Cleopatra

I found the movie Cleopatra to be a little boring.  I would have to say that some of the parts that I enjoyed the most were the scenes where Cleopatra goes to Rome when Caesar calls for her to go to Rome.  I though here entrance was really entertaining but other then that there was not a lot to entertain in the movie.  Another thing that I liked was Cleopatra’s wardrobe, it was magnificent and a lot of the clothes could be altered to be worn today.  Some of the things that I did not like about the film was the, one fighting scene, that was in the whole four hour-long film. Another thing that I did not like was the way that the Octavian was portrayed, I think that there should have been a different actor for the role of Octavian.  I understand that Octavian, or Augustus or Caesar however you want to call him, was a thin man but the actor just looked weak and very twig like, that he ended up looking weak when we all know that at the end he was going to be the one that won.  I wonder if that was one of the main reasons that this actor was chosen to play Octavian, so that the audience members that did not know the story of Cleopatra would believe that Cleopatra and Antony would win at the end? Either way I think that there should have been another actor that looked like a man that could very sneakily take everything from everyone and no one suspect him but at the same time look like if he were to be going to combat that he would at least have a fighting chance in hand to hand combat.  Overall if I had to rate the move from 1-10 and ten was the highest score I would give this movie a four because the female characters wardrobe was fantastic and Cleopatra’s grand entrance to Rome scene was really entertaining as well as her death but other then that the whole movie was really dull.

Reading on Spartacus

Being able to read about Spartacus, through Florus, Plutarch, and Appian, really gave me a different perspective on the movie Spartacus (1960).  Knowing that the historical context that is placed in the movie is not completely accurate, but that some of it was kept in the movie really helped me try to piece some of the movie together.  It was interesting to know that the death of Spartacus is not the same depending on whose story you are reading.  In the movie he is crucified and in the ancient sources there is one where he is hurt and his body was never found and in another he died in the battlefield.  One of the things that I noticed form all of the three ancient sources were that they all made Spartacus the hero of the story and that is also something that I noticed from the movie.  Even though Spartacus ended up losing the battle he was still made to be the hero of the story, even though 6,000 slaves were crucified after the battle.  I guess in a way, the fact that all of these slaves wanted to sacrifice themselves for Spartacus made him a hero but I think he would have been more of a hero if he had sacrificed himself for all of the slaves.  Another thing that I noticed was never mentioned in the ancient sources that was mentioned in the movie was Varinia and their son.  I think that Varinia and the baby were two characters that were just there for the movie, I think that they were just the love interest and a way of keeping time for the movie because throughout the entire movie we do not really know how much time has gone by.  I think that by reading the ancient sources I was able to form a better understanding of the slaves standing up and revolting and I think that the idea of making that into a movie was good but in the end the movie just needed a little bit of more editing.

Spartacus

Personally I did not like the movie Spartacus at all.  I tried to watch the whole thing in one sitting and by the time that I got to the intermission I was falling asleep.  The movie was too long for my liking and a lot of the scenes could have been made a lot shorter.  I also felt like there were a lot of unclosed ends all throughout the movie.  Based on what professor Shelton said during lecture there was a lot of disagreements during the filming of the movie and I could kind of see that because I felt like my mind was shifting to different things but in general there was a flow to the movie, I could see what the director, writers, and producers were trying to create.  I think that if there would have been more direction and maybe fewer disagreements and they would of all had the same idea then I think that the movie could have been a lot better.  I really cannot think of something that I liked about the movie Spartacus, yes there are things that could have been done better but there wasn’t anything bad about it either so I think that I have neutral feelings about the movie I don’t think it was bad but I also don’t think it was that good either.  I think that if the director would have gone back and redone the whole religion part of the movie and taken out the crucifixion of Spartacus and made him be distracted during battle because Varinia had gone to labor and got to meet his son and then died then I think that would have been a better death then the one that he had in the movie. Then Varinia leaving with Batiatus and riding past where Spartacus was killed and telling his tombstone that his son was a freeman and then leave, I think that would have been a better ending because it would be bittersweet that Spartacus never got to see his son be a freeman but Varinia and her son were able to leave slavery behind and be free and Spartacus was finally free because he was dead.  With these changes and more editing of the movie I think that it could have been a lot better.

