Oops! I have let this get away from me again (* indicates something watched/read for the first time).
Movies
A rewatch, in connection with it being both a set text for my Ancient Greece and Rome on the Big Screen course, and a #ClassicsTwitterMovie. To quote myself, from my course materials, 'Ben-Hur is not only the best version of the original source novel (though the 1925 silent version runs it a close second), it is generally considered the best of the Roman epics of the 1950s and 1960s. This position is deserved. It is genuinely a good movie, made by talent that was very much at the top of their game.' Part one of the #ClassicsTwitterMovie thread is here, and part two is here.
† According to the Writers' Guild of America; others, such as William Wyler and Charlton Heston, thought that Christopher Fry deserved a credit, and the script as finally seen is the product of input from over a dozen writers, producers, and others.
4. Live and Let Die (UK/USA, dir. Guy Hamilton, scr. Tom Mankiewicz, starring Roger Moore, Eon Productions, 1973)
An animated version of the classic tale, watched because I'd never seen it and thought it was about time I did. Charlton Heston introduces the movie from a comfortable study, narrates it and voices Judah Ben-Hur, and signs off as himself at the end. His final words are 'I'm Charlton Heston. Thanks for watching.' As this was the last movie he ever made, those words become an epitaph for his entire career, and a pretty appropriate one, I think. The movie itself is quite a compressed version of the original novel. There is a much stronger Christian message here than in either the 1925 silent version of the 1959 classic, and the screenplay draws upon the Four Gospels directly as well as upon Lew Wallace's novel, including things like the Massacre of the Innocents that Wallace omitted. Messala is also redeemed by the end, something that the 2016 remake also does. Overall, it's okay, but not better than the 1959 version.
Watched, for the first time, with the London Science Fiction Research Community. This is an interesting low-budget sf movie, from a time when a lot of similar movies were being made. The only Sayles movie I'd previously seen was The Return of the Secaucus 7 (1980), which actually feels as if it's been made on a larger budget, though it very definitely wasn't. Brother is about an alien who has been smuggled out from interstellar slavery (it's strongly hinted by an equivalent of Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad), who then has to adjust to life in Harlem. New York of the 1980s is quite an alien place, especially to whites; there's a striking moment on the New York Subway where all the white people get off the train, to be replaced by blacks. This was definitely worth watching. It's slightly weird, has a social conscience without ever really preaching, and is in places quite funny. Sayles says it was about the immigrant experience, which is why it begins on Ellis Island.
I had been really looking forward to this, obviously. The first Wonder Woman remains the best of the DCEU movies (not that there is a lot of competition there). This was a bit, well, so-so. I thought killing off Steve Trevor was a bold move in Wonder Woman, and if they were going to bring him back, it would have to be in a way that didn't invalidate his sacrifice, i.e. Diana would have to give him up again. Apart from one horrible aspect, which Will Morgan has well detailed, I thought this was got right. Apart from that, there are two delightful moments, right at the beginning and right at the end, which warmed my fanboy heart, and the rest was standard superhero fare. It does all get a bit excessive at times (Geoff Johns' influence, I feel). And the 1984 setting doesn't entirely work; the movie is going for the strong sense of place that Captain Marvel managed so effortlessly, but it doesn't quite achieve it. Definitely not the breath of fresh air that the first movie was.
A rewatch for #ClassicsTwitterMovie. My Twitter thread is here. An excellent version of Shakespeare's play, with superb performances by Marlon Brando and John Gielgud, and pretty good ones by James Mason and Deborah Kerr. All productions of Julius Caesar are either Brutus plays or Antony plays, depending on directorial choice and actors' performances. Here, thanks to Brando, who is extraordinary, it's an Antony play. The movie is very studio-bound, and in consequence feels rather like a television production at times, except that no television production could have assembled a cast of this quality. Ten years later, director Mankiewicz tackled the same event in Cleopatra. More needs to be done, I think, in comparing his two Roman movies. Unfortunately, movies of Shakespeare's Roman plays are something of a neglected area of classical reception studies, which I'd like to see more people working on.
Apparently the critics were lukewarm to hostile about this adaptation of Michael Frayn's stage farce. I can't think why. Frayn himself liked it. And actually, it's pretty funny. Act Two, where backstage descends into slapstick chaos while on stage the play proceeds apparently smoothly, is done particularly well; it requires expert timing, and here that is delivered by a set of comic actors right at the very top of their game. John Ritter deserves special mention. He never got the recognition he deserved, probably due to snobbery about the fact that he spent much of his career in television sitcoms. But here he's excellent, right up there with screen comedy greats such as Peter Sellers. And the relocation of the setting from England to the US allows jokes to be made about the excruciating English accents everyone puts on. Even Denholm Elliott, basically dying of AIDS by this point (this was his last movie), is great in the role of somebody who's meant to be not as good as they once were.
