You know how you watched King Arthur?
(Shut up, you totally did. I saw you.)
And you know how you couldn’t possibly have given a flying fuck about its political implications or meditations on faith and the feudal economy and how the guy autowittering on about freedom was doing so because everybody knew he would be king anyway and it’s easy to talk about freedom when you’re going to be king?
And you know how none of that mattered because hey, look, Clive Owen! Ray Stevenson! The third extra from the left! They’re hot! With swords! Guinevere mostly naked in leather, like, straps basically, shooting flaming arrows into the sky! Music! AWESOME!
That’s kind of how I felt about 300. I was not bored.
This comment from Tbogg’s post sums up my feelings pretty well:
Look, I couldn’t give a tinker’s cuss whether VDH approves – I’ve always wanted to see the battle of Thermopylae played out in supremely violent technicolour. Even more violent than the last attempt, that is.
I don’t care whether Bush himself presides over the premiere, I’ll be there – and I’m a classically educated smartarse.
I’ll watch it as a fat, dumbass slice of Hollywood historical travesty, and most likely enjoy it, and Victor can stick his fatuous historical analogies.
I’ve got a long post somewhere, that encompasses this and Galactica and the assholes who send my Internet boyfriend Jacob hatemail calling him a toasterfucker, which, dude, but mostly it’s to do with the conservative neediness that everything around them reinforce their worldview. That there be nothing which they cannot use to say, “See? SEE?!” like fucking kindergartners, that everything from what they had for breakfast to every inch of the newspaper to every word out of the mouth of everybody they know conform to their idea of the Noble Struggle In Which They’d Totally Participate If Not For Their Critical Job Here Blogging The Revolution. It’s just embarrassing.
If you really believed it, you wouldn’t need to go looking at your grilled cheese sandwich or a movie that’s basically about hot mostly nude men killing each other for signs you’re right. Quit using Gerard Butler as an excuse.
A.
i figure i will catch bits on cable. depending how good bits, watch all.
but war is reallty starting to depress me.
I have a Tai Chi lesson playing on my Vid right now. Roommate’s swatting imaginary flies.
King Arthur sounds good… as soon as the Chinese harps stop plinking in my head.
I saw 300 yesterday.
I enjoyed it because so much was jest cool to look at, but most of the dialogue will make it Red Dawn for Gen Y.
Oh, lord, bartkid, I was totally thinking about Red Dawn while reading this.
And yes, I watched King Arthur totally for the cute men factor, with a little dose of “Guenevere as an ass-kicker–woo hoo!” thrown in. Those factors were enough to offset about 20% of the “god, this script is a blight on the landscape of screenwriting” factor and maybe 5% of the “I’m so bored I may start removing my fingernails for fun” factor. I so wanted to like that film–the idea of putting Arthur closer to his likeliest historical context really appealed to me. Sigh.
I want to see 300 for the same reasons, plus that I really like Frank Miller’s stuff and thought Sin City was absolutely gorgeous to watch. But I’m going in with low expectations.
Haven’t seen 300, but I’m inclined to. Just because, as anyone who’s read the Iliad can tell you, the simply can’t cram any more gore into a battle scene than Homer did. And I’ve always wanted to see Hollywood attempt something with an ancient Greek sensibility towards ancient greek battles. And it seems to me that a comic book aesthetic gives the best chance of doing that successfully.