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
Alex McAuley: Resurrecting the War on Terror in Risen (2016)
After languishing in film and television obscurity for several decades, biblical stories have made a remarkable comeback in the past decade or so – thanks in no small part to … Read More
Jo Paul: Was Ben-Hur Really an Epic Fail?
Last month, I kicked off our new film and TV theme with my post on why many recent ancient world films have been so disappointing. Since those musings were prompted … Read More
Jo Paul: Confessions of a Classics Cinephile
One of the reasons why I love working on classical receptions is that there’s always so much new material to get stuck into. While colleagues working on, say, classical literature … Read More
Henry Stead: And My Story Begins in Russia
Recently back from Russia, Henry Stead (Open) tells of some of his experiences in St. Petersburg this summer and reflects on beginning his new research project, Brave New Classics, which investigates the … Read More
Allan Hiscutt: An Unexpected Journey
When I signed up for Reading University’s MA in Ancient Art a few days after retiring from a long career as a forensic scientist, what did I expect? Well, I … Read More