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A long march, a long march, and twenty years behind
Look, I don't know Neil Marshall from a poke in the eye with a pilum, but all things being equal, I'd rather see The Eagle of the Ninth. No offense, but General Virilus? Does he have a very great friend in Rome named Biggus Dickus?
(Oh, movies. How is it you can beautifully realize Middle-Earth and still fuck up the Romans on a regular basis?)
(Oh, movies. How is it you can beautifully realize Middle-Earth and still fuck up the Romans on a regular basis?)
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There is also a character called Quintus Dias. I assume he has brought his lovely daughter, Cameron.
In related news, I share your pain.
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I know. What was wrong with Dius? He would have had a hell of an ego, but . . .
In related news, I share your pain.
Do you have any classical films to recommend?
ETA: Apologies for comment spam. My browser is behaving weirdly.
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Spartacus is also good, more for the secondary characters than the heroes. The part that I remember best is how they managed to talk about Romans' sex lives without going the "lol they were pedophiles" route, and that's hard to do.
And it's not as cool as the first two, but I liked Gladiator a lot. The gladiatorial games are just about perfect in every respect. It has a Giggling Villain of Utter Evil who is also fairly well-written and clearly-motivated, which doesn't happen often.
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You might enjoy The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964), which was essentially remade as Gladiator. It suffers from starring Stephen Boyd, who despite his good work as Messala opposite Charlton Heston here cannot act his way out of a paper bag, but makes up a lot of ground in Alec Guinness, James Mason, Sophia Loren, and Christopher Plummer, who is great fun to watch as Commodus. I cannot recommend all three hours of the movie equally, but the funeral of Marcus Aurelius is genuinely something from another world.
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I hate spelling out dialect!
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Eeee! I didn't realize someone was making a movie of Eagle of the Ninth! Thank you for letting me know!
(I'd really love to see them do The Silver Branch, but that had more politics and somewhat less action. And they'd probably mess up Cullen big time.)
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I found out from
I'd really love to see them do The Silver Branch, but that had more politics and somewhat less action. And they'd probably mess up Cullen big time.
Maybe if The Eagle of the Ninth is well-received? It is a sequel; people like franchises. And Kevin Macdonald is no one to sneeze at. (I know it's irrelevant that he's the grandson of Emeric Pressburger, but my reaction is still: awesome.)
I do like your icon.
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XD
I recalled that you liked it! I was going to use this one, that I use for YA/children's, until I remembered.
I was also going to quote more Sutcliff Roman legionary lyrics at you, but forgot about them in my fervor over the subject of Cullen ... the one you used as a title always runs to a tune vaguely like "McNamara's Band" when I hear it in my head.
Oh, I have hopes for the movie. In the photos I found, the actor cast as Marcus even looks rather like the recent paperback book cover painting of him. (It's just that Cullen is such a strange little character, and it would be so easy to make him funny in the wrong way.)
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Hey, that one is quite legitimate, too.
In the photos I found, the actor cast as Marcus even looks rather like the recent paperback book cover painting of him.
Dude. Show?
(It's just that Cullen is such a strange little character, and it would be so easy to make him funny in the wrong way.)
Do you have any actor in mind who could play him properly?
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Hmmm ... book cover. Actually, in that picture, Marcus is a bit darker than Channing Tatum, the actor who's to play him. But the endearing thing about Mr. Tatum, from what I can see, is that he's not Hollywood handsome, and he looks rather soldierly.
Re Cullen: Gosh, I am very out of the loop on recent actors - we see maybe half a dozen movies per year, if that, and I almost never watch TV. So I'm not coming up with any names.
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Agreed on that last. I actually saw him last year in Stop-Loss; his bones are still too big for his face. If he does not look particularly Roman, at least he does not look all wrong for a legionary.
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Cool. (Even if you will have to point me toward a recording of "McNamara's Band," because I don't actually know it.) I was just lamenting to
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"McNamara's Band"is an old Irish chestnut - here's a video of a performance - from an old movie, I guess. It's the chorus that I'm mainly matching up in each case. The phrase "The girl I kissed at Clusium comes easy to my mind" maps onto the phrase "A credit to old Ireland is McNamara's Band." The fit on the verses is not quite as good, but it can be worked. The performance there has it a little too fast for a good march, but I have heard it played as a marching band number.
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Thanks!
I just found out tonight there was a radio adaptation of The Eagle of the Ninth in 1957. I would really like to hear it, both because I remember Marius Goring fondly from Powell and Pressburger's A Matter of Life and Death (1946) and The Red Shoes (1948), and because its setting of "The Girl I Kissed at Clusium" seems to have been the kind that listeners still remember fifty years later. To my great dismay, however, it looks as though it just spilled out over the wires and disappeared: "Neither the serial, or the edited play version are held by the BBC Sound Archive and there is no information about it being issued by Transcription Services." I'm hoping if I search the internet earnestly enough, I'll discover someone made a private recording. Either that, or Mithras will manifest and whap the BBC Sound Archive over the head.
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Hey, you're an authority on YA literature! You should write to Kevin Macdonald and tell him!
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"We are beginning to think about the cast and the idea is to use American actors for the Romans and to use Scots and other Celts for the Pictish people."
Says Kevin Macdonald. I wonder if he has been reading Alan Garner.
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(Oh, movies. How is it you can beautifully realize Middle-Earth and still fuck up the Romans on a regular basis?)
I'd like to know this, also.
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I hope so, too. I think there's reason to be cautiously optimistic.
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Besides...who says you can't see both?
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See, that's useful information. Names that look like bad schoolboy Latin are not. Thanks!
I'm betting his version is more "Sent Down" than Life of Brian.
I thought of "Sent Down" immediately on reading the description of Etain. I'd just rather see a movie of that, too!
Besides...who says you can't see both?
I am wondering why it is that zeitgeist comes in pairs—Photographing Fairies and FairyTale (1997), The Illusionist and The Prestige (2006), and now it looks like next year is going to be the Legio IX Hispana.
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Re the cinematic zeitgeist, meanwhile--my favorite version of that was Dangerous Liaisons vs. Valmont, ie the one nobody remembers anymore. Time usually weeds the chaff.
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This is quite true. Gladiator has the hazy wheatfields of Elysium. "Sent Down" has the underworld. I know which one my money's on.
Time usually weeds the chaff.
There you go: I didn't even know Valmont existed!
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On the other hand, Eagle of the Ninth? Eeeeeeeeeeee. I really hope they do it well.
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Perform all the propitiatory rituals you can think of!
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From your mouth to the right gods' ears!
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*snerk*alas*
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And it stars the totally wonderful Dominic West as Biggus Dickus!
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I don't think I know him at all!