The Cult of Antinous

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Antinous Mondragone (c.130 AD).

Antinous: the face of the Antique
Main Galleries, Henry Moore Institute, Leeds
Exhibition: 25.05.06 – 27.08.06

The Emperor Hadrian’s young lover was Antinous, a beautiful youth who drowned mysteriously in the Nile before his 20th birthday. The Emperor, in his grief, commissioned busts and statues of his beloved, and as the cult of Antinous spread throughout the Roman Empire, many more were erected by his subjects.

Today Antinous has more sculptures to his name than almost any other figure from classical antiquity. The earliest of these finds were identified by comparison to tiny coin-portraits, each with an identifying legend, so that by the sixteenth century his aquiline nose and full lips were well known. Yet such was his appeal that as more and more heads, busts and statues were unearthed, there was a temptation to call those of any young pretty boy “Antinous”. Into the modern age, archaeologists and scholars have worked studiously to define the corpus of Antinous portraiture, basing their identification primarily on his hairstyle.

Drawing together loans from all over Europe, this is the first exhibition dedicated to Antique sculpture to be held at the Institute and the first in Britain to explore the mythical image of Antinous. As a subject, Antinous works not only to provide a very human way into looking at Antique sculpture, but also as an introduction to some of the thorniest issues surrounding work of this period. Issues of recognition, restoration and re-naming are all present, and to a degree we can deal with these by simply asking: does it look like him?

This exhibition has been selected by Dr Caroline Vout, of the University of Nottingham, and will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue, with essay and entries by Dr Vout, along with extracts from more historical texts.

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Blade Runner DVD

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Blade Runner concept painting by the great Syd Mead.

Several reliable news sources are reporting that Blade Runner is to finally receive a decent DVD release.

In September of 2006, Warner Home Video will release a restored and remastered version of the Blade Runner 1992 Director’s Cut for a special four month limited release, in anticipation of a series of exciting and unprecedented releases of the film in theaters and on DVD.

Following a four month run of the remastered Blade Runner DVD, this disc will be placed on moratorium, by WHV. In 2007, Warner will follow with a limited theatrical run of Blade Runner: The Final Cut, which is being touted as Ridley Scott’s definitive version. Subsequently, there will be a multi-disc Special Edition DVD release which will contain three alternate versions of the film: the original U.S. theatrical cut, the expanded international theatrical cut and the 1992 director’s cut. “Ample, groundbreaking bonus features will also be included,” according to the WHV press release.

Blade Runner has been on DVD already in a very shoddy edition that’s now happily deleted, a rush release from the early days of DVD. Most news reports don’t seem to mention that the re-issue of the film was held up by various legal wrangles; the Blade Runner fan site, BRmovie.com, details the whole sorry tale. Here’s hoping Ridley’s masterpiece will be given the same treatment as the excellent (if unfortunately named) Alien Quadrilogy which had great transfers of the films and an insane amount of extras.