Monday, February 21, 2005
"Pompeii: The Last Day", AD 79, The Discovery Channel, Sat. Feb 5, 3-5 PM ET/PT

The ANNOTICO Report

"Pompeii: The Last Day", AD 79, and you live near Mount Vesuvius. But not
for long. It all lasted just 19 hours.

Then, there was only a long, deathly silence. Pompeii lay buried for nearly
1,700 years. It wasn't until 1748 that archaeologists began slowly
uncovering the ancient city, preserved under 9 feet of volcanic ash and
frozen in time by Pliny the Younger's vivid report, written just 18 years
later.

About three-fifths of the city has been liberated from the solidified
volcanic ash and pumice that engulfed it. But many questions remained
unanswered for a long time.

What exactly did happen that summer day in A.D. 79?  If you must miss the
TV Presentation, you must check out The Discovery Channel Web Site.

The Site includes: What Happened Here; A Step Back in Time; Pompeii's
EyeWitness Account; The Ongoing  Excavations (Still uncovering relics
today); Virtual Volcanoes;
Pompeii Quiz;  and an Eruption Video.
http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/
pompeii/pompeii.html



TELEVISION REVIEWS

HISTORY HAS ITS UPS AND DOWN

RE-CREATION TREATMENT OF THE DESTRUCTION OF POMPEII

Los Angeles Times

By Robert Lloyd,
Times Staff Writer
January 28,2005

The Discovery Channel's "Pompeii: The Last Day" takes us to AD 79, when
Vesuvius blew its top, and is an historical re-creation that concern green
and pleasant lands overtaken by an unstoppable force.

There are real people portrayed in "Pompeii: The Last Day", a 2003 BBC
production imported to the Discovery Channel, but the filmmakers have the
advantage of their subjects having been dead 2,000 years; no one's going to
challenge their portrayal of Pliny the Elder. A kind of illustrated
documentary or educational disaster movie, it tells the story of a very bad
day on the Bay of Naples, when the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum were
buried in waves of gaseous volcanic sludge.

We see not quite enough of the bustling life of the town before the
mountain goes volcanic, but then this isn't about the life of the town so
much as its death. "The people don't even know it's a volcano," the
narration tells us. (Having no word for "volcano," as we are later
informed, they couldn't have.) The filmmakers focus on the lightly
intertwined lives of several luckless citizens ? Altman does Pompeii ? in
well-written, well-played scenes that do not tax our credulity. They play
out their ends in noble gestures or acts of random greed, family feeling or
domestic dispute, though not before such ironic last words as "The beams
are solid, don't fuss."

Well, they hadn't counted on the pyroclastic surge (an avalanche of ash and
gas) or the toxic fumes. The physics of their demise are spelled out in
disturbing detail.

As to the villain of the piece, the CGI (Computer Generated Images) volcano
that destroys the CGI Pompeii is a pale imitation of what the real thing
must have been, but there is no file footage available, and until Peter
Jackson takes on a remake of 1935's "The Last Days of Pompeii," this
version will do nicely.

'Pompeii: The Last Day'
Where: Discovery Channel
When: 9 to 11 p.m. Sunday
Ratings: TV-PG (may be unsuitable for young children)
Tim Pigott-Smith... Pliny the Elder
Jonathan Firth... Stephanus
Jim Carter... Julius Polybius
Executive producers Michael J. Mosley and Jack Smith.