i really don't see the "wow" factor in any of this.

3/19/2007 9:50:11 AM

Quote :

"What is fun about this interview is the fact that NPR usually does a pretty good job of not sticking people in front of their interviewers who will disagree with the party line. They probably thought Miller, because he was an artist, would automatically be against the war."

You, clearly, are completely unfamiliar with NPR as a whole.

3/19/2007 10:13:46 AM

Quote :

"about this liberal outrage thing"

I don't think I said there was an "outrage". I said it was upsetting liberals...specifically liberal movie reviewers. My point is that they seem to be trying to discount the popularity of the film despite their negative reviews. They cannot bring themselves to acknowledge that a message of good vs evil, freedom isn't free etc is resonating with movie-goers. The success, according to them, is due to no competition and cool fight scenes.

3/19/2007 10:16:07 AM

maybe movie reivewers recognize this for the mindless crap that it is.

3/19/2007 10:21:16 AM

^Perhaps the same reason for the success of "An Inconvenient Truth"?

3/19/2007 10:25:41 AM

huh?

3/19/2007 10:27:16 AM

earthdogg, you are in no position to decide what is mindless crap and what is not. stop trying so hard.

3/19/2007 10:27:24 AM

this thread reads a lot like a salisburyboy thread. simply replace "liberal" with "jewish"

3/19/2007 10:32:26 AM

[Edited on March 19, 2007 at 10:53 AM. Reason : .]

3/19/2007 10:49:35 AM

3/19/2007 11:41:16 AM

Quote :

"They cannot bring themselves to acknowledge that a message of good vs evil, freedom isn't free etc is resonating with movie-goers. The success, according to them, is due to no competition and cool fight scenes."

Can't say I really cared much about any message of good vs evil or the like after seeing that movie. And pretty much everyone I've spoken to about the movie enjoyed it for the action, like I did. I think it's safe to say that the success really is mostly due to little competition and good fight scenes.

I mean, hell, any one who goes to see 300 expecting to see anything other than a whole lot of dead people is probably going to be somewhat disappointed.

3/19/2007 12:10:50 PM

Quote :

"What is fun about this interview is the fact that NPR usually does a pretty good job of not sticking people in front of their interviewers who will disagree with the party line. They probably thought Miller, because he was an artist, would automatically be against the war."

Uh...do you listen to NPR? They bring on Republican strategists all the time. They are probably one of the few mainstream media outlets today that will take the time to offer both sides of the story instead of some kind of sound bite spin that you'll find on CNN or Fox News. I have a number of conservative friends who listen to NPR regularly because they find it to be the least biased news programming that is freely available.

3/19/2007 12:36:17 PM

Quote :

"in the end they talked about “fighting mysticism” which sounds a lot like they are valuing reason/philosophy/science which the greeks started up over religion."

Yup, thats exactly what I came away with. These guys probably wouldn't go for intelligent design.

3/19/2007 1:37:09 PM

I'm still wondering how the "message" (lol) of 300 was illiberal.

Sticking up for what you believe in and liberty are conservative-only traits?

3/19/2007 2:13:13 PM

because liberals stand for running away with their tails between their legs, of course

3/19/2007 2:14:38 PM

And it wasn't really good vs evil. It was more like moderately evil vs evil. Personally the main theme I got from the movie was honor, valor in battle, and looking death in the face - Not much politics at all. Sure Leonidas called the Athenians "boy lovers" at one point in the movie if you all remember but it turns out that later they were the ones to send Xerces packing historically speaking. When it comes to war doesn't the liberal conservative line fade. Leonidas himself could be called liberal when he decided to go ahead and march to the canyon without the councils support. The whole point of this thread is silly.

3/19/2007 3:20:26 PM

i don't see why this thread is still in existence.

3/19/2007 3:40:00 PM

Perhaps we should elaborate on other movies'/shows intrinsic political content. Let me begin by asking,

Godfather

is it conservative or liberal?

3/19/2007 3:46:54 PM

The Godfather is clearly liberal because the existing law enforcement system needs liberal revamping in the form of la familia extortion, racketeering, protection, etc

Its also clearly conservative because they've been doing that thing of theirs since the old country

3/19/2007 3:59:47 PM

this has nothing to do with "liberals" or "conservatives". Earthdogg is a retard.


rotten tomatoes gives it a "fresh" rating. Barely... 61%

the reviews all split practically into two camps.

