Friday, September 22, 2006

Go Tell the Spartans...

At this rate, Frank Miller is going to become known as the most filmable creator in comic books.

I keep watching this trailer. It’s beautifully stylized. It hits the high points of Spartan culture subtly, brushes on the historic significance of the battle of Thermopylae, and the insane courage of the three hundred who stood in that narrow place. It’s an awesome story, all the more amazing for being true, and Frank Miller did incredible work with it.

The Spartans themselves were one of those peoples that make modern historians have little fits. You can see them as the exceptions that make the rules, or the truth that shatters many popular myths: that matriarchal societies are peaceful and gentle, that freedom is a weakness in a violent world, and individuals are powerless in the grip of history.

As someone who has loved mythology since childhood, I eagerly await “Pan’s Labyrinth”. As a history and anthropology geek, I can’t wait to see “Apocalypto”. But right now, “300” is the movie I want to see the most.

Update: And of course right after I post, iFilm takes the video down. Phooey! Keep your eyes open for this one, folks. It looks great.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Oddly enough, I posted a comment about the 300 trailer on my blog on Saturday!

You can still see it at:
http://download.ifilm.com/qt/portal/2773266_300.mov, or at least you could this morning.

I also downloaded the trailer, just in case this might happen. If it goes "missing" I'll pop it on my own web site.

trollsmyth said...

Thanks for the link! :D

And you should feel free to promote your blog here. You've got a lot of interesting things there.

- Brian

Unknown said...

Thank you, Brian! I plan to mention your blog on mine this week.

Oh, and thanks for mentioning Girl Genius in your blog. I was a fan of Foglio's work, but lost track of it. There's a comic store in the city where I live now, but it's kind of sad. They don't sell many graphic novels and they don't have a lot of copies to pick something up "on spec". I didn't even know about Girl Genius until I read your blog today, and then later on I saw a post on RPG.net referencing it!

I'll check out Outsider, too!

- Allan