Announcement: Short-content feeds

Phillip Winn — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT

Sunday, August 26, 2007, marks the switch of all Blogcritics.org article feeds from full-content to short-content. This is the result of several converging factors, and is unfortunately a permanent decision (as permanent as any decision can be on the web, that is). We are aware of all of the reasons that this is a Bad Idea, and we are aware that some of you will be quite upset about having to click on something to read the free content, and we're sorry. Unfortunately, despite great effort, full-content feeds are not currently economically viable. Two other factors are involved: full-content feeds have resulted in an unprecedented level of content theft, with BC content appearing on many websites, usually spam sites, without attribution or permission. This duplicate content causes a cascading set of problems, not the least of which is that search engines generally aren't favorable to duplicate content, and don't always guess correctly. Finally, our RSS advertising partner is strongly in favor of short-content feeds. We hope that you'll continue to subscribe to BC via RSS, and when an article grabs your eye, it's only a click away, still free on the BC website. Thank you for your understanding.

Movie Review: 300 Reasons Why You Shouldn't Feel Bad About Skipping 300

Anne Russell — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 14:21:23 EDT

Not since Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhastan has watching a movie made me snort and chuckle as much as Zack Snyder's adaptation of Frank Miller's graphic novel about the Battle of Thermopylae. I imagine Zack Snyder as a director who, showing up on set at 6:30 am with his venti latte in hand, started filming 300 with, “We need more lip gloss and body glitter for Xerxes!” And that’s what 300 is -- a lip gloss film if ever there was one. It’s the equivalent of Showgirls for male audiences. So if you’re wondering if you can live through the rest of the year 2007 without seeing this movie let me just ease your mind with the fact that whatever hype you've heard about the stylistic phantasmagoria of 300 is seriously overrated. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not here to burst anyone’s bubble about Frank Miller. I am not worthy of touching Mr. Miller’s dirty socks. And though I might not a big connoisseur of graphic novels, like some of our readers, I did really enjoy Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez’s Sin City. That film was a witty piece of neo film noir that supported his graphic novel’s dark themes of paranoia and violence. He populated his world with great anti-heroes and femme fatale characters whose campy overacting added a layer of comic book authenticity, which was only possible because the script was strong and the characters were well developed. Even the cinematography was inventive and purposeful. Miller and Rodriguez used color like punctuation marks, elevating the emotional impact of certain actions (like the woman's eyes flashing blue at the beginning; or the slinky red dress, the flash of bright white blood); but in 300, the desaturated high contrast film style has been around for a while. It was made famous by such little-known films as Lord of the Rings and The Matrix, to name a few. So what made this film style so unique? Was it the gore, the blood? The menagerie of wild zoo animals? It certainly wasn’t the backgrounds. Sure the wheat field was pretty. But much of the film felt enclosed as if it were shot on some cheesy set. When they fought on the battlefield defending the Hot Gates and looking towards the massive Persian army, I kept wondering if somewhere out there Captain Kirk was waiting in the wings to get his Star Trek set back.The one visual effect I did like was the oracle scene with the girl swimming in the air. It would have been really great if she hadn’t looked so pained in the process of trying to hold her breath. But she did give it her best shot. Perhaps she could have used some lessons from Miss Tyra Banks - from that episode of America's Next Top Model when the challenge was underwater photography. Even I found myself preferring to watch her boobies than her eyes popping out of her head like a drowning squirrel.And since most of the film was one long fighting sequence, there was another directorial choice Mr. Snyder made that had me first perplexed, then bored. It was all the slow-mo battle shots. In the scenes where they slowed the action of the fighting down to such an extent that individual frames seemed to go on for an eternity, I had time to think about all the many problems of this film. I was tempted to give the projector a swift kick to see if that would help. Perhaps, we'll need to look more in depth at the story because it just oozes political rhetoric. The only problem is the story isn't deep enough to analyze. If you’re on the fence about whether to see this movie, maybe this will help: if you go, chances are high that you’ll come out with a severe headache from getting pounded over the head with the message that 'Persians are bad and we're in a fight for Western Civilization’. Every other word they yell is "free" or "freedom", Queen Gorgo tells us "freedom isn't free" (there's a funny reference to this line in a review in the NY Times by A.O. Scott where he says, "Another movie — Matt Stone and Trey Parker’s “Team America,” whose wooden puppets were more compelling actors than most of the cast of “300” — calculated the cost at $1.05.") In other words the dialogue is flat, the characters are weak, and the story is poorly written.But by far, the worst thing about this movie was the flamingly gay Mr. Clean. He had more make up on than a two-dollar whore, and whoever applied the gold rings to his face did such a fabulous job that you could see the clear demarcation between the fake bronzer and the fake skin itself. Yuck! And when Xerxes puts his hands on King Leonidas' shoulders, everyone in the audience laughed. By the end of the movie, I had stopped caring enough to start counting the Star Wars rip-offs: there's Jabba the Hut, those guys in the masks sound like Darth Vadar, and that little guy on the top of the hill looks like Yoda. But it seemed like Zack was throwing in a little bit of everything, 'cause I swear at one point I even saw Frodo in there somewhere. Needless to say, I was highly entertained by 300. Rarely does a film miss its mark so cleanly that it becomes fun to watch. So whether you go because you’ve heard it’s the best thing since buttered toast or because you’ve heard the opposite, one thing’s for sure -- you’ll be entertained. But if you skip it, don’t feel that you’ve missed much either. Rent it on DVD with friends, make up a drinking game where you have to chug beer every time someone yells “freedom” and get totally wasted. You’ll have a great time.

Anne Russell holds an M.F.A. from the USC Graduate School of Cinematic Arts and works as a TV producer. Being on the other side of the lens, it is her natural instinct to abhor the film critic. Imagine her surprise as she now finds herself playing the role. Luckily, she appreciates irony and still maintains her sanity as a filmmaker. In her blog, Flicker: 24fps, Anne can be found musing on a variety of off-beat topics, from tree swinging monkey-men in India to cupcake pornography.

Blogcritics Author: Anne Russell

Announcement: Short-content feeds

Movie Review: 300 Reasons Why You Shouldn't Feel Bad About Skipping 300