"Nocturnal Greece and Rome" was terrific. Among other things, it featured a paper (by Peter Mazur, Yale grad student) about Hermes and Apate—Deception—as the tricky, ambiguous children of Night, and who could fail to love that?
(Are my obsessions showing?)
I had to run out three-quarters of the way through the session on Troy and only returned for the last round of applause, so I can't vouch for the conclusions, but I think some of them might have been "Hollywood blockbuster formula: Homeric epic: do not play well with one another" and "Peter Jackson, where are you?" (Other conclusions could well have been "Don't watch this movie. Please. Please . . . We told you so.") Of all the sessions I attended, it was definitely the most entertaining. Nick's talk on "Writing Troy" included excerpts from the glorious "Troy in Fifteen Minutes" and deleted scenes from earlier drafts of David Benioff's screenplay. Other panelists offered clips from Troy and other classical movies, such as the 1956 Helen of Troy and the staggeringly bad TV adaptation of the Odyssey that had me wanting to apologize personally to the epic tradition after about thirty seconds of viewing. Also much intelligent and interesting criticism, which made up for all the brain damage incurred by the film clips.
no subject
(Are my obsessions showing?)
I had to run out three-quarters of the way through the session on Troy and only returned for the last round of applause, so I can't vouch for the conclusions, but I think some of them might have been "Hollywood blockbuster formula: Homeric epic: do not play well with one another" and "Peter Jackson, where are you?" (Other conclusions could well have been "Don't watch this movie. Please. Please . . . We told you so.") Of all the sessions I attended, it was definitely the most entertaining. Nick's talk on "Writing Troy" included excerpts from the glorious "Troy in Fifteen Minutes" and deleted scenes from earlier drafts of David Benioff's screenplay. Other panelists offered clips from Troy and other classical movies, such as the 1956 Helen of Troy and the staggeringly bad TV adaptation of the Odyssey that had me wanting to apologize personally to the epic tradition after about thirty seconds of viewing. Also much intelligent and interesting criticism, which made up for all the brain damage incurred by the film clips.