Another movie on my ancient world movies course, and a #ClassicsTwitterMovie; my Twitter thread is here. I think, apart from a few moments (the Stan/Loretta gags being most obvious), this still stands up after over forty years. Everyone is at the top of their game (a phrase I grossly overuse), and there's hardly a moment wasted, which is more than can be said for a lot of Python product. Standout scenes remain the haggling, the stoning, Spike Milligan upstaging everyone else, 'What have the Romans ever done for us?', and pretty much all of it, really. Very controversial at the time, but these days it all seems rather tame. This has possibly robbed the movie of some of its power to make its audience think again about their attitudes to religion, and in particular group think. 'You don't have to follow anybody' is a message we could still do with paying attention to.
Another movie from my ancient world movies course, and another #ClassicsTwitterMovie. The thread is here. Fellini Satyricon is a movie that I always found 18-21-year-old undergraduates had a problem with. I can understand that; it's a difficult movie. Even I'm not sure whether I actually like it. And I suspect Fellini didn't mean me to know. What I will say is that this was the first time I had actually watched it through in a while, and I certainly find it a rewarding experience, and there are new subtleties that emerge with each viewing. And I will also reiterate my feeling that Fellini intends a lot of what he puts on screen to be funny, sometimes, I think, laugh-out-loud funny. I really must watch more of his work, as it would no doubt provide a better context. And it's a movie that I think deserves to be in any course on antiquity and cinema, because it has influenced so much that follows (Gladiator, in particular, has Fellini's fingerprints all over it).
I'd rather let this slip by on first release. I'd not been that impressed by the first two reboots, especially Into Darkness, and so I had low expectations for this. But it was free on Prime, so I thought, 'why not?' And I found that it's a lot better than the two Abrams-directed examples. For the first time, I found I could actually believe in Chris Pine as Jim Kirk. And I admire the movie's chutzpah; there are some things (e.g. the use of The Beastie Boys' 'Sabotage') that it just shouldn't be allowed to get away with, and yet it does.
And yet another #ClassicsTwitterMovie. My Twitter thread is here. There's no arguing that this movie isn't a mess. Stone took ages to find a structure he was happy with, long after the movie's official release. I think a lot of the problem is that the shape of Alexander's life defeats dramatic structure. But there's also no denying that the movie is a thoughtful one, and I think a lot of critics had difficulty with it because they weren't prepared for this level of thoughtfulness, or simply couldn't cope with the way Alexander's sexuality refuses to fit into the neat boxes they would prefer. This killed off a rival movie version that would have been directed by Baz Luhrmann and produced by Dino de Laurentiis. Some claim that this version would have been more restrained and tasteful than Stone's version, which I find very odd.
Television
Again, watched in connection with my class on the 1959 movie, and because I had never seen it and thought I ought to. If you've never seen it either, don't bother. This is the toxic masculinity version of Ben-Hur, with both Judah and Messala behaving like arses throughout. It is notable for several cameos from actors who are better than the material, such as Alex Kingston as Judah's mother (here named Ruth), Ray Winstone as Quintus Arrius, and Art Malik, an actual Muslim playing Sheik Ilderim! Also features the most rubbish version of the chariot race; they couldn't afford a proper circus, and so the race is done cross-country, like an ancient Roman rally-cross. This is the only version of the story, apart from the 1959 movie, in which Messala dies of wounds received in the race, though here he an Judah are reconciled before he dies. Emily VanCamp makes the best of what little she is given.
I saw most of this last year, but finished off the last couple of episodes last month. And oh, it's a delight. Based on Luke Pearson's Hildafolk graphic novels, which I haven't read but get good write-ups, Hilda is about the adventures of a young girl in a Nordic land where fantastic elements such as trolls, giants, elfs, and other magical creatures are all treated as part of everyday life. I particularly like the woffs, big balls of fur with tails that fly through the air in large groups, and are just treated as something that needs no particular explanation. There's good characterisation for Hilda, her mother Johanna, her friends David and Frida, and various other recurring figures, such as the Wood Man, a man made of wood who casually walks into anyone's home like he owns the place. It's intended as a children's series, of course, but I recommend it to anyone who likes the mythology of Scandinavia, presented in a nice, homely fashion. The second season has now dropped, and I'm looking forward to that.
