<!--QuoteBegin-Pandyan+Mar 7 2009, 09:52 AM-->QUOTE(Pandyan @ Mar 7 2009, 09:52 AM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->Just money and more good actors is needed to make a very good serial. Good example would be HBO's Rome.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGYI1UHK5jM
[right][snapback]95266[/snapback][/right]<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Don't get me wrong, British actors are very good at their job <i>in their homesettings</i>. But to see Brits parading around as if they were Romans is too much for me. Also the series totally skewed history. There was a nice DVD review on <i>I, Claudius</i> was it (or maybe just on the Beeb's <i>Rome</i>) where the reviewer went over how the west now likes to make series about past civilisations - especially of those where the peoples/cultures have ceased to exist - to superimpose modern ideas on them. As a case in point he brought up the Romans and how often they were essentially parodied as immoral characters. Even in the case of some realism, such as their more extreme food habits, the exceptional cases were made the rule rather than the exception that they were. Particularly, excesses of promiscuity and one orgy after another seem to be focussed on. An insightful observation was when he (the reviewer) noticed that it was the underlying fetish of the west to explore and film these things that were instead projected onto a population that no longer exists (people of a long-gone civilisation can't protest or defend themselves from the slander, nor sue for historical inaccuracy that presents them in a very unfavourable light), simultaneously passing the charges of morbidity and unwarranted excess onto the Romans with excuses like "but we're trying to be realistic". Realistic would be to not just make programs on Rome a list of all the worst and most sensational events that occurred here and there in the empire of ~300 million people for over centuries, but to have representative events.
And James Purefoy is a good actor, but what's with a Norman playing a Roman? And poor Polly Walker, she also looks out of place. And the whole gang of Saxons. Just get some Italians and make it real Rome. I may watch. But this sort of thing makes as much sense as the old complaint: Americans/Brits in Troy and Irish playing Greeks in Alexander, or the Brits playing Russians in ITV's Anna Karenina (complete with Latin rites used in catholicism, instead of Orthodox rites! As if Russia is orthodox and as if people are too stupid to notice such absurd, unreal impossibilities).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGYI1UHK5jM
[right][snapback]95266[/snapback][/right]<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Don't get me wrong, British actors are very good at their job <i>in their homesettings</i>. But to see Brits parading around as if they were Romans is too much for me. Also the series totally skewed history. There was a nice DVD review on <i>I, Claudius</i> was it (or maybe just on the Beeb's <i>Rome</i>) where the reviewer went over how the west now likes to make series about past civilisations - especially of those where the peoples/cultures have ceased to exist - to superimpose modern ideas on them. As a case in point he brought up the Romans and how often they were essentially parodied as immoral characters. Even in the case of some realism, such as their more extreme food habits, the exceptional cases were made the rule rather than the exception that they were. Particularly, excesses of promiscuity and one orgy after another seem to be focussed on. An insightful observation was when he (the reviewer) noticed that it was the underlying fetish of the west to explore and film these things that were instead projected onto a population that no longer exists (people of a long-gone civilisation can't protest or defend themselves from the slander, nor sue for historical inaccuracy that presents them in a very unfavourable light), simultaneously passing the charges of morbidity and unwarranted excess onto the Romans with excuses like "but we're trying to be realistic". Realistic would be to not just make programs on Rome a list of all the worst and most sensational events that occurred here and there in the empire of ~300 million people for over centuries, but to have representative events.
And James Purefoy is a good actor, but what's with a Norman playing a Roman? And poor Polly Walker, she also looks out of place. And the whole gang of Saxons. Just get some Italians and make it real Rome. I may watch. But this sort of thing makes as much sense as the old complaint: Americans/Brits in Troy and Irish playing Greeks in Alexander, or the Brits playing Russians in ITV's Anna Karenina (complete with Latin rites used in catholicism, instead of Orthodox rites! As if Russia is orthodox and as if people are too stupid to notice such absurd, unreal impossibilities).