(1) if you want your movies to have meaningful dialogue, a credible and historically accurate plot, then this movie sucks.

(2) if you're a fan of Miller's comics and/or you like lots of flashy blood and guts, then this movie rocks.

simple as that.


[Edited on March 19, 2007 at 7:42 PM. Reason : ]

3/19/2007 7:41:22 PM

Someone tell me again -- how does the legacy of the brave Spartans stack up to the legacy of the pussy Athenians?

3/19/2007 7:56:23 PM

They both sucked.

3/19/2007 8:35:51 PM

those doods who started democracy are assholes.

3/19/2007 8:55:20 PM

They both ruled each other at some point.

Then they were both conquored by the Romans.

3/19/2007 10:00:17 PM

Quote :

"Uh...do you listen to NPR?"

Yes quite a bit actually. Just like with other media, NPR will seem free of bias if you tend to agree with their editorial slant.

Quote :

"Personally the main theme I got from the movie was honor, valor in battle, and looking death in the face - Not much politics at all."

I got the same. But, as I said earlier, I can find political themes in almost any flick. Another example is how the leaders of Sparta had devolved into a bunch of grizzled old men, faces eaten away by excess, corrupted by bribery, and addicted to sex with teenagers. Their ruling home hidden away high -far from the average person. Sound a bit like Washington?

Quote :

"FORBIDDEN HOLLYWOOD--LESSONS OF '300' By DAVID KAHANE March 16, 2007 -- OK, this is weird. Since about, oh, Sept. 12, 2001, every writer, producer, director and suit in Hollywood has known one sure rule: Don't make fun of our so-called "enemies." Don't stereotype them as bad guys. Don't mock their beliefs. Don't even mention their names. And for heaven's sake, don't make them mad. Instead, try to understand them. Celebrate their diversity. And realize that - in a world where black is really white, up is really down, an attack is really self-defense and self-defense is really a provocation - we are actually the enemy. Out went any script that ascribed anything but the purest of motives to Arabs, Iranians and Muslims. Back came everybody's favorite villains: ex- and neo-Nazis (I haven't met any, but I hear they're everywhere) and crazed Christian fundamentalists, lurking out there in flyover country, itching to pull the triggers to establish a theocracy in a country we all know perfectly well was founded by unarmed vegetarian multicultural atheists. So we make films like "Kingdom of Heaven," in which the Christian ruler of Jerusalem becomes a hero by surrendering the Holy Land to the noble Saladin. You'd think "300" was a metaphor for something . . . I heard the other day that one of the creators of this film is . . . yes, a closet conservative. Well, now he's a rich closet conservative. So that noise you heard blowing from the west this week was hundreds of writers from Playa del Rey to Santa Barbara, sticking their fingers in the air to see if the wind's suddenly shifted, wondering if we can shelve our metrosexual "Syriana" and "Babel" knockoffs and conjure up some good old-fashioned "men of the West" material. Because the dirty little secret is, we used to write these movies all the time. Impossible odds. Quixotic causes. Death before surrender. Real all-American stuff, in which our heroes stood up for God and country and defending Princess Leia and getting back home to see their wives and children, with their shields or on them. And the dirtier little secret is: We loved writing them. Even a blacklisted communist like Carl Foreman came up with "High Noon," in which a lone Gary Cooper defends a town full of ungrateful, carping yellowbellies and then throws away his badge in disgust at their cowardice. But then came psychiatrists and psychologists and Ritalin and global warming and racism and sexism and homophobia and the enlightened among us said the hell with John Wayne and Gary Cooper. Hollywood became one big Agatha Christie novel in the last chapter - you know, where the survivors gather in the drawing room and realize: The killer must be one of us! But now, I'm starting to wonder. Starting to wonder if celebrating diversity is getting us anywhere when the Iranians think we're insulting their civilization by making King Xerxes a seven-foot-tall club queen. Starting to wonder if a movie that has no stars, the look and feel of a video game, and the moral code of the United States Marine Corps might have something to say, even to audiences in New York and L.A. But most of all, I'm starting to wonder what it might feel like to be the good guy. David Kahane is a nom de cyber for a writer in Hollywood. "

3/19/2007 10:03:15 PM

you fail to mention that this review is taken from a political website.

