Gladiator: The Making of the Ridley Scott Epic (Newmarket Pictorial Moviebook)

Historians not affiliated with the movie Gladiator praise it as the most realistic depiction of Roman combat ever committed to celluloid. Gladiator: The Making of the Ridley Scott Epic illustrates how the filmmakers achieved that authenticity. It's the official tie-in, and one of the handsomest movie books Newmarket Press has ever produced. (No, it's not as fancy as The Art of the Matrix, but it's not that kind of massive book--this one is for the howling yet discerning fans in the cineplex coliseum.) The filmmakers explain how they coped with the considerable weight of Roman movie tradition--"Transcending the Toga," they call it--mostly by drawing their inspiration more from Gérôme's 1872 gladiator painting Pollice Verso ("Thumbs Down"), an evocative rendering of the life-or-death drama subject to the emperor's whim. Ridley Scott is famous as a director (the modern equivalent of an emperor), but he started out as a painter at London's Royal College of Art, and his training has served him well.

Explications of scary stunts and ingenious special-effects scenes, crisp film stills, fascinating storyboards, architectural renderings, thumbnail histories, cast profiles, production drawings of boar-tusk helmets and spiky maces--this little book packs in a lot of information, and enlarges one's appreciation of a very big movie. --Tim Appelo