{"id":11737,"date":"2010-12-20T22:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-12-20T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/2010\/12\/20\/spartacus-blood-and-sand-part-2\/"},"modified":"2010-12-21T07:21:32","modified_gmt":"2010-12-20T23:21:32","slug":"spartacus-blood-and-sand-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/2010\/12\/20\/spartacus-blood-and-sand-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Spartacus: Blood and Sand – Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

The actor performances pique my interest, because as visually spectacular as Gladiator<\/em> was and that Russell Crowe did a great number as the brooding Maximus, I never quite got got past the disbelief that these were Hollywood bigwigs playacting in a sword and sandals epic. And the less said about the buffed up Gerald Butler trying to pass himself off as King Leonidas in 300<\/em>, the better. Spartacus<\/em> on the other hand oozes with immersion, and its entire package \u2013 each frame of the series lovingly shot, enhanced and looking as though it\u2019s popping out of a beautifully drawn graphic novel, the costumes, and the sets \u2013 all drew me right in over the series\u2019 13 hours.<\/p>\n

Thankfully too, the story doesn\u2019t take a back seat. Each character is believably drawn with their individual strengths, motivations and weaknesses \u2013 even the supposed \u2018hero\u2019 character in Spartacus. Andy Whitfield\u2019s Spartacus is far from a saint and he does nasty things when he needs to, but you won\u2019t ever for a moment not feel for his plight. Heck; the same goes for just about every one of the series\u2019 characters. Even the supposed thugs and bullies present shades of grey. No one character is really evil, but neither is any person a saint. Each person is well, just human and reacting in exactly the same way we would if we were in their sandals 2000 years ago.<\/p>\n

Moreover, while the series is ostensibly centered largely on its title character, none of the supporting cast are throwaways. With the exception of John Hannah whom I recognized from his turn in the three Mummy <\/em>films with Brandon Fraser, and Lucy Lawless from the recently concluded Battlestar Galactica<\/em> series and they both star as as ludus\u2019 master and mistress, the rest of the cast are relative unknowns, but all turn in marvelous performances.<\/p>\n

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The series also includes many other subplots that do a great job at explaining the times and situations of the Roman empire. The class divides, the decadence, and the political play between persons of common birth but yet yearning higher office.<\/p>\n

On the other hand; the series is not going to sit well with every viewer. When I said that there\u2019s a lot of adult content, I really meant it! I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever seen a mainstream TV series with this much gore, violence, homosexuality, both male and female nudity and foul language. And funnily, if you go with historical accounts passed down from time in memoria, you can\u2019t fault the series for not trying to be faithful to that time period. There was<\/em> a lot of foul language used (if in Latin back then), a different regard for clothing, and people in the gladiatorial arena do get killed in unkind fashion. But you\u2019re gonna have to watch this series with a lot of tolerance for this sort of thing. I think myself already pretty saturated with these things, but even the first episode of Spartacus <\/em>here made me squirm a little even. It\u2019s that extreme.<\/p>\n

All said and done; I enjoyed Spartacus: Blood and Sand<\/em>. It\u2019s not for everyone; certainly not for minors, and for people who have issues with bad language, nudity and more adult themes than you can shake out of a big trash bag. But if you can get past all that, there\u2019s a deeply compelling story in this series \u2013 one that even Ling I think enjoyed.<\/p>\n

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The actor performances pique my interest, because as visually spectacular as Gladiator was and that Russell Crowe did a great number as the brooding Maximus, I never quite got got past the disbelief that these were Hollywood bigwigs playacting in<\/p>\n

Read More Spartacus: Blood and Sand – Part 2<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11737","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-at-home","category-entertainment","wpcat-6-id","wpcat-10-id"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11737"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11737\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}