Suetonius Life of Nero

When I first started reading Suetonius Life of Nero I was expecting something similar to what I had seen in the movie.  I was not expecting Nero to be so terrible, I don’t think there is a word that I can think of that can describe how terrible Nero was, according to Suetonius.  I knew, from the movie Quo Vadis, that Nero had killed his previous wife and mother, but I was not expecting to read about how he dressed himself in animal skin and raped other people.  I was aware that, in ancient Rome, having sex with your slaves was something that was not unheard of and I knew that it was something that I should not have been to surprise from.  But because, through the movie Quo Vadis, I had formed my own opinions of Nero and I kind of liked how evil the character of Nero was that to hear how Nero the person was, I did not even notice that I was separating the two. Once I was able to process that Nero from Quo Vadis and Nero from Suetonius were the same person just different interpretations of him I was able to piece all the information that I had of Nero and put them into one Nero and not have two different Nero’s in my mind.  It was after I came to terms that it was just one Nero that I started to hope that Nero would die soon in the movie Quo Vadis.  In the movie Quo Vadis the character of Nero does not really change he is evil from the very beginning of the movie but reading about Nero in Suetonius Life of Nero I was able to read how much Nero really changed.  In the beginning it seemed that Nero really loved his mother so when I read that he had killed his mother I was a little surprised but I think Nero was just a really crazy person that the life he had made him become the evil person that he was and he convinced himself that was he was doing was alright because he was an “artist” it almost seemed that he wanted bad things to happen to him so he made sure of that and I am glad that at the end I got the satisfaction of seeing the character Nero die in Quo Vadis. 

Quo Vadis

The movie Quo Vadis really surprised me because I was not expecting it to be as religious as it was.  When we watched Ben-Hur I was expecting a lot of really religious scenes for that movie and since we did not get that much religion in Ben-Hur I was not expecting as much religion as was shown in Quo Vadis.  I have to say that out of all of the movies that we have watched so far, Quo Vadis, is my favorite.  It was a little long? Yes, but it was really enjoyable to watch.  I thought Nero was a very complex character and I found myself waiting to see when the villains of the movie were going to show up because I wanted to know what other ridiculous thing they were going to do.  In this case I think that the villains were the ones that stole the show.  Nero, as the crazy artist/ruler, would constantly make me crack up all throughout the movie, even when he set all of Rome on fire, I know it was supposed to be a dramatic scene and in a way it was but all I kept looking at were the faces that Nero was making and I though that Peter Ustinvo did such an amazing job as Nero and bringing that comedic factor into the movie and making the audience have a love-hate relationship with this character, I could not help but love him because he would constantly make me laugh but I also hated him because he was such the perfect villain.  I think that the way that Peter Ustinvo played Nero added to the whole feeling bad for looking concept that was mentioned in lecture, while watching the movie I felt bad because even though I was rooting for Nero to be killed, at the same time I did not want anyone to kill Nero yet because I wanted to know what else would happen throughout the movie and he was such an important character for this movie, if Nero would have died at the beginning of the movie then the movie would not have led to anything. The storyline very much relied in the character of Nero.  This movie so far is my favorite and I cannot wait to see if any of the other movies changes my mind.

Ben-Hur ‘Tale of the Christ’ or tale of Rome? : (My thoughts on the paper and thoughts on the movie after reading the paper)

In this article I learned that maybe I should not have skipped the overture for Ben-Hur.  If I had left the overture and waited like the people at that time would have done would my opinion of the movie be different? I did listen to half of the overture until I decided that if I wanted to get through the entire that night I would have to skip the rest of the overture and get started.  In my opinion, I think that by listening to just a minute or half of the overture, is enough time to get into the mindset that you are watching something bigger than just a film.  I feel that if some of the scenes could have been made shorter and left the chariot race the way that it is, maybe the chariot race would of stood out a lot more.  As for the presence of Jesus throughout the film, there were times where I thought that the movie was trying to make Judah a little bit like if he was going through something somewhat similar to what Jesus was going through.  Judah was judged unjustly and was condemned for something that he did not do, while Jesus was also condemned for the sins of everyone.  Also when Messala says, “He is god the only god. He is power, real power on earth Not –that” it made me think to a scene in Titanic when someone, I cannot remember who said that not even God could sink the ship, and what happens the Titanic sinks.  So in this particular case I see a similarity with a defiance of God Messala says that God does not have any power on earth and what happens? Messala is killed very brutally during the chariot race.  When I try to put myself in the position of the people of 1959 I can imagine that seeing a film on a big screen with so many vibrant colors and such a big action sequence I know that if I would have lived in that time era I would have been very impressed and even now that I am so much more used to color film and SGI and so many other “movie magic” I found myself liking the 1959 version of Ben-Hur and reading this paper by Theodorakopoulos really put a lot of things about this film into perspective and I know that if I were to watch this movie again I would probably enjoy it a lot more