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

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