This is Sparta. I am Beowulf. Tonight will be different. Tonight we dine in Hell.
Stew:
>If I recall, John, you've been threatening to write your full
>denunciation of this for while. Any joy? I watched it wishing to be
>offended, but actually found it quite fun and diverting in its own
>particular way.
I wrote a review at the time, but I'm trying to make it socially redeemable by combining it into an essay with an analysis of 'Beowulf' the movie and comparing them both to Gloranthan notions of myth and hero.
In other works I'm making a bit of an effort to be comparative sweetness and light. It's not gonna work of course.
A few nuggets ...
"The only real outcome of Thermopylae was that it rid the Greeks of an incompetent military commander, but that’s mere history."
"Emotional constipation, deep confusion, and even deeper contradiction."
"‘300’ can best be summed up as a Republican stick movie, deeply fearful of everything that isn’t white, male and gung-ho for gore; a comic book tale of buff ubermensch fighting a holy war for ‘freedom’ against hordes of subhuman blacks and Iranians (sorry, ‘Persians’). It manages to give us history simplified to caricature, myth reduced to bombast, and all semblance of human feeling buffed up to a homoerotic Chippendale dance routine. With spears."
"While dipping deeply into what scholars call
‘the Spartan Mirage’ the modern appropriation of
supposed Spartan values for propaganda purposes,
‘300’ comes across most strongly as rejected bits
of ‘Lord Of The Rings’ gathered up from the
cutting room floor. It has the gollum bit
(disfigured Ephialtes lolling close behind the
main party: he wants the precious), the
‘cavetroll’ bit (it’s big, it’s chained, it wants
to hit you so bad…), the exotic animals bit, the
subhuman enemy trope, and obviously, the massed
battles bit. It even has a terminally
embarrassed, plastic-chested David Wenham doing
what he can with some painfully trite
sub-shakespearian dialogue.(WTF is he doing
here?!) And teenage mutant ninja Immortals. "
"<http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/filmography.html?p_id=240591&inline=nyt-per>Gerard Butler as Leonidis can't decide if he's Sean or Mel, but generously gives us his wandering impressions of both. The rest of the cast make do as best they can. Dominic West as Theron is so mind-numbingly one-dimensional in his evil you’d swear he worked for Haliburton. At least Rodrigo Santoro as Xerxes looks like he’s having fun: after all, he’s got lots of bling and plenty of ho’s: are we perchance talking caricature here? Again?"
"Women in '300' are divided into three
categories. Some are dead. Most are solely
writhing lust objects, sexualised playthings with
tongue parts but no speaking bits. And then
there's Gorgo, the single good woman who keeps
the home fires burning. And gets raped."
As you can see, I've mellowed.
Defending FREEDOM to the last tanning clinic....
Dim Jim
John Hughes
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