Word: nero
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Long before Russell Crowe helped reignite filmgoers' enthusiasm for Roman epics, Sir Peter Ustinov, now 81, was king of the genre. He fiddled as Nero while Rome burned in Quo Vadis? (1951) and won the first of his two Academy Awards in 1960 for a supporting role in Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus. "When I was in Rome for the 50th anniversary of Quo Vadis?, the mayor asked me to say a few words in Italian," Ustinov recalls. "I reminded him I was Nero, who only spoke Latin." The story captures the wit and erudition for which Ustinov - who was knighted...
...These days Nero can't help but reflect on the similarities between ancient Rome and modern America. "We had Pax Romana, now there's Pax Americana," Ustinov says. "The empires are very close to each other - the eagle, the legions, the respect for the flag. That's why Americans make the best Roman films." American hegemony is just one of a multitude of topics on which Ustinov is happy to expound. The British-born son of a French mother and a half-German, half-Russian father (who had an Ethiopian grandmother to boot), his cosmopolitan origins and a lifetime...
...fullest of these is the Technicolor spectacle called Revelation. The book is usually attributed to John of Patmos and dated around A.D. 95. John was responding to the horrific persecution of early Christians under the Roman emperor Nero. (Among other things, he had them coated with pitch and burned alive in his gardens.) The book incorporates the extravagantly harsh yet finally hopeful scenarios now familiar to believers: the earthquakes and plagues, the Four Horsemen and Seven Seals, the battle against the Antichrist, Christ's 1,000-year earthly rule of peace and righteousness (called the Millennium). And lyrically, these lines...
...opposition party of the country, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which was in the forefront of the movement to destroy the mosque built, it said, where the revered Hindu god Rama was born. The Congress Prime Minister at the time, P.V. Narasimha Rao, in a modern variation of the Nero legend, slept while the mosque was being destroyed. Even his Cabinet colleagues were not allowed to disturb his sleep, according to numerous statements made by them (after he lost power). Rao rationalized his abdication of responsibility with Machiavellian rationale. The BJP was committing suicide, he argued. Why interfere...
...stories are in what is called the "slash" category, describing Harry's heretofore unpublicized gay liaisons in stories such as Night of the Round Table. Harry is one of the most popular protagonists in this underground literary form, although he's not alone. (Others include Don Quixote, Ben Hur, Nero Wolfe and, less imaginatively, Frank and Joe Hardy.) Warner Bros. has no plans to include this new side of Harry in its sequels. (Although the Batman franchise could use some fresh character issues.) The whole concept gives Notebook pause on a particular point: what has Hagrid been doing out there...