Common Sense

Sunday, Space Monkey, Sailor Moon and I made our way to the theater to watch 300. The original plan was to go to the IMAX theater in Dallas to see it on Saturday, but that didn’t happen.

So there we were, in the pouring rain, waiting to buy tickets. I think it was the first time all three of us had been together since… I don’t know, I guess it was Horrorfest back in November or October. Sailor Moon has his art and his dreams to focus on.

Sasquatch doesn’t even come with us anymore.

And Space Monkey, well, he does spend time with me. In fact, he and I went out drinking Saturday, it being his birthday and all. It still kind of sucked; we were at Scruff’s. I did win three games of pool against him. Before he says anything, they were technical wins, but I was still playing pretty well, especially for a guy who doesn’t play often and can’t put any weight on his left leg.

For once, we were on time to see a movie. Something about each of us as individuals makes us constantly late when we go to the movies. Not this time, though. I walked into the theater with my soda right when the trailers started playing. Perfect timing.

None of the Coming Attractions jumped out at me. It was just yesterday and I can’t remember any of them.

How best to describe the movie itself? Did you see Gladiator? Well, think of that, but with less gayness. In fact, take all the gayness out and put in a whole lotta ass whuppin’. No pansy-ass Russel Crowe going on and on about his dead wife and son and no pansy-ass Joaquin Phoenix looking like a Catholic school girl and crying because his sister won’t do him. Nope, just a lot of masculine fighting and killing.
Well, maybe not all the gayness. All the Spartan soldiers had the Dolph Lundgren He-Man look going on. Speedos and red capes… and nothin’ else. But these guys cut off peoples’ heads, so it’s okay.

I think they did digatal effects work to get the Spartans looking so svelt. I refuse to believe that human beings can have zero body fat and abs harder than steel. If I were gay, I would say something like ‘I bet they could crack a walnut with their butt cheeks’ or something.

The only thing that bothered me about the movie was the lack of historical accuracy. Of course, they weren’t trying to be historically accurate, they were being accurate to Frank Miller. If you watch the History Channel special, you find out that the Battle of Thermopylae was an important point in the formation of the Western World. If not for the Spartans and Athenians and other groups fighting together against Xerxes, there would have been no identification as Greek. Before this battle, the idea of a land called Greece had not been thought yet. After it, there was some unity. A few generations later, Philip of Macedon conquered Greece and made it one nation.

Philip’s son, Alexander, eventually led the Greek’s to conquer the Persians, bringing the whole story full circle.

I guess they felt they needed to sex up the real story, interestingly enough, with a lot of talk about freedom. The Spartans were practically the first fascists. If you look at the ways in which they shaped their society, its not all that different from Nazi Germany. I’m not making a judgement call about righteousness or evil, just an observation of their society.

I mean, they looked at babies and left the ones considered inferior out to die on the side of a mountain so that only superior Spartans would be able to breed. Childhood was spent with rigid indoctrination into the culture and with an emphasis on athletics, just like the Hitler Youth. And in Spartan society, you were not a man until you had killed your first Heliot. The Heliots were a group of people that had originally inhabited the lands where Sparta was located. The Spartans used them as slave labor, just like the Nazis did to the Jews.

That doesn’t make their sacrifice any less brave, but it does put an end to all the talk of “free men” standing up to a tyrant. Xerxes was there to burn down Athens and the Spartans assumed Sparta would be next. Leonides felt the death of his 300 warriors (and 700 Thespians that were left out of the movie) would cover the retreat of the rest of the Greek army, which would then regroup with the rest of the army located at the Isthmus of Corinth.

And there was no mention of the Athenian naval battle that was the real decisive victory. Without ships, Xerxes could not supply his land forces, nor could he remove them from Greece when the time came.

See, it’s really fascinating stuff that sort of got lost to the idea of fighting elephants and rhinos and gold-masked ninjas. The story they have works well with what they do, but it is still sad to think of all the people that are going to assume it is accurate or that people will not be able to learn the true story.
Something I found interesting, I couldn’t recognize a single actor in the movie. Unlike other period epics like Troy or the aforementioned Gladiator, 300 relies on the movie’s visual style to attract an audience, not a big-name, summer mega-movie cast. They invested all the money in the production and not the cast salary. I’m glad to see that (although I did think Troy was good and Brad Pitt was awesome as Achilles).
Even with all of that, I still think this is a pretty good movie. I think we really missed out by not going to the IMAX theater for this one. I give it, 4 out of 5 evil purple loin cloths.

I might have given it 4 1/2 if not for all the shit I had to put up with afterwards. I stopped at the HEB in Hewitt to get gas because I was on empty. The stupid pump wouldn’t take my debit card. So I drove across the street to the convenience store to use the ATM.

I turned around and started walking out the door when I realized the old man at the register had just parked beside my car. I mean really parked beside my car. There was maybe 10 inches of space between my car and his.

He took forever. For-freakin’-ever to leave. I stood behind him for at least 5 minutes while he hit on the young girl at the register. He asked her if she had a boyfriend for chrissakes! She was trying to get him to go away, but he was still there yakking away. When he did leave, he took his sweet-ass time to to pull out and he almost hit my car doing it. Then he drove really slow through the parking lot so that I couldn’t go back to the pumps at HEB. God, I hate old people, especially old men in silly hats with Purple Heart license plates. You know who you are!

