On Thursday, July 14, 2011 at 7:48:00 AM UTC-7, really real wrote:
> With the new cheap blu-ray version of Spartacus available, I thought I
> would watch this epic again. What a treat! The huge battle scene looks
> quite fantastic in high def, especially when we know its down with
> thousands of extras and not computers.
> And what an amazing hodge podge of a movie. It was the most expensive
> Hollywood movie of its time, back in 1960, and with Stanley Kubrick
> directing, it's quite a spectacle and a scene. I read a quote from
> producer/actor Kurt Douglas saying he hoped Kubrick would have a flop
> soon so he would learn hou do compromise. But did Kubrick compromise
> after Barry Lyndon?
> Some of the acting in Spartacus is terrific. Charles Laughton and Peter
> Ustinov are wonderful especially in their scene together. Laurence
> Olivier is good. Kurt Douglas is hammy. John Gavin, as Julius Caesar,
> seems to belong in a different movie. And why do they call him Caesar? I
> thought Caesar was a title, like Czar or Kaiser.
>
> Jean Simmons is gracious and lovely. She too seems to be coming from a
> different movie than one about oppressed slaves thousands of years ago.
> The homosexual subtext in the movie is also a delight, not only with the
> snails and oysters scene, but with all the cute naked statues. And there
> is a scene where Laughton talks about liking women, as if it were wrong
> to like women.
> The political subtext of the movie is also fascinating, with commie
> propaganda lurking throughout. There are lovely scenes of the escaped
> slaves in their camps, working in their paradisaical collective.
> It's fascinating the way Spartacus veers from being an intelligent
> Kubrick movie to a Hollywood schlock movie.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKYNctR98H4