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Iliad fragment found in Roman-era mummy

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Re: Iliad fragment found in Roman-era mummy

#201
post #188
post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I think that Nolan sells himself (The online worship can hardly all be organic) as an authentic, technical director interested in accurate physical props. I'm not a huge Nolan-discourse-insider, but that seems like a pretty bizarre reputation to have for someone who's famous for directing three Batman movies, Inception, Interstellar and Tenet? Is this reputation just because of Oppenheimer? I haven't seen Dunkirk (a…

Well, interstellar has also some nerd stuff in it. If I remember correctly Kip Thorne did physics consulting on the movie and they even use a simulation running on a cluster to visualize the black hole physically correct. They could have used some arbitrary CGI…but no, they wanted it accurate according to science. https://arxiv.org/abs/1502.03808

And yet the rest of the movie runs on movie logic, enough so that every physicist I know rolls their eyes at it. It gives me the vibe of the "IFLS" crowd, not anyone who actually understands science.

Re: Iliad fragment found in Roman-era mummy

#202
post #102

>>If Christopher Nolan’s coming adaptation of the Odyssey happens to do well enough to get Hollywood back on its feet, A typical laconic reply works here: "If"

It looks pretty shonky. I dont care about the casting. But the costumes look like ass (One of the extras was saying he had fit into the same armor for a low budget sword and sandal film), they are using a viking longboat as a greek ship (have already seen half a dozen experts spitting chips over the difference in boat design). I just cant bring myself to care about the film. "Oh its a fantasy film" its set in a histo…

"I wouldnt watch a WW2 Zombie movie if the nazi zombies were wearing viking armor driving an Abrams tank either."

OK, so you didn't watch Kung Fury?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kung_Fury

Re: Iliad fragment found in Roman-era mummy

#203

Unearthed from a 1,600-year-old Roman-era tomb That's c. 400 AD. Closer to today, than to the time of King Tut...and King Tut was closer to the TFA mummy than to the First Dynasty. Ancient Egypt is really really old. The Great pyramid was 3000 years old at the time of the TFA mummy. The TFA mummy is about equidistant between today and the events of the Iliad and the book was already more than 1000 years old in 400 CE…

Pedantic side note maybe and sorry about that, but I found disturbing to see multiple "the TFA", where I guess TFA stand for "the fine article", so "the the fine article"? If it’s about brevity, "the peg" is just as short and mean in journalism parlance "A topic of interest, such as an ongoing event or an anniversary, around which various features can be developed."

I don’t think you’re reclaiming “peg”. Lost cause.

Re: Iliad fragment found in Roman-era mummy

#205
post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

We've already accepted a lot of non-Greek casting, and always have. Movies like Troy are filled with people of German, English, Scandinavian whatever heritage, same here with The Odyssey. I think they get a pass because we see Greek history as a shared western history, even though it's about as accurate as a black person in those roles. So I think for a lot of people, when they see complaints about black actors playi…

I don't know about what Americans think, but, as a Greek, the whole "whiteness" thing is an American social construct. There aren't whites and blacks in Greece, mostly because we don't have enough black people here to have a divide.

As far as I'm concerned, all your casting is wrong, it's not like Brad Pitt in Troy looks anything like a Greek person. Casting black people goes even farther, but it's just a matter of degree.

It does make sense, these are American movies, they're going to cast Americans, and the whole race issue is about who gets to star in them. There aren't enough Greek people in Hollywood to make a fuss about representation, so they don't get representation. It is what it is, but let's not pretend it's about accuracy or faithfulness to the original material, it's just about less racially biased casting.

Re: Iliad fragment found in Roman-era mummy

#206
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When a non-trans person stars in a film, nobody calls it a 'straight-cis' ideological hit piece.

You can't have a 1.55m woman play the greatest Greek hero of all time. It's an insult to Greek culture. If Sydney Sweeney played Martin Luther King it would be equally insulting.

A big part of Achilles' story in the Illiad is that he was hidden among a group of princesses, and that Odysseus had to use a trick to figure out which of the princesses he was. So, even though in other places he is described as quite manly, it also makes sense to portray him as having more feminine features if referencing this part of the canon.

I'd also note that Elliott Page is, of course, not a woman.

Re: Iliad fragment found in Roman-era mummy

#207

> the fragment contains lines from Book 2’s epic “catalogue of ships,” which lists all the vessels the Achaean army sends off to Troy It's been about 30 years since I've read The Iliad, but I remember that chapter as the worst part of the book. Just pages upon pages of names and where they came from. I wonder what significance it held for the buried individual to have been specifically included so.

People loved that damn catalogue enough to be buried with it! I guess tastes have changed.

Re: Iliad fragment found in Roman-era mummy

#208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people kind of merge the kingdoms together, while every kingdom is unique in both the culture and, say, external influence. And the late period is quite long as well. There is a very strong connection between periods, of course. But 2500+ years of ancient egypt is a very long damn time. All of our modern history is, say, 3k years, starting with greeks, early chinese , india and all. But egypt to me is like a sta…

> But 2500+ years of ancient egypt is a very long damn time. To put that in perspective, consider how long 100 years ago feels.. not in technological terms, but in human perception of time: The USA was founded 250~ years ago. Try to recall your own life from 20, 40, 50 years ago.. it's a literal lifetime. Most people only meet people as far back as their grandparents, just 2 generations back. Great-grandparents and t…

> To put that in perspective

Star Wars debuted 37 years after World War II

Star Wars debuted 49 years from now

(Now I feel really old)

Re: Iliad fragment found in Roman-era mummy

#209
post #188
post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I think that Nolan sells himself (The online worship can hardly all be organic) as an authentic, technical director interested in accurate physical props. I'm not a huge Nolan-discourse-insider, but that seems like a pretty bizarre reputation to have for someone who's famous for directing three Batman movies, Inception, Interstellar and Tenet? Is this reputation just because of Oppenheimer? I haven't seen Dunkirk (a…

Well, interstellar has also some nerd stuff in it. If I remember correctly Kip Thorne did physics consulting on the movie and they even use a simulation running on a cluster to visualize the black hole physically correct. They could have used some arbitrary CGI…but no, they wanted it accurate according to science. https://arxiv.org/abs/1502.03808

Maybe we run in different circles, but I feel like “appreciates scientific accuracy” and “appreciates historical accuracy” are pretty disjoint sets?

Not entirely without overlap, but pretty distinct.

Re: Iliad fragment found in Roman-era mummy

#210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that just like our normal museums now ?

No, the artifacts stayed where they were found. Different concept.

Not the one I'm referring to. Which I just looked up and got the region wrong -- it was in Mesopotamia. It was an actual museum showing ancient artifacts in a building, 2,500 years ago. Some of the things in that museum were an additional 1,500 years old at the time they were on display.

It's a funny story because the modern archeologists who dug it up were very confused by finding objects from different regions and separated by hundreds or thousands of years, all in the same layer.

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