Sunday, Space Monkey, Sailor Moon and I made our way to the theater to watch 300. The original plan was to go to the IMAX theater in Dallas to see it on Saturday, but that didn’t happen.

So there we were, in the pouring rain, waiting to buy tickets. I think it was the first time all three of us had been together since… I don’t know, I guess it was Horrorfest back in November or October. Sailor Moon has his art and his dreams to focus on.

Sasquatch doesn’t even come with us anymore.

And Space Monkey, well, he does spend time with me. In fact, he and I went out drinking Saturday, it being his birthday and all. It still kind of sucked; we were at Scruff’s. I did win three games of pool against him. Before he says anything, they were technical wins, but I was still playing pretty well, especially for a guy who doesn’t play often and can’t put any weight on his left leg.

For once, we were on time to see a movie. Something about each of us as individuals makes us constantly late when we go to the movies. Not this time, though. I walked into the theater with my soda right when the trailers started playing. Perfect timing.

None of the Coming Attractions jumped out at me. It was just yesterday and I can’t remember any of them.

How best to describe the movie itself? Did you see Gladiator? Well, think of that, but with less gayness. In fact, take all the gayness out and put in a whole lotta ass whuppin’. No pansy-ass Russel Crowe going on and on about his dead wife and son and no pansy-ass Joaquin Phoenix looking like a Catholic school girl and crying because his sister won’t do him. Nope, just a lot of masculine fighting and killing.
Well, maybe not all the gayness. All the Spartan soldiers had the Dolph Lundgren He-Man look going on. Speedos and red capes… and nothin’ else. But these guys cut off peoples’ heads, so it’s okay.

I think they did digatal effects work to get the Spartans looking so svelt. I refuse to believe that human beings can have zero body fat and abs harder than steel. If I were gay, I would say something like ‘I bet they could crack a walnut with their butt cheeks’ or something.

The only thing that bothered me about the movie was the lack of historical accuracy. Of course, they weren’t trying to be historically accurate, they were being accurate to Frank Miller. If you watch the History Channel special, you find out that the Battle of Thermopylae was an important point in the formation of the Western World. If not for the Spartans and Athenians and other groups fighting together against Xerxes, there would have been no identification as Greek. Before this battle, the idea of a land called Greece had not been thought yet. After it, there was some unity. A few generations later, Philip of Macedon conquered Greece and made it one nation.

Philip’s son, Alexander, eventually led the Greek’s to conquer the Persians, bringing the whole story full circle.

I guess they felt they needed to sex up the real story, interestingly enough, with a lot of talk about freedom. The Spartans were practically the first fascists. If you look at the ways in which they shaped their society, its not all that different from Nazi Germany. I’m not making a judgement call about righteousness or evil, just an observation of their society.

I mean, they looked at babies and left the ones considered inferior out to die on the side of a mountain so that only superior Spartans would be able to breed. Childhood was spent with rigid indoctrination into the culture and with an emphasis on athletics, just like the Hitler Youth. And in Spartan society, you were not a man until you had killed your first Heliot. The Heliots were a group of people that had originally inhabited the lands where Sparta was located. The Spartans used them as slave labor, just like the Nazis did to the Jews.

That doesn’t make their sacrifice any less brave, but it does put an end to all the talk of “free men” standing up to a tyrant. Xerxes was there to burn down Athens and the Spartans assumed Sparta would be next. Leonides felt the death of his 300 warriors (and 700 Thespians that were left out of the movie) would cover the retreat of the rest of the Greek army, which would then regroup with the rest of the army located at the Isthmus of Corinth.

And there was no mention of the Athenian naval battle that was the real decisive victory. Without ships, Xerxes could not supply his land forces, nor could he remove them from Greece when the time came.

See, it’s really fascinating stuff that sort of got lost to the idea of fighting elephants and rhinos and gold-masked ninjas. The story they have works well with what they do, but it is still sad to think of all the people that are going to assume it is accurate or that people will not be able to learn the true story.
Something I found interesting, I couldn’t recognize a single actor in the movie. Unlike other period epics like Troy or the aforementioned Gladiator, 300 relies on the movie’s visual style to attract an audience, not a big-name, summer mega-movie cast. They invested all the money in the production and not the cast salary. I’m glad to see that (although I did think Troy was good and Brad Pitt was awesome as Achilles).
Even with all of that, I still think this is a pretty good movie. I think we really missed out by not going to the IMAX theater for this one. I give it, 4 out of 5 evil purple loin cloths.

I might have given it 4 1/2 if not for all the shit I had to put up with afterwards. I stopped at the HEB in Hewitt to get gas because I was on empty. The stupid pump wouldn’t take my debit card. So I drove across the street to the convenience store to use the ATM.

I turned around and started walking out the door when I realized the old man at the register had just parked beside my car. I mean really parked beside my car. There was maybe 10 inches of space between my car and his.

He took forever. For-freakin’-ever to leave. I stood behind him for at least 5 minutes while he hit on the young girl at the register. He asked her if she had a boyfriend for chrissakes! She was trying to get him to go away, but he was still there yakking away. When he did leave, he took his sweet-ass time to to pull out and he almost hit my car doing it. Then he drove really slow through the parking lot so that I couldn’t go back to the pumps at HEB. God, I hate old people, especially old men in silly hats with Purple Heart license plates. You know who you are!