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revdorothyl at 05:04pm on 22/02/2005 under movie reviews
revdorothyl at 05:04pm on 22/02/2005 under movie reviewsI finally watched the tape my sister had sent me in her Valentine's Day C.A.R.E. package while I was playing Scrabble last night, and I found "Age of Treason" a delightfully guilty pleasure.
Though the flick wasn't based on the plot of any of the Lindsey Davis novels as far as I could tell, Bryan Brown made an endearingly scruffy and irreverent Marcus Didius Falco, private "finder" of lost persons and objects in the first century Rome of the Emperor Vespasian.
Throw in Amanda Pays (veteran of a couple of my favorite too-short-lived SF series in the 1980s, Max Headroom and The Flash) as the patrician Helena Justina, a blond Germanic body-builder-type (Matthias Hues) as the virginal gladiator "Justus" (along for both eye candy and comic relief), Sophie Okonedo (currently appearing in "Hotel Rwanda" in a definitely non-comic role) as Falco's friend and verbal sparring partner Niobe, Art Malik playing yet another sociopathic villain, and another imported fertility cult to justify several acerbic asides about the appeal of religion, and you have a ridiculous but enjoyable romp which honors the spirit (though not the letter) of the Davis novels.
Sis apparently taped "Age of Treason" off of "Multiplex" (one of the many basic cable movie channels that are excluded from the horrifically over-priced basic package here in Nashville -- not that I'm resentful, or anything!) within the last year or two, but the internet movie database lists it as an American made-for-TV production from 1993.
Worth a look, if you find this in your cable guide or spot it on the video rental shelves.
Meanwhile, on a completely different subject, HURRAY!, my DVD's of the new English dubs of Hayao Miyazaki's "Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind" and "Porco Rosso" finally arrived from Amazon today! And not quite six months after they were originally supposed to be issued, so that's practically on time for the release of English-language versions of Studio Ghibli classics. I've only seen these two films previously in the original Japanese (which I neither speak nor understand), so I feel like it's my birthday all over again (without the irritating getting older part!).
And I can finally retire my VHS copy of "Warriors of the Wind", the much-despised cut-down English dub of "Nausicaa" from the 1980s -- without which I might never have fallen in love with the work of Miyazaki in the first place, so it's not like I'm going to chuck it out, or anything. But now I can keep it as merely a piece of memorabilia, an historical oddity to chuckle over, rather than as my only window (warped and smudged as it was) into the world of Miyazaki's first Studio Ghibli feature.
Though the flick wasn't based on the plot of any of the Lindsey Davis novels as far as I could tell, Bryan Brown made an endearingly scruffy and irreverent Marcus Didius Falco, private "finder" of lost persons and objects in the first century Rome of the Emperor Vespasian.
Throw in Amanda Pays (veteran of a couple of my favorite too-short-lived SF series in the 1980s, Max Headroom and The Flash) as the patrician Helena Justina, a blond Germanic body-builder-type (Matthias Hues) as the virginal gladiator "Justus" (along for both eye candy and comic relief), Sophie Okonedo (currently appearing in "Hotel Rwanda" in a definitely non-comic role) as Falco's friend and verbal sparring partner Niobe, Art Malik playing yet another sociopathic villain, and another imported fertility cult to justify several acerbic asides about the appeal of religion, and you have a ridiculous but enjoyable romp which honors the spirit (though not the letter) of the Davis novels.
Sis apparently taped "Age of Treason" off of "Multiplex" (one of the many basic cable movie channels that are excluded from the horrifically over-priced basic package here in Nashville -- not that I'm resentful, or anything!) within the last year or two, but the internet movie database lists it as an American made-for-TV production from 1993.
Worth a look, if you find this in your cable guide or spot it on the video rental shelves.
Meanwhile, on a completely different subject, HURRAY!, my DVD's of the new English dubs of Hayao Miyazaki's "Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind" and "Porco Rosso" finally arrived from Amazon today! And not quite six months after they were originally supposed to be issued, so that's practically on time for the release of English-language versions of Studio Ghibli classics. I've only seen these two films previously in the original Japanese (which I neither speak nor understand), so I feel like it's my birthday all over again (without the irritating getting older part!).
And I can finally retire my VHS copy of "Warriors of the Wind", the much-despised cut-down English dub of "Nausicaa" from the 1980s -- without which I might never have fallen in love with the work of Miyazaki in the first place, so it's not like I'm going to chuck it out, or anything. But now I can keep it as merely a piece of memorabilia, an historical oddity to chuckle over, rather than as my only window (warped and smudged as it was) into the world of Miyazaki's first Studio Ghibli feature.
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