracle of Apollo in Delphi, in Greece, was (oddly enough) in Greek. The common language used for communication in the Eastern part of the Empire was Greek. Even Julius Caesar's famous last words were spoken in Greek. Some if these alterations are understandable as no one wants to confuse the audience too much - but Lisa Simpson's claim that Plutarch wrote in Latin is just plain wrong.
How to do it right: Not only do the Roman Mysteries books cover Nubia's slow improvement in Latin with care and sympathy, the children's TV series actually includes subtitled Greek when it shows Lupus' backstory. Goodness knows what young viewers thought, but I was impressed.

2. Go easy on the Minotaurs.
In Classical mythology, there was one Minotaur. It was the offspring of Pasiphae and the bull she fell madly in love with. It lived in the middle of the Labyrinth and was fed with regular sacrifices of virgins. Now, I don't really mind authors, filmmakers and artists playing around with mythology; there's nothing inherently wrong with populating one's fantasy with multiple minotaurs, and the recent Narnia movies in particular do quite interesting things with them. It's just that recently minotaurs seem to have become just another monster, playing no real role beyond showing off the skills of the special effects department. The Minotaur is a specific character from a specific story - it would be nice to see that reflected once in a while.
How to do it right: Um, I can't think of any pop cultural examples of the actual Minotaur. I'm sure there must be some, somewhere. Otherwise, the closest might be Doctor Who's 'The Horns of Nimon,' and that's just depressing.

3. Let archaeologists be archaeologists
'Scientists' are not a great big homogenous group who all do the same thing. The different branches of science are all unique and different from each other. Archaeology belongs with the human sciences, linked to sociology and anthropology, and is a very different beast from, say, nuclear physics. Archaeologists often have a certain linguistic expertise and there is some overlap between archaeology and anthropology, and between archaeology and philology, especially when one studies the ancient near east or Egypt, but archaeologists are not omnidisciplinary scientists. They cannot translate every language under the sun off the tops of their heads, they are not usually all that handy with a gun and believe it or not, not all of them wear glasses.
Of course, I might just be jealous because Classicists and ancient historians never get played by Harrison Ford, carrying a whip.
How to do it right: Lintilla the archaeologist in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (second radio series) is pretty handy in a crisis, but in terms of training and occupation, she stick to digging in the ground looking for the remnants of past civilizations.

4. Come up with something beyond 'it was Christianity's fault' to account for the fall of the Roman Empire
Christianity was certainly a factor in the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, but watching popular films, you'd think it was the only thing that brought an end to Roman civilzation. Whether it's the 1950s story of wonderful, moral Christianity overcoming the nasty, immoral Romans or Agora's story of the lovely, philosophical, wise Romans being overcome by nasty, evil Christians, either way, Christianity is held solely accountable for the fall of one of the world's most famous empires. In fact, Constantine the Great adopted a favorable position towards Christianity nearly 100 years before the Romans pulled out of Britain and not far off 200 years before the city of Rome was overrun. Christianity had its part to play in the decline of Roman civilization for sure, particularly in the decline of institutions like bath houses, that Christians thought were immoral, but it was only one factor of many.
How to do it right: Fall of the Roman Empire tried to introduce more complex details into the story, though this didn't go down too well with audiences.

5. Try to use orgies ironically

Ah, the Roman orgy. Such a well known trope of ancient Roman-set fiction. The trouble is, it's a concept that came about in the early twentieth century - real Romans were no more or less likely to engage in orgiastic activity than any other culture. I'm sure some of them had orgies, and some of the orgies depicted on film and television are what we might call real rumours (Suetonius reports that Caligula opened a brothel in the palace, for example). But while in some ways attitudes towards sex and sexuality in ancient Rome were very different from ours (slaves had no rights to their own bodies, male adultery was acceptable to many but female adultery was not, attitudes towards homosexuality depended partly on the relationship and positions employed), there were some similarities, and general social disapproval of wild sex parties was one of them. (Social and legal taboos against brother-sister and parent-child incest were another - the point of the stories about Caligula, Nero and the others were to make them look bad).
How to do it right: In Rome's second season, Agrippa lectures Maecenas on moral virtue and then carries Octavia back to her mother, forcing her to admit that she was at an orgy. It's hilarious and filmed with a distinct sense of post-modern ironic humour (whether deliberately so or not).

Happy New Year everyone! Here's to 2013!

More Top 5 Lists