Frank Miller's 300

[Johann]

I saw the trailer for this film at The Departed last night.

I am so fuckin' pumped for this movie you can't believe it.

At first I thought I was seeing the trailer for a sequel to Julie Taymor's Titus.
Instantly I was saying "what the hell is this?!"
Then I knew when I saw Miller's name.

300 is a hardcover one-shot graphic novel about the battle of Thermypolae.

I've never heard of the director (Zack Snyder) but he's apparently attached to the Watchmen and Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six.

The trailer is absolute nirvana.
Manliness on the silver screen like you've never EVER seen.

http://300themovie.warnerbros.com

[HorseradishTree]

The film should be swell. Thermopylae is the quintessential Spartan event. The trailer seems to convey that feeling that Sparta was a pure war nation.

[Johann]

In a few days- the opening of a Frank Miller/Zack Snyder classic.

Myself and 3 others are gonna check it out Thurs. night

THIS IS WHERE WE FIGHT!

This is where THEY die!

[oscar jubis]

Trailer looks fantastic.

[Johann]

It sure does.

Very stoked...

[cinemabon]

Hark! Do you hear it, gentlemen? It's Steve Reeves and Russell Crowe all wrapped up in one homo-erotic event... not sweaty men in burlap bags (aka, Gladiator) or even loin cloths, (aka Tarzan or early gladiator movies) but nearly naked men in burgundy jock straps, cod pieces added for enticement (yes, they really did pad them on the set!)

Frank Miller waltzes into town again, this time pushing another comic book, "300", based upon the final stand taken by an actual group of Spartan fighters that decide to hold the pass against the Persian army long enough to rouse the Greek passions into hurdling the conquering horde back into the sea (which they do... not in the film, but in history).

Filmed entirely against blue screen, actors stormed off the sets, angry with the director because they found it difficult talking and reacting to nothing. Director Zack Snyder, whose only feature claim to fame is "Dawn of the Dead" attempts to translate Frank Miller's violent artsy comic world into another feature film. Judging from the rather mixed reaction, I'm not certain he accomplished this goal.

The problem with films of this type (i.e., Sky Captain and the world of tomorrow), where actors standing in front of blue walls and swing around blue objects, is that the special effects tend to overwhelm the subject material to the point that the effects drive the story into the ground. While the visual may be stunning, the content depends on the visual effects artist to 'sell' what is lacking, a great story told by great actors.

An epic movie like "300" should probably be seen in the theater. (I waited to see "Troy" and "Alexander on DVD, preferring the ability to fast forward through the crap). However, if the level of violence purported by most reviewers is as graphic as stated, I will decline to infuse my mind with CGI images: endlessly chopping off limbs, gouging out eyes, ripping open guts with swords by men whose dirty sweaty bodies, bulging with muscles, scream with Spartan pride; "Death to the...!"

[bix171]

I think the trailer was about the best one I've seen in about ten years. It actually made me want to see the movie. The film's sepia tint seems unique.

[Johann]

Weird post cinemabon.

This is the kind of film you either give it up for or you don't.
I think it's a masterpiece.

That's all I'll say on this one.
(I'd hate a repeat of the Sin City thread).

[Johann]

This movie was not made for fanboys as so many claim.

Fanboys love it (I'm one) but this movie was made for those who'd rather see a staging of glory than faux glory- that of the NFL or modern armies.

A friend of mine said something awesome as we left the theatre:
"You know what? modern men are pussies"
And we are.

Forget about this movie for a minute:
Spartans were a supernatural fighting force, warriors that you dream about that actually existed. And how about the vikings?
Alexander's men?
Think about war and battles in terms of actually falling in and serving with your LIFE. Can you do it?

This is beyond no fear.

This is about being posessed with passion.

This is about glory attained with an almost otherworldly tack.

Cry about blue screen and codpieces all you want.

300 gave me a hard-on.

The art is awesome. The IDEA is awesome, the acting is awesome- Gerard Butler, you Sir are a special actor.
You brought it man and I love ya for it.
He became Leonidas.

The monsters and fantastique-ness is more Clive Barker's Tortured Souls than Lord of the Rings.

This movie is for the man who feels there are no men left.
This movie is for the lovers of poetic battlefield orchestration but have seen little of it conveyed on the big screen.

This movie is for a select group of people who appreciate their jugulars grabbed and their eyes stabbed.

Stabbed with beauty and unbelievable art direction.

As I said on the Sin City thread- dance with it or move on.
Yes Miller's got me in his back pocket.
No guilt here.

I live for films like this one.
Thanks Frank and thanks Zack.

The fact that this film EXISTS is enough to exalt..

[Johann]

Saw 300 again.

Masterpiece indeed.
I'm still in awe of what Zack Snyder has accomplished.

The first battle with the Persians is incredible.
That slo-mo/freeze-frame where you have a Spartan smashing and crashing his way through puny Persians is simply awesome.

Man, just getting hit with that damn shield could kill you.

I also love the scene up on the rock face where Leonidas asks his opponents what they do for a living.
I brought a few more soldiers than you... AWWOOO!

