Magic Happens Here, in Miami

What is the coolest city on the planet? It's not Las Vegas, it's not San Francisco or L.A. and it's not New York. The coolest city in movies and TV is and always will be Miami, Florida. From Miami Vice to Scarface to CSI to Dexter, Miami is and has been writing the book on edgy cool. Let's recount some of Miami's coolness:

With this much cool, Magic Happens here

• It's where Jim Morrison got arrested for the 60's / 70's most legendary on-stage bad behavior.
• It's where Art Deco came to life - it is the pastels capital of the world.
• It's where the CIA has their own university.
• It's one of the few places where an alligator can walk into your backyard and eat your poodle. 
• It's where (all of) Latin America meets the US.
• It's the only US city that has its own gran prix in the downtown.
• It's where Al Capone really got caught.
• It's built on a swamp and even that is cool.
• It's where cigar boats were born (for bootlegging).
• It's actually inside of the Bermuda triangle. 
• It's where style comes to get hot.
• It's where J-lo dumped Marc Antony
• It's where Madonna did something - we're not sure - but she does live there

So, it's no surprise that another great show has built its foundation atop Miami's shifting sands. Magic City is in its second season on Starz and has proven that it has both style and substance. The show is set in the late fifties / early sixties with the Cuban revolution and Kennedys as a backdrop. It's a little like Madmen on the beach but that would not be giving it enough credit. For movie fans, it's got some interesting little nuggets, such as two of the cast members who were in the original Godfather movie and Danny Huston - grandson of the legendary director John Huston. It's got more sex (or at least as much) as Masters of Sex. It's got Olga Kurylenko who is beyond hot and a great actress to boot. It's got father against son - and slew of subplots to keep us busy for several seasons at least.

Season 2 is building an arc - the cool versus the bad...

And it's got style...

The show revolves a mythical Miami Beach hotel - something on the scale of the Fontainebleau. These hotels hosted some of the nation's first television variety series - and Miami was the place to go (before Orlando became Florida's tourist mecca) - an elite vacation destination but also a long-time haunt for the mob. It makes the perfect setting for this troubled tale of family breaking apart as ambition runs headlong into corruption. It is the end of an era and the beginning of the modern age - all wrapped together. Mitch Glazer has realized a unique vision and it is almost totally due to the mystery that is Miami.



Copyright 2013, Raving Reviews

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What is Camelot?

What is Camelot? Is it an idea or a shining castle on the hillside - is it a movie or a Starz series or perhaps a Monty Python skit? Camelot is a central theme of the Arthur legend - it is that place from which a just ruler becomes one with the land and brings peace and prosperity to the people. Camelot is where there is a grand conference room with a giant round table wherein all the knights of the realm can meet and discuss the virtues of being chivalrous.  

Richard Harris had some ideas about Camelot...

The story of Arthur seems ingrained in our culture for some reason - we just can't help returning to it. Arthur is the royal Robin Hood - a man who brings justice along with his god-given or Merlin-procured birthright. Last year Starz decide to reignite the Arthur legend once more, unfortunately despite a promising start the series wasn't picked up for a second season. Will Arthur return on Starz again ? Will a young squire locate the sword and pull it from the stone once more to become king? Will Guinevere play Yoko to the Round Table Knights again - leading them all into ruin?

The Stars of Starz shortlived series, Camelot

Maybe it is a silly tale, perhaps the Python boys got it right. Can it be retold without conjuring visions of the profoundly bad First Knight from the early 90's or the hopelessly outdated broadway musical from the 1960's? Most readers don't recall that Camelot was 'the' show on Broadway when JFK became President and partly for that reason the popular media began referring to the White House as Camelot (and like Arthur, Kennedy strayed from his queen). 

Who knew that this month had such unique powers

We like the Starz series Camelot with two major exceptions. First, the actor Arthur (Jamie Campbell Bower) was miscast. Bower appears far too feminine and looks hopelessly childlike (and often downright goofy). It strains the whole credibility of the show with him at the helm. The second major issue was the lack of budget. It seems as though Starz had directed all their resources into buying new loincloths for slaves on Spartacus. Camelot deserves some epic touches, a bit of grandeur. 

There was one movie which did give Camelot and the Arthur legend the epic setting it deserved and while it was relatively low budget it managed to hide that fact cleverly. We're talking about John Boorman's classic, Excalibur.  

Excalibur had an Arthur we could believe in, an unforgettable Merlin and the sexiest Morgana ever. It even had Liam Neeson in one of his first movies as the knight who accuses Guinevere of lusting after Lancelot. Granted, both Ralph Fiennes and Eva Green provide fantastic performances as Merlin and Morgana in the Starz version of Camelot, but it's hard to compete with the 1981 classic. Some of you might be saying, "everyone in the 1981 film was wearing armor the whole time, armor that hadn't been invented yet, they even wore it while having sex." So maybe they took safe sex too far in the 80's - Excalibur was still a great show.

Starz might want to try Camelot again, but this time add some more pizzazz and some armor and get rid of Denis the Menace as Arthur and pick a real king. One of the reasons that the show wasn't picked up was because Bower was busy working both Breaking Dawn films. That should be evidence enough that is not the chosen one...

Copyright 2012 - Raving Reviews - All Rights Reserved

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The Spartacus Awards

The tale of Spartacus and his slave rebellion against Rome never seems to get old. The 1963 version of the movie about him propelled Kirk Douglas into super-stardom. The new Starz series (there are about 4 of them now) about Spartacus have decided to take a unique approach to telling the tale however; one that focuses on the shock and awe of life in Rome circa 75 B.C. Starz has taken the movie Gladiator, added some 300 and mixed in some of HBO's Rome for good measure. All this has been used to "spice up" the old story a bit. Well, it is so spicy we're thinking that it has broken new ground in a number areas for television (even for a cable network). For that reason, we've decided to put together an awards tribute for these shows - it's called the Spartacus Awards because we're pretty sure that they're aren't many other shows that could even compete in these categories...

The new Spartacus (the original actor from season 1 passed away)

Our award categories are as follows:

• Best Blood Gushers - Slow-mo shots of blood gushing out of wounds (mainly inflicted by Spartacus).
• Best Blood Splattering - It's almost poetic the way they do it on this show; there's a lot of love put into it. 
• Best Sword Through the Head - (actually The Walking Dead season 3 could compete in this category if we included machetes, samurai swords and garden tools) 
• Most Gratuitous use of Male Frontal Nudity - And the bigger the better seems to be their motto.
• Most Annoying use of Accurate Latin Grammar - So, Latin doesn't use definite or indefinite articles (the for example) - ok we get it already.
• Best Roman Orgies - No contest here.
• Most creative use of the words Cock and Cunt - The shows must have a rule that one or both words are used several times in every episode. It can be quite challenging to find ways to insert this language into nearly any type of scene. 
• Best Entrail Spilling - And we thought the Japanese and King Henry VIII had this market cornered...
• Best Gladiator Music - We've included an example below. 
• Least use of Wardrobe - The Spartacus series certainly qualifies as Green. There must be relatively little laundry to do given the sparse amount of attire employed.
• Most evil Roman Bitches - There's several who jockey from season to season for the top spot.
• Best Trident Impaling - The groin area is especially popular.
• Best Slave Humping - It's seems as though this is all the Romans ever did.
• Best Whorehouse Massacre - Worthy of its own movie.

Spartacus Vengeance - a new lead but lot's of the same action

Best Gladiator Music award

Copyright 2012 - Raving Reviews - All Rights Reserved

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