House of Uppity

I move in two days (New Years Day, like a dumbass) and everything is all packed up. Except a copy of Spartacus that I had borrowed off a friend several months ago. Months. That’s why I don’t lend stuff out to me, because I’m horrible at returning them……

…..toooo…. me.

It’s been fun living in the Muffin House (so named because it is actually, well, …shaped like a muffin.) but time has come to move on. Places get old after a while and it’s time to see what life is like…..down the street around the corner. I could walk my stuff to the new place.

So, tonight we’re watching Spartacus together. You & me.

I. You & I. Me? I?

Let’s begin shall we?

Why don’t more movies have overtures? It might have something to do with the quality of film scores. You remember the music from movies like West Side Story, Lawrence of Arabia, & Gone With the Wind long after the people who composed the music have died because the music was made to stand on it’s own as a separate character of the movie. Not just a collection of emotional queues to sell on CD. I think the art of the great film score might be (not completely) lost.
I find it odd (or hilarious) that an American movie released in 1960 begins its tale by calling out the “horrible sin of slavery” as the South was still in the throes of Jim Crow laws, institutional racism at its worst.
Kirk Douglas is a fantastic actor. His face looks like it was chipped out of granite. Then had burned leather placed over it.
Woody Strode is a bad-ass. Every time I him see I think of the long,slow opening of Sergio Leone’s Once Upon A Time in the West where him and the two other killers are waiting at the train station for Charles Bronson to kill them.
“Crassius here? Livinia, get my red robe, the one with the acorns, and the second-best wine. Wait, the best but small goblets.” Peter Ustinov is going to rock this movie, I know it.
The “love theme” is repeated far too much within the first 30 minutes.
“I only want the most beautiful. I’ll take the big, black one.”
The scene where Woody Strode and Kirk Douglas await their turn in the arena as the sounds of another gladiator battle (their comrades in the gladiator training school) take place behind them is gripping. The tension is incredible.
Their fight is pretty amazing, too. Didn’t end how I thought it would, either. The last minute change of Woody’s heart, to strike out at his masters, those who enslaved him, instead of his fellow slave..so good.
The slave revolt at the one hour mark is pretty bloody for 1960.
Laurence Olivier. I would love to see him against Anthony Hopkins in an “act-off.”
“What are we becoming? Romans?” I’m finding an interesting commentary on the way movements of resistance become gluttonous and (violently) drunk on their own power. Oh, hey Castro, how are you doing over there?
“Forbid me ever to leave you.” Even the romance is epic. Horse riding across the landscapes, the sun setting behind them.
The conversation between Ustinov and Charles Laughton about women and the “moral sanctity” of marriage is hilarious.
The “controversial” bathing scene is written pretty subtly. “My morality allows for both the eating of oysters and snails.” Subtle. Like a brick through a window with a note attached to it that says ,”HE’S BISEXUAL!”
Spartacus’s “army of gladiators” is a pretty ragtag bunch of misfits. They’re the Bad News Bears of slave revolts.
The training scene montage is the granddaddy to Rocky IV.
The ego of the Romans, taking on “just a bunch of slaves”, just proved their undoing. Now their camps are on fire. Didn’t they learn anything from all those “underdog” scrolls that were popular about the pee-wee gladiator team from the inner city against…okay, we get the joke, already.
INTERMISSION. Intermissions are the other great thing that movies lack now. It’s not like people aren’t making the 3 1/2 hour epics anymore. I guess it would be harder to pull of an intermission at the multiplex than at, say, the Cineramadome in Hollywood. Do they still show movies at the Dome? Is the Dome still a thing? Sometimes I think about how much my home is changing without me being around to see it anymore. Next time I get out there, I probably won’t recognize it at all.