3/19/2007 10:06:35 PM

The dishonest love to hide their sources.



They also like to steal whole articles from other sites.

3/19/2007 10:08:29 PM

Quote :

"you fail to mention that this review is taken from a political website."

Forgive me. That will happen sometimes..like when you forgot to source your thread here, and forgot to tell us that this guy wrote for a left-leaning site "The Age".

Quote :

""Hicks' military trial ruled 'illegal' Michael Gawenda, Washington"

I didn't think you were purposely trying to hide your source, we just forget sometimes.
But I'm all about forgiveness. Hope you are too.

3/19/2007 10:37:15 PM

Quote :

"Liberal Hollywood is scratching its collective head. How could a movie with the combination of kick-ass effects and a strongly illiberal message become a run-away hit? One head-scratching reviewer from the L.A. Times wrote"

I don't see how the LA Times review was anything but dead-on.

And Illiberal is certainly not "conservative." I'm no liberal and I don't have any strong love for the Spartans. They threw away babies, for God's sake -- how conservative is that?

If the movie had any message, it was about the power of self-directed nationalism -- that a prideful society will beat one comprised of slaves and demagogues any day. The NPR interview posted here put that idea into context. But honestly, it just wasn't very convincing. Patriotism as a force is never rightfully detached from morality or decency. And the Spartans as portrayed had little by modern standards -- their primary vehicle for decision-making was drug-raping adolescent girls.

Nuff said. Watch the movie for its special effects and stylism.

[Edited on March 20, 2007 at 2:59 AM. Reason : foo]

3/20/2007 2:59:23 AM

Quote :

"And Illiberal is certainly not "conservative." "

One of the few posters who caught my nuance. Thanks.

3/20/2007 10:16:23 AM

this thread is stupid. why does everything have to be liberal vs conservative?

shut up.

[Edited on March 20, 2007 at 10:21 AM. Reason : j]

3/20/2007 10:20:49 AM

Quote :

"Another example is how the leaders of Sparta had devolved into a bunch of grizzled old men, faces eaten away by excess, corrupted by bribery, and addicted to sex with teenagers."

Wouldn't this be anti-conservative?

3/20/2007 10:34:00 AM

^ well that was the religious leaders, but yeah, still not particularly "conservative".

Quote :

"Personally the main theme I got from the movie was honor, valor in battle, and looking death in the face - Not much politics at all."

Exactly, sure you can say the left wants to "cut and run" but then again, there are a lot of chicken hawks who are all about war as long as its viewed from a comfortable video screen in the Pentagon.

Quote :

"Sure Leonidas called the Athenians "boy lovers" at one point in the movie"

Anyone who has been in any competetive organization (military, athletic teams, etc.) knows that shit-talking happens all the time and there really isn't a whole lot behind it.

Quote :

"The whole point of this thread is silly."

Yup, but I'll post anyway.

[Edited on March 20, 2007 at 10:59 AM. Reason : .]

3/20/2007 10:58:55 AM

Quote :

"a prideful society will beat one comprised of slaves and demagogues any day"

dude, the Spartan society ran on slavery. The free citizens spent all their time training for war so they didn't have time for farming and shit, all that was done by slaves. There were a lot more slaves than free men, and the Spartans lived in constant fear of revolts.

3/20/2007 11:40:21 AM

I haven't seen this movie but I gather from the ads it refers to the battle of Thermopili

I hate to be the realist [as is in the foreign policy sense] but didn't the greeks lose at Thermopili and didn't the Persian Navy cicle around and blockade Athens leading to rapant disease and the end of the Golden Age?

Its a romatic story but in the end the goal of war is to win - not to be a hero.

3/20/2007 12:40:43 PM

Its not meant to be anywhere close to historically accurate.

3/20/2007 1:37:22 PM

^^ No, the defeat of the Persians led to Athenian acsendancy for half a century until the Peloponnensian War.. That war is what devastated Greece, not any of the Persian wars, which really made Greece stronger and was the beginning of the end of the Persian empire.

In that interview Frank Miller sounded like a nut, Iraq declared war on us? eh?

3/20/2007 5:17:48 PM

Quote :

"300 director Zack Snyder says he feels no resentment towards the critics who pummeled his movie. "Nah, I love 'em, they were funny," he told Los Angeles Times columnist Patrick Goldstein in today's (Tuesday) edition. "The reviews were so neo-con, so homophobic. They couldn't just go see the movie without trying to over-intellectualize it.""

