April 17, 2007

Out of the Ashes...

I've visited the breathtaking Getty Villa in Malibu twice in the past two months. Last week, I took a fascinating "architecture and gardens" tour which described how the Romans would have lived on an estate such as this. (The building is modeled after the Villa de Papyri, the country home of Julius Caesar's father-in-law in Herculaneum, which as we all know, was destroyed in the catastrophic eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 A.D.)

The other location decimated in that disaster, — Pompeii — is the subject of Roman Polanksi's latest film, a $130 million dollar epic account of that city's horrific burial under molten lava and volcanic ash. According to Dark Horizons, set designer Allan Starski visited the real Pompeii archaological site last month, and pre-production is underway. Sounds like it will be engrossing, albeit upsetting to watch, I'm sure. -- Amy

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