Paul Cartledge's latest book exploring the historical accuracy of Oliver Stone's film "Alexander" and reasons for its less than enthusiastic reception at the box office sounds really interesting. I was so anxious to see the film and so disappointed with the result that it would be interesting to read why others were equally disillusioned. I actually found the critics who harped on such things as Colin Ferrell's bleach job to be just so uninformed they couldn't critique the film from a historical perspective (and too lazy to do any research). Although there were historical inaccuracies, I just found the pacing of the film way too slow - especially the long droning voice over by Anthony Hopkins (and I personally normally like Anthony Hopkins). Alexander was an exciting, charismatic personality and I felt the editing of the final cut was just poorly done or at least not done by someone with the same vision of Alexander as I had developed after reading the trilogy of novels written by Mary Renault (Fire From Heaven, The Persian Boy and Funeral Games) and the ancient biography by Appian. Stone released a director's cut but what I would really like is a DVD of digital video of the movie that could be edited into a personal cut of the movie then shared on Hulu or another site that does not have a video length limit. Maybe the studio could sponsor a contest for "Best Cut of Alexander" or have categories like "Best Cut of Alexander from a Persian Viewpoint", etc.
"The charismatic Alexander the Great of Macedon (356–323 B.C.E.) was one of the most successful military commanders in history, conquering Asia Minor, Egypt, Persia, central Asia, and the lands beyond as far as Pakistan and India. Alexander has been, over the course of two millennia since his death at the age of thirty-two, the central figure in histories, legends, songs, novels, biographies, and, most recently, films. In 2004 director Oliver Stone’s epic film
Alexander generated a renewed interest in Alexander the Great and his companions, surroundings, and accomplishments, but the critical response to the film offers a fascinating lesson in the contentious dialogue between historiography and modern entertainment.
This volume brings together an intriguing mix of leading scholars in Macedonian and Greek history, Persian culture, film studies, classical literature, and archaeology—including some who were advisors for the film—and includes an afterword by Oliver Stone discussing the challenges he faced in putting Alexander’s life on the big screen. The contributors scrutinize Stone’s project from its inception and design to its production and reception, considering such questions as: Can a film about Alexander (and similar figures from history) be both entertaining and historically sound? How do the goals of screenwriters and directors differ from those of historians? How do Alexander’s personal relationships—with his mother Olympias, his wife Roxane, his lover Hephaistion, and others—affect modern perceptions of Alexander? Several of the contributors also explore reasons behind the film’s tepid response at the box office and subsequent controversies. "
- Product Description, Amazon
"The relation between the visual and the verbal spheres has been much contested in recent years, from laments about the 'logocentricism' of the academy to the heralding of the 'pictorial turn' of the multimedia age. This lavishly illustrated book recontextualises these debates through the historical lens of Greek and Roman antiquity. Dr Squire shows how modern Western concepts of 'words' and 'pictures' derive from a post-Reformation tradition of theology and aesthetics. Where modern critics assume a bipartite separation between images and texts, classical antiquity toyed with a more playful and engaged relation between the two. By using the ancient world to rethink our own ideologies of the visual and the verbal, this interdisciplinary book brings together classics and art history, as well as a sustained reflection on their historiography: the result is a new and explosive cultural history of Western visual thinking." - Product Description, Amazon.com
"In A.D. 381, Theodosius, emperor of the eastern Roman empire, issued a decree in which all his subjects were required to subscribe to a belief in the Trinity of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This edict defined Christian orthodoxy and brought to an end a lively and wide-ranging debate about the nature of God; all other interpretations were now declared heretical. It was the first time in a thousand years of Greco-Roman civilization free thought was unambiguously suppressed. Why has Theodosius's revolution been airbrushed from the historical record? In this groundbreaking book, acclaimed historian Charles Freeman argues that Theodosius's edict and the subsequent suppression of paganism not only brought an end to the diversity of religious and philosophical beliefs throughout the empire, but created numerous theological problems for the Church, which have remained unsolved. The year A.D. 381, as Freeman puts it, was "a turning point which time forgot."
