{"id":10974,"date":"2010-02-05T15:26:30","date_gmt":"2010-02-05T23:26:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leogrin.com\/CimmerianBlog\/?p=10974"},"modified":"2010-02-05T22:28:16","modified_gmt":"2010-02-06T06:28:16","slug":"blood-and-sand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/leogrin.com\/CimmerianBlog\/blood-and-sand\/","title":{"rendered":"Blood and Sand"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a rel=\"attachment wp-att-10977\" href=\"http:\/\/leogrin.com\/CimmerianBlog\/?attachment_id=10977\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-10977\" title=\"tv_spartacus_blood_and_sand03\" src=\"http:\/\/leogrin.com\/CimmerianBlog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/02\/tv_spartacus_blood_and_sand03-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"http:\/\/leogrin.com\/CimmerianBlog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/02\/tv_spartacus_blood_and_sand03-300x225.jpg 300w, http:\/\/leogrin.com\/CimmerianBlog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/02\/tv_spartacus_blood_and_sand03-150x112.jpg 150w, http:\/\/leogrin.com\/CimmerianBlog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/02\/tv_spartacus_blood_and_sand03-1024x768.jpg 1024w, http:\/\/leogrin.com\/CimmerianBlog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/02\/tv_spartacus_blood_and_sand03.jpg 1600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Any of you been watching Starz\u2019s series, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.starz.com\/originals\/spartacus\">Spartacus: Blood and Sand<\/a>?<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s kind of rekindled my interest in the man, and I\u2019m reading Howard Fast\u2019s novel and wondering what I did with my copy of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0054331\/\">1960 Kirk Douglas movie <\/a>based on that book.<\/p>\n<p>As some of you know, Howard was familiar with the story of Spartacus. In his poem, \u201c<em>A Son of Spartacus<\/em>\u201d he opens with a line from Reverend Elijah Kellogg\u2019s \u201cSpartacus to the Gladiators\u201d speech. In <strong>Almuric <\/strong>you can also hear the echoes of this speech.<\/p>\n<p>As someone who grew up in the age of the Comics Code, when censors suppressed Captain Kirk every time he tried to open-mouth kiss an alien girl, it\u2019s kind of startling how much nudity, sex, violence, gore and profanity they cram into each episode. The storyline is interesting, though they\u2019ve totally recreated Spartacus\u2019s origin from previous versions. Although historians differ, it seems their version is more accurate than Fast\u2019s, who has him born into slavery.<\/p>\n<p>Owner of the gladiator school Batiatus is played by John Hannah, from the <strong>Mummy<\/strong> movies, and former warrior princess Lucy Loveless plays his scheming sexy wife. Those who want to see Xena naked are prettty much in luck. The other members of the cast are unknown to me, except for Peter Mensah, who was in <strong>300<\/strong> and <strong>Hidalgo<\/strong>. He plays Batiataus\u2019 trainer.<br \/>\nBut the acting is good.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking of <strong>300<\/strong>, it seems every fight is inspired by the <strong>300<\/strong> style; slow\/stop\/fast followed by a burst of blood, even if the blow struck would not really have produced much blood. It\u2019s like they think <strong>300<\/strong> is the best movie <em>ever<\/em>. But I think it\u2019s an enjoyable series so far,\u00a0though I feel like a decadent Roman while watching it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Any of you been watching Starz\u2019s series, Spartacus: Blood and Sand? It\u2019s kind of rekindled my interest in the man, and I\u2019m reading Howard Fast\u2019s novel and wondering what I did with my copy of the 1960 Kirk Douglas movie based on that book. As some of you know, Howard was familiar with the story [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,76],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film","category-history-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/leogrin.com\/CimmerianBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/leogrin.com\/CimmerianBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/leogrin.com\/CimmerianBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/leogrin.com\/CimmerianBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/leogrin.com\/CimmerianBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10974"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/leogrin.com\/CimmerianBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10974\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10981,"href":"http:\/\/leogrin.com\/CimmerianBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10974\/revisions\/10981"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/leogrin.com\/CimmerianBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/leogrin.com\/CimmerianBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/leogrin.com\/CimmerianBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}