Star Trek exists as what Daniel Bernardi calls a ‘mega-text’, a group of televisual, filmic, literary, auditory, and other ‘texts’ that all share a relatively cohesive fictional universe. The amount … Read More
Ben Greet: Classics in Star Trek
Introducing the ‘Classical World New Zealand’ Project
by Anastasia Bakogianni, Lecturer in Classical Studies, Massey University (Auckland campus) How have New Zealanders received the classical world? How have they adapted and transformed it for use in their own … Read More
Anastasia Bakogianni: Between Tradition and Creativity – Modern Greek Cinematic Receptions of the Classical World
How can ancient tragedy be transplanted into the modern medium of film? What are some of the obstacles filmmakers have to overcome when they attempt to transform an ancient theatrical … Read More
Kim Shahabudin: Simply the best? Or not so simply…
A recent post on a Facebook Group asked what the “best” film versions of the Iliad, Odyssey and Aeneid were. BIG QUESTION, was my immediate reaction. After all, how do … Read More
Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones: The Epic World of Norma Desmond – An Alternative Guide to Watching Hollywood Epics – Part 2
As I showed in Part 1 of this post, Sunset Boulevard is a film saturated in allusions to an earlier age of filmmaking, but it is in the film’s extraordinary … Read More
Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones: The Epic World of Norma Desmond – An Alternative Guide to Watching Hollywood Epics – Part 1
At the moment I’m writing a book. It is called Designs on the Past: How Hollywood Created the Ancient World. It is all about movie-making in Hollywood and movie-watching in … Read More
Sasha-Mae Eccleston: Doing the Right Thing in Chi-Raq (2015)
Like the iconic song solicited for it, Spike Lee’s film Do The Right Thing (1989)(hereafter, DRT), highlights the competing voices and values underlying the banal term ‘community’. Using a heat-wave … Read More
Amanda Potter: Putting Audience Reception Centre Stage in Classical Reception Studies
From a very young age I was fascinated by all things ancient Roman and Greek, fuelled by my consumption of films made before I was born like Ben Hur (1959) … Read More
Clytemnestra in your living room? Greek Tragedy on the Small Screen
It’s not often that the ancient Greek adulteress and murderer graces the cover of the Radio Times – still less often does she wear a costume that combines Minoan art … Read More
Gideon Nisbet: On not getting round to watching the 2016 Ben-Hur
I didn’t see Timur Bekmambetov’s Ben-Hur when it was at the cinemas (not that it hung around long). Meant to; would probably have had fun; just never got around to … Read More