Decaps, arrows from hell (love it when the sun is indeed blotted out), Xerxes losing his composure, awesome awesome movie.

Just what the doctor ordered.

War.
Raw and real.
Forget the blue-screens.
If you can't give it up then GIVE UP.
Just give up on movies altogther.

[oscar jubis]

In which a bunch of hyper-masculine white guys led by one who doesn't like "philosophers and boy-lovers" fight for freedom against Arabs led by a drag queen who thinks he's god. Images are composed artistically by computer, battles are precisely choreographed, and the colors are painterly applied. Quite a spectacle. I enjoyed looking at it.

[Johann]

Yes you are correct sir.

I wanna say mindless entertainment, but my mind was all agog while sitting in that dark theatre. My mind was doing the mambo.

Comic book movie. Pure adrenaline, pure fun.

[Chris Knipp]

Speedos, pustules, and buckets of blood. It's called a Graphic Novel. We used to call them Comic Books

Initially Zack Snyder's 300, based like Rodriguez's violent, ugly, macho Sin City on a Frank Miller graphic novel, certainly has a distinctively derivative look. That is to say, it captures perhaps better than anyone before (despite so many movies made from comic books) the Frank Frazetta comic illustrator style. It's a kind of adolescent boy's dream world, austere, romantic, angular like all comic book images (but doesn't that come from Forties Hollywood?), in dread of the ultimate teenage ugliness, acne (evidenced in gross skin eruptions) and full of perfect, acne-free super males dressed in Speedos and capes to show off their excessively defined abs and pecs. Miller's and Snyder's Spartans go into battle against the Persians at Thermopolae wearing almost nothing but their buffed-up muscles, which are the one thing the movie is ultimately about. This is a bit ironic, since they are very into using their round shields effectively. You'd think they'd consider some armor, but that would cut off our view of the abs and pecs. They wear helmets, but those are mainly an S/M style statement.

The Persians, in stark contrast this season, are very wrapped up, sort of like desert Arabs, and their leaders are very into elaborate, peculiar, one-of-a-kind piercings (quite the rage among exotic movie bad guys these days). They also seem a perverse outgrowth of the Spartan's rejection of all abnormalities, which the Persian's use of legendary horned beasts and elephants and deformed human giants, are a contrasting embrace of. Notably, a grotesque hunchback on the Spartan side isn't allowed to fight and goes over to the Persians, where he's welcomed by the giant metro-sexual Persian leader Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro), who wears not only piercings and chains but lipstick, fingernail polish, and painted-on eyebrows. But the Spartans too have a crew of elders they go to for advice, whose faces and bodies are covered with pustules. (They're a teenager's nightmare of old age.) The imagination here oscilates between idealized male (and very rarely female) perfection and disgust at everything and everyone else.

The thinking behind this movie doesn't seem consistent. If the Persians are gay, how come it's the Spartans who go around in bulging Speedos? Whether you're gay or straight, you wouldn't really want to be on either side. And after a while despite or perhaps because of the highly stylized way the battle sequences are cranked out with slow-mo starts and stops and pauses for spurting blood, the color-drained images of the uniformly buff male bodies and Frazetta landscapes, which seem made of brushstrokes rather than dirt and stone, start to seen monotonous and repetitive. Surely any viewer who's seen Kurosawa's samurai battles, or more recently Clint Eastwood's realistic Iwo Jima footage, is likely to find this movie lacking in real action interest. It would be interesting to see an attempt to recreate the battle from history books instead of a picture book for adolescent grownups. As an antidote to this glorification of fake heroism, go and see Bruno Dumont's Flanders when it comes out in the US.

[Johann]

Chris, you provoker you...


I think you mean Frank Frazetta, right?
Never heard of that Langhella guy.


I think the Spartans dispensed with the armour because they were so fuckin' tough. When you're a hulking badass warrior you don't need no stinking armour! Their mentality might've been: "If my shredded fuckin' Spartan physique don't psyche you out, then maybe my attitude will. Stand aside, you Persian pussy".

Doesn't the word "Spartan" mean bare?

Xerxes does have a Ru-Paul thing goin' on, with lots of wild bling action happenin'

But he's a tall mofo, isn't he?
He was like Manute Bol standing in front of Leonidas.

I love the movie, despite the bulging speedos- poor choice of word there Chris.
Speedos? Come on- codpiece, fabric, I accept. Did they really look like speedos?
I wasn't staring at that region too much- were you? naughty naughty naughty!

[Chris Knipp]

I gladly accept your correction and will change to Frazetta--I really ought to have checked that. Frank Langella is a veteral character actor. I may have been thinking of his name but that's no excuse for the error.

I will stick to Speedos, though. That's exactly what they correspond to; they are not codpieces or jock straps as previous comments or reviews had led me to believe. I wasn't staring at it much, just enough. . .the weren't really bulging, they just ought to be. What hits you are the identical torsos with the outlined abs and pecs. Your other comments are right on, and I appreciate your sense of humor about all this.

My response to Grindhouse was the opposite--I love it. 300 was a disappointment. I admit I wasn't expecting to like it, but I was expecting more