The film's director says reviewers disliked it because they were too conservative.

3/21/2007 12:19:59 PM

Why Is the Film "300" Upsetting Conservatives So?

3/21/2007 3:24:05 PM

Quote :

"hate to be the realist [as is in the foreign policy sense] but didn't the greeks lose at Thermopili and didn't the Persian Navy cicle around and blockade Athens leading to rapant disease and the end of the Golden Age?"

no the spartans stalled the persians at thermopayle, then the athenian navy had time to mass and destroy the persian fleet in the battle of salamis bay. then the bulk of the persian army was left without a supply line in greece and was eventually destroyed by a united greek army at the battle of platea. thus leading to the golden age of greece. the pelleponesian wars sevaral centuries later weakend greece to e taken over by the macedonians.

3/21/2007 4:27:14 PM

It's news to me that anyone is upset about this movie. I haven't heard of liberals being upset about it, nor conservatives being upset that liberals are or are not upset about it. No one cares. Why is everyone trying to tie a their political agendas to this movie? Some critics gave it bad reviews and it did well at the box office. That's all that happened. I think everyone is talking out of their ass on this one.

[Edited on March 21, 2007 at 6:22 PM. Reason : by "everyone" i mean in this thread]

3/21/2007 6:05:05 PM

Quote :

"It’s All Geek to Me By NEAL STEPHENSON Published: March 18, 2007, Seattle A WEEK ago Friday, moments before an opening-day showing of the movie “300” at Seattle’s Cinerama, a 20-something moviegoer rushed to the front of the theater, dropped his shoulders, curled his arms into a mock-Schwarzenegger pose and bellowed out a timeless remark of King Leonidas of Sparta that has in the last week become the catchphrase of the year: “Spartans! Tonight we dine in hell!” Groans, roars, macho hooting noises and sardonic applause rained down on him. The audience had been standing in line for an hour. Only a few of them were dressed as Greek hoplites. They were much better balanced between men and women than I’d expected and, racially, looked like a fair cross section of Seattle’s populace. Over the next couple of hours, they enjoyed “300” with roughly the same level of energy and audience participation as one would expect in an N.C.A.A. Final Four game. The film contains a lot of over-the-top material, reflecting its origin in a graphic novel. As often as not, when I found myself rolling my eyes at something particularly mortifying (the tactical corpse-pile avalanche, the Persian executioner with serrated fins for arms), the crowd reacted much as I did, some even hurling catcalls from the balcony or blurting their own lines of dialogue. It was all pretty festive for a movie about ancient history in which almost all of the characters end up dead. This, apparently, was no anomaly. Though it opened on a relatively small number of screens, “300” made money far beyond the most optimistic projections of its producers, racking up the third-best opening weekend ever for an R-rated movie. The critics, however, were mostly hostile, and frequently venomous. Many reviews made the same points: • “300” is not sufficiently ironic. It takes its themes (duty, loyalty, sacrifice, the preservation of Western civilization against enormous odds) too seriously to, well, be taken seriously. • “300” is campy — meaning that many things about it can be read as sexual double entendres — yet the filmmakers don’t show sufficient awareness of this. • All of the good guys are white people and many of the bad guys are brown. (How this could have been avoided in a film about Spartans versus Persians is never explained; the distinctly non-Greek viewers at my showing seemed to have no trouble placing themselves in the sandals of ancient Spartans.) But such criticisms aren’t really worth arguing with, because they are not serious in the first place — and that is their whole point. Many critics dislike “300” so intensely that they refused to do it the honor of criticizing it as if it were a real movie. Critics at a festival in Berlin walked out, and accused its director of being on the Bush payroll. Thermopylae is a wedge issue! Lefties can’t abide lionizing a bunch of militaristic slave-owners (even if they did happen to be long-haired supporters of women’s rights). So you might think that righties would love the film. But they’re nervous that Emperor Xerxes of Persia, not the freedom-loving Leonidas, might be George Bush. Our so-called conservatives, who have cut all ties to their own intellectual moorings, now espouse policies and personalities that would get them laughed out of Periclean Athens. The few conservatives still able to hold up one end of a Socratic dialogue are those in the ostracized