Well, here's something that has really divided my friends. Half of them really like it, and the other half really don't. I am in the former group. I like the characters. I like the way the show pokes fun at Trek tropes whilst nevertheless remaining Star Trek. I like the way that all the races that appeared in one episode and were then never seen again are back—look there's an Edoan! I think it's worth persisting with, as it gets better as it goes along; the last episode in particular goes places I really was not expecting it to go.
Made to mark the four hundredth anniversary of Shakespeare's birth, an ambitious version of Hamlet, shot at Elsinore castle itself. That might seem like a gimmick, but what a cast they assembled! Christopher Plummer as the Prince, delivering a performance reminiscent of his later Wellington, but very effective. Michael Caine as Horatio! Robert Shaw as Claudius! Donald Sutherland as Fortinbras (okay, so Sutherland's accent is ridiculous). When this was shot in September 1963, Shaw had made From Russia With Love, but it wouldn't be released until October, Caine had made Zulu, but it wouldn't be released until January 1964, and Plummer had made The Fall of the Roman Empire, but this wouldn't be released until March. When this was broadcast, all three had big Hollywood movies to their names (albeit Fall of the Roman Empire was a flop, and Plummer would have to wait until The Sound of Music to have a hit). The cast is captured at the one point when it would be possible to have all these three in a BBC Shakespeare. Well worth tracking down.
Comics
I reread this prior to reading the first issue of Kieron Gillen's new Eternals series, which I recently reviewed for FA. Some years back, I reviewed Gaiman's version for The Slings and Arrows Graphic Novel Guide. I now think that review was rather ungenerous; I was probably in a grumpy mood, and overcompensating for those who sometimes say 'It's Gaiman, so it must be brilliant' (I agree Gaiman has done some brilliant things—Stardust, most of Sandman, the Fairyland issue of Books of Magic—but I judge each piece of writing on its merits). I appreciated the writing rather more on a second read through, and the characterisation is pretty strong. And John Romita Jr's art is nice. Gaiman's Eternals works quite well as a not-bad piece of superhero storytelling. However, I'm still not convinced it's Gaiman's best writing in the genre, and I'm still not sure that Gaiman manages to make the Eternals work in the Marvel Universe. But then I'm not sure anyone ever managed that, including Jack Kirby.
Who doesn't like She-Hulk? Bruce Banner's fun-loving, angst-free, superheroically-confident cousin. I read this to do a review of the Omnibus (and its constituent volumes, The Sensational She-Hulk by John Byrne and The Sensational She-Hulk: The Return) for Slings and Arrows, so I'm afraid you'll have to wait till those reviews come out to find out what I actually thought. Actually, part of this was a reread, as another constituent part is a 1985 Marvel Graphic Novel, and that I already reviewed, so you can get a bit of an idea of my views. I will say that I think these stories are significantly better than the pervious run of She-Hulk, reviews of which are also on their way from Slings and Arrows.
Virtual theatre
Swingin' the Dream was a jazz adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream, staged in 1939, directed by Erik Charell, and featuring Louis Armstrong and Benny Goodman, among other luminaries. It ought to have been a massive hit. Instead, it was a huge flop. The RSC are attempting to recreate the play, which is not an easy task. Only a few torn pages of the script have survived, and the rest needs to be reconstructed from photos, the playbill, the known cast and songs that were included, and what was written about the production at the time. This is an early go at that, mostly consisting of the songs, and commentary to cover the gaps between them. Perfectly pleasant jazz numbers, but one feels a great loss at what might have been restaged, if only we knew more.
I put this here, because it was a stage production filmed on the stage of the Harold Pinter in London, and initially shown in cinemas, though I saw it on BBC4 (well, on the iPlayer actually, where you can still watch it). My this is a cheery piece and no mistake! We are all doomed to unhappiness in this life, but that's fine, we can be happy in the afterlife (if we believe in that). One of the tragedies of Uncle Vanya is that it's clear that everyone has been having these conversations over and over again, and can't escape them. Still, superb performances by an exceptional cast.
Aside from the stage direction 'Exit, pursued by a bear', The Winter's Tale is not a Shakespeare play I'm familiar with. I really should be, as it is set in the world of ancient Greece, or at least Shakespeare's version of that, complete with sending a message to the Oracle at Delphi. I have to say, this production did not win me over. I think it is not the Bard at his best, and one of those 'comedies' that remind us that The Merchant of Venice is also among the comedies. In the first half, an increasingly paranoid Leontes destroys his life, losing his son and wife, culminating in a scene that is played as if it is the origin for a Batman villain. In the second half, we get a Bohemia that is characterised as Ireland, and an Ireland that largely resembles the Ireland of Father Ted. I found the changes of tone threw me out of the production somewhat. I'd like to see another production of this some time, to see if my problems are with this production in particular, or with the play in general.