The politics of the Senate, republicanism vs. patrician “dictatorship”, is pretty interesting stuff in itself. I want to see a whole movie of just that.
Equation: Epic= Lots of extras X large orchestral score.
Aw…little dead baby grave.
No, seriously, the inner politics of the Roman Senate (Caesar’s rise to power against “Republican corruption”) is so far my favorite part of the whole movie.
The scene where Spartacus lays out Olivier’s plans against the gladiator army is pretty cool. He sees the defeat before them but knows that he has to play right into the hands of Crassius.
The “big speech” from Spartacus to his army before they march on Rome is pure hokeyness in its worst way. It sounds like it was written for John Wayne’s Alamo.
Here we are, the big battle: The initial face-off is pretty good. Braveheart owes a lot to this. It must suck being in the gladiator army and just seeing wave after wave of Roman soldiers coming up over that hill. Like, “Holy shit, we’re screwed.”
Watching the formations of troops changing and aligning in new groupings is like watching a weird game of football. Half expect Roman cheerleaders on the sidelines and giant foam fingers.
Oh man, here comes the army of Pompeii rolling down the hill like, I don’t know….lava or something.Now the slaves are done for!
Great shot of the field of battle afterward. A sea of corpses as Crassius walks the field of dead. Kubrick was ~~a pacifist~~ a great satirist of man’s impulse to destroy and he did an amazing job of showing the horrors of battle in a few of his movies. This shot is striking.
“I’m Spartacus!” “I’m Spartacus!” Take that, Rome! (I bet the guy who built the crucifixes saw this and flipped out at all the work he was about to do.)
Lining up the streets with the dead of war is a long time tradition that lasted at least until the British lined the roads of Ireland with the heads of the dead. Like a bunch of jerks.
The scenes of Ustinov & Laughton are so good.These guys together in a great British comedy would’ve been stellar. Just quipping at each other.
Again, the Roman Senate is brilliant. Crassius sparing Peter Ustinov to act as Republican puppet for the new dictatorship is a genius move. Will he make the speech he’s supposed to? Oh, man. Don’t do it, Poirot!
Ego= Okay, I killed your husband, the father of your baby, in battle, but I’m sure you’ll get over it soon and love me because I have money.
“He wasn’t a God, he was a simple man.” Well, now we’re in Jesus-ville. Just crucify him and get it over with.
“Could we have won, Spartacus?” “We won just by fighting.” Inspiring, but also a very positive “no.”
It’s weird, by the end of the movie, Kirk Douglas is looking less “made of granite”, more “made of dried play-doh.”
I always thought this movie ended with the “I’m Spartacus”/crucify all the slaves bit. Didn’t realize it just kept going on.
Oh man. Spartacus just killed Antinitus. “Go to sleep.”
“He’ll come back. He’ll come back and he’ll be millions.”
“There’s no weeping in this house. Go away.” Charles Laughton is really the best.
“Here’s your son, Spartacus, he’s free. He’s free.” Spartacus wins.
Weirdly romantic: “My love, my life, please die.”

I think the only other Kubrick movie I need to see now is Paths of Glory and I’m done with all the Kubrick movies.

It is Christmas Eve and, according to NORAD, Santa is over Joplin, Missouri. Which is nice because they had a hell of a year.

My Christmas Eve was spent in the company of The Girl’s™ family having a great dinner, exchanging gifts and watching the shenanigans involved in playing Just Dance 3 on the Wii.

My Christmas day is going to be spent watching a couple of my newly-gifted-to-me BluRays (Caddyshack (score!) and Fight Club) and reading more of Philip F. Gura’s American Transcendentalism (which is freakin’ great,btw). It’s going to be interesting to go back and see if I have the same reaction to Fight Club after not having viewed for 10 years or if I’ll walk away with a new appreciation for it. Either way, it was a gift, I appreciate the thought, and will watch it again to honor the spirit it was given in.

Oh, and playing with my new gift to myself, a Kindle. (I feel the cold, murderous stare of every bound volume in my bookshelves) and drinking hot cocoa.

Merry Christmas everyone.

House of Uppity

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