libertarian wing — interestingly enough, a group with a disproportionately high representation among fans of speculative fiction. The less politicized majority, who perhaps would like to draw inspiration from this story without glossing over the crazy and defective aspects of Spartan society, have turned, in droves, to a film from the alternative cultural universe of fantasy and science fiction. Styled and informed by pulp novels, comic books, video games and Asian martial arts flicks, science fiction eats this kind of material up, and expresses it in ways that look impossibly weird to people who aren’t used to it. Lack of critical respect means nothing to sci-fi’s creators and fans. They made peace with their own dorkiness long ago. Oh, there was momentary discomfort around the time of William Shatner’s 1987 “Saturday Night Live” sketch, in which he exhorted Trekkies to “get a life.” But this had been fully resolved by 2000, when sci-fi fans voted to give the Hugo Award for best movie to “Galaxy Quest,” a film that revolves around making fun of sci-fi fans. The growing popularity of science fiction, the rise of graphic novels, anime and video games, and the fact that geeks can make lots of money now, have given creators and fans of this kind of art a confidence, even a swagger, that — hard as it is for some of us to believe — is kind of cool now. Video games have turned everyone under the age of 20 into experts on military history and tactics; 12-year-olds on school buses argue about the right way to deploy onagers and cataphracts while outflanking a Roman triplex acies formation. The near exhaustion of Asian martial arts themes has led a small but growing number to begin reconstructing, or imagining, the forgotten martial arts of the West. And science fiction, by its nature, has had to equip itself with a full toolkit for dealing with alien cultures, mindsets and landscapes. Which is exactly how the creators of “300” approach the Spartans and the Persians. The only people in the film who don’t seem as if they came from another planet are the Arcadians (non-Spartan Greeks), who turn tail once the battle becomes hopeless. Classics-based sci-fi is nothing new. To name the most recent of many examples, the novelist Dan Simmons published “Ilium” and “Olympos,” science-fictional takes on Homer. When science fiction tackles classical themes, the results may look a bit odd to some, but the audience — which is increasingly the mainstream audience — is sufficiently hungry for this kind of material (and, perhaps, suspicious of anything that’s overly polished) that it is willing to overlook the occasional mistake, or make up for it by shouting hilarious things from the balcony. These people don’t need irony or campiness self-consciously pointed out to them, any more than they need a laugh track to enjoy “The Simpsons.” The Spartan phalanx presents itself to foes as a wall of shields, bristling with spears, its members squatting behind their defenses, anonymous and unknowable, until they break formation and stand out alone, practically naked, soft, exposed and recognizable as individuals. The audience members watching them play the same game: media-weary, hunkered down behind thick irony, flinging verbal jabs at the screen — until they see something that moves them. Then they’ll come out and feel. But at the first hint of politics, they’ll jump back behind their shield-wall, just like the Spartans when millions of Persian arrows blot out the sun, and wait until the noise stops. "

3/24/2007 10:26:27 AM

you are so retarded.

3/24/2007 10:56:27 AM

Quote :

"i don't see why this thread is still in existence."

3/24/2007 10:57:25 AM

More wholesale copy and pasting of un-cited columns complaining about uncited "liberal" reviews. This whole thread is a huge fucking strawman by some old ass idiot.

[Edited on March 24, 2007 at 11:13 AM. Reason : dfs]

3/24/2007 11:12:48 AM

Quote :

"The critics, however, were mostly hostile"

This is simply inaccurate. Look at RottenTomatoes. As has been mentioned previously, 61% of the reviews were favorable. You're so ill-informed on the subject that it's just ridiculous.

3/24/2007 12:18:30 PM

When I watched that movie I was like "FUCK YEAH!" the whole time. I'd say it was bad ass. My peace loving girlfriend even liked it and she is like some kind of super liberal.

3/24/2007 8:51:30 PM

^
The film does seem to be stirring up strong feelings.

3/24/2007 9:28:02 PM

Strong feelings of mediocrity OOHHHH BURNNNN.

3/24/2007 9:32:29 PM

I'm a liberal (though probably not in the sense you meant) and I still liked the movie.

I would never submit if an attempt was made to implement the laws of Lycurgus in America, but that does not diminish my respect for Leonidas' badassity. Respect does not imply agreement.

3/24/2007 10:10:31 PM