Gladiator Allusions

It was really interesting to see how much of other movies the movie Gladiator alludes to.  I think the main one would be Spartacus since the story line is almost the same.  Both movies had similar characters and very similar locations.  Some of the characters that I saw resemblances were of Commodus and Nero they are both very interesting complex characters in my opinion and for both of movies were the driving force for me to finish watching these movies because with Quo Vadis I just wanted to see Nero die or some one to humiliate him and tell him how awful his singing was.  With Gladiator I just wanted to see Commodus die because he was so cruel to Maximus and he killed his father in the movie.  It was a real shame that in real life Commodus did not die fighting with The Spaniard.  I felt like when I found out that the story of Jack and Rose from Titanic was not real, it was a sad day for me.  Another character that were very similar was Juba and Draba I thought that they were almost the same character that I was watching except Juba does not die in Gladiator and he actually becomes really good friends with Maximus.  The most important character that had the same characteristics as Spartacus was Maximus.  I thought that I was just watching a much better remake of Spartacus.  Even though they were both very similar I liked Gladiator a lot more than Spartacus.

Satyricon, the Novel

The novel was not much help really, the only help that it really allowed me was to realize that the weirdness of the movie was not the director’s choice but it was the only option if he wanted to stay true to the novel.  Fellini, though a weird director, I think he did the best he could do with the novel.  I watched clips of his other film La Dulce Vita and even though they were not as strange as Satyricon, I can imagine that they were not as weird because the script was probably complete.  I also am kind of glad that Fellini was the one that directed Satyricon because I think that if someone else would have directed this movie it would have done really bad and the movie would not have probably left you wondering as to what was going to happen next.  Even though the movie was very fragmented, like the novel, in general I can see this movie being a movie centered for a specific genre.  I do not think that the movie or the novels are bad movies, I just find them strange, and after class I can understand that why Satyricon is incomplete. I did like that the novel did give a little bit more to the story but I was still confused, but I think it is okay, because I does not take a lot to confuse me so I was really lost for this movie but overall by reading some of the novel I was able to understand a little bit better what was going on in the movie and maybe if I were to read the entire novel I would probably understand it a lot better but not completely because of all the missing pieces.  I really wish that the whole story were available because I would have really liked to know what really happened and how the story really ended.

Gladiator

Finally! A movie that makes me feel real emotions. Even though there were a lot of scenes that reminded me of Spartacus I am so pleased that there is finally a movie that can make me feel something.  The other movies, though they were good movies, did not make me feel any sort of connection to the characters and I found myself being board with a lot of the scenes.  With Gladiator, the way that it introduces the main actor makes me feel an instant connection to him and that was something that I had not felt with any of the other movies. I think Russell Crowe and Joaquin Phoenix are both really good in this movie and I think that they are both great actors.  I loved Joaquin Phoenix in Walk The Line and I found it amazing how he can portray all of these different characters and the way that he can change his voice for an entire movie.  Even though Russell Crowe is supposed to be the protagonist of this movie I think that Joaquin stole the show by how much life he was able to give his character.  Russell did a fantastic job at making the audience like him, just like his character made the audience from the gladiator matches love him.  I liked the blue tint of the movie, I have always liked blue tint on movies I especially like watching blue tint movies when it is raining outside because the blue tint makes me feel like I am in the similar type of weather, were it is cold in the movie and where I am at and can feel like I am there and am experiencing what the characters in the movie are feeling. I thought it was a great movie and though it was a little too violent for my taste I still did not mind it too much because I was so glad that I could finally watch a movie that was not four hours long and that formed a connection between the characters and the audience.  My favorite movie so far.

Fellini Satyricon

This movie is such a strange movie that I still cannot figure out if I liked it or not.  My first thoughts were, “Great, I’m going to have to read the subtitles” and after the first couple of scenes I though that having the subtitles would help me out in understanding what was going on better in the movie but it didn’t.  I read parts of the novel and I still do not know what it is about.  But one thing that it managed to do was keep me entertained.  I may not have known what was going on but because I did not know what was going on and was trying to figure it out, I kept watching it in hopes that at the end something would be explained and I would understand it.  Once I got towards the end of the movie and nothing had been explained I was disappointed because I felt that the short fragments of the storyline that were portrayed could have been really good if it was not in pieces.  I understand that the novel is in fragments as well but I was and still am so confused and then the ending did not finish.  I am so curious to know what happened and want to know what I am missing.  That is why I am left wondering if I like this movie or not because I want to know what happened in the missing part of the story and I really want to know how it ends. Overall I think it was a funny weird movie that could have probably been funnier had it not been so fragmented.  I thought the characters were weird and very girly which I am not used to seeing in movies.  Most of these characters were so feminine and the females were very strange.  After watching this movie I just stared at the ceiling of my room and tried to understand what I had just watched.  It is not a normal movie but if anyone is into strange movies then that might be a good one to see but I tried to find the storyline and when I thought I had found it, it changed and I don’t know. That is my thoughts in this movie I simply do not know.

Plutarch Life of Antony

In Plutarch’s Life of Antony I was able to learn a lot about the history of Cleopatra and Antony.  While watching Cleopatra there where times where I would wonder of Cleopatra really did manipulate Antony the way she did in the movie.  When I read Plutarch’s Life of Antony I was surprised to learn that it was much worst.  It was also nice to know what facts were right and which ones were kept out of the movie.  After reading Life of Antony I came to the conclusion that Elizabeth Taylor had done a good job playing Cleopatra.  The way that she was able to manipulate both Caesar and Antony in the movie I thought was amazing and it was pretty evident that the romans blamed her for the fall of both of these men.  I was able to notice this because in Plutarch’s Life of Antony, Plutarch describes Antony as being a simplistic man that has a sense of justice, and that is also portrayed in the movie, while Cleopatra was described as a “Crowning Evil” and by the end of the movie you can not help but blame Cleopatra for everything that happened to Antony and Caesar.  Through Life of Antony we also get a better description of how the real Cleopatra looked like and she did not look anything like Elizabeth Taylor, but the main thing that they did have in common was the characteristics of Cleopatra.  Elizabeth Taylor did an amazing job at portraying all of the charm and spectacle that Cleopatra was known for.  It was also interesting to read more about Octavia because in the movie she is hardly mentioned and it was interesting to read about the main differences between Cleopatra and Octavia, even in the movie you could tell that Octavia was the woman that everyone should be like but Cleopatra was the woman that every female secretly wanted to be. Over all there were a lot more differences that I would have thought were but a lot of the differences were things that were not really necessary to the film.  Overall I liked Plutarch’s Life of Antony more than the movie.