dear jesus

remember when the iraq war first ended? i’m not talking about the 90’s. i’m talking about fighter jet suits and mission accomplished banners. i’m talking about spring of 2003.

then it turned out the war wasn’t over. five years later, the war still isn’t over. five years. just like that bowie song.

but, for the next few paragraphs, i want to go back to that spring 2003 right after we thought the war was over but it turned out it had just begun. the real war. urban guerrilla warfare. imagine you’re working high up in the defense department or the pentagon or something. what do you do? watch a movie, obviously. but which movie?

the battle of algiers.

and they did. in real life. in fact, the pentagon made up a flier for it’s special screening of the battle of algiers:

How to win a battle against terrorism and lose the war of ideas. … Children shoot soldiers at point blank range. Women plant bombs in cafes. Soon the entire Arab population builds to a mad fervor. Sound familiar? The French have a plan. It succeeds tactically, but fails strategically. To understand why, come to a rare showing of this film.

captivating flier.

i also attended a special screening of the battle of algiers — movie night, july 9 2008 (which was wednesday night at my house; movie night is sometimes called big wednesday since it’s on wednesday, but, technically, big wednesday is actually the name of an earlier version of movie night named after the best surf movie ever made). but i think, even given our diverse locations and times, the pentagon and i watched the movie for somewhat the same reason: an interest in terrorism.

(i know worry, given how easy it is for the government to spy on me (thanks a lot, obama), that expressing an interest in terrorism coupled with the general cynicism of america that seems to be seeping out of every sentence that i write, which could be seen as anti-americanism, may cause me problems. paranoid, i know. but i’m talking about terrorism and anti-americanism? i’m guessing that those are two of the first words they look for while they’re out there scanning all our digital communications. i realize i’m being paranoid, but that fisa bill is bullshit.)

I saw Batman. I liked it. Heath Ledger was cool.

It seems like Batman films are directors’ properties. While there are hundreds of people involved in these productions (trust me, I stayed - on bad information - for all of the credits to Dark Knight) the director is who everyone is focusing on right now as far as filmmaking goes. Who’s better? Nolan, Burton?

Then, of course, is the star. I think Bale makes a fine Batman, but what about Adam West? Doesn’t he add a delightful twist to the franchise?

And gossip about who will be the next Batman villain is all the rage these days. (though we all know who won’t get the part, jerks)

So what if some of my favorite directors made a Batman film? Who would they cast as the Caped Crusader? Which Arkham nut case will try to get the job done?

Spike Lee

Well, obviously Batman would be black. Instead of blacking out the skin around his eyes with make up he could just wear the mask. Way less prep time = fewer citizen deaths. Spike Lee would definitely cast Denzel Washington. The man’s obsessed with that perfectly symmetrical face. Plus, Wesley Snipes is in jail for tax evasion.

Sure, Denzel would probably make a bit of a dopey Dark Knight, but Spike Lee gets a chance to direct a film as huge as Batman, he’s going with his golden boy for sure. But, Batman would be called Blackman, he’d be from Brooklyn instead of Gotham. When he’s not fighting crime, he’s a not-so-subtly racist cop. 

Blackman fights Superman, because Blackman can beat that alien bitch. Superman comes into Brooklyne, locking up all the young black men and trying to “save them from themselves” and Blackman kicks some foreign, aryan ass.

Blackman Got Game. Produced by:

Robert Altman

Robert Altman, known for his huge ensemble casts, never got a chance to direct a Batman film. It’s a shame that the closest he ever got was Popeye, and I hope we never forget what a film atrocity that is. But I think he might do a good job. I always like the spontaneity of his movies, and Batman could use a little improvisation, a little pick-up football game, a little country pizazz. 

That’s why Robert Altman would cast Warren Beatty as Batman. There have been a lot of Batman movies…he’s old, he’s tired. He might go into politics soon?

And you better believe Altman would find a way to fit every single Batman major villain he can into this one:

Alan Alda could play Robin.
Tim Robbins would be The Joker. (though he’d fight for the Batman role)
Julianne Moore would be Poison Ivy.
Robert Downey Jr. could play The Mad Hatter.
The Riddler could be played by Garrison Keillor. 

And he’d have some lesser known villains in there, too. He’d get some Calculator up in that shit! (for sure played by Donald Sutherland)

And finally: Catwoman played by Lily Tomlin:

Jane Campion

Batman probably wouldn’t be played by a woman - fascist that he is - but Poison Ivy is definitely making an appearance in this film.

Joshua Brolin might play Batman, but he wouldn’t get much screen time. This is a story about villains, and all the awesome, female empowering sex they’re having.

Poison Ivy (Nicole Kidman), Harley Quinn (Kirsten Dunst), the lesser known Jane Doe (Zooey Deschanel), and Catwoman (Naomi Watts) are four friends in relationships that are all at different levels of commitment. That’s not to say they’re afraid of a little girl on girl loving now and then. They’re open.

The movie will be Aussie heavy, and Brolin is only a sexual pawn in their game. 

Werner Herzog 

There’s only one man that can play Batman in Herzog’s version of the film and that would be this crazy ass:

Klaus Kinsky: notorious for holding people at gun point and walking off of every set he’s ever been on.

No one’s willing to fight this guy. Even The Joker shies away. The only guy Werner Herzog can possibly get to star opposite Kinsky? Himself.

By the way, a lot of the jokes (i.e. all of the Spike Lee jokes) in this post were from Scott, who helped me out a lot with this post.

Well, I did it. I made it through five Animals Attacking Humans films. It’s 3:29. I got home about 20 minutes ago (if I started to write about muni in SF this thing would end up longer than my thesis) and I’m exhausted but so happy.

Phase IV = masterpiece

Unexpected, right? I thought this one was going to be fun, maybe a little uncomfortable because of large numbers of insects and so on, but relatively harmless. Wrong! This movie is fucking awesome!

Here’s the break down: Solar eclipse causes a mutation in the ants. Different species start communicating with each other and it turns out what they are communicating can be summed up as “death to farm animals…oh, and some humans.” So some Sean-Connery-Want-To-Be scientist ant specialist guy sets up what appears to be a billion dollar science project in the middle of the rural South West, bringing  studly mathematician with him. While trying to kill ants with something called “Yellow,” they inadvertantly (and yet eerily nonchalauntly) kill some of their neighbors. Except this hottie young girl, who proceeds to develop some hard core sexual tension with the middle-aged mathematician. So, inexplicably, the ants turn out to be messin’ with all their heads and just want to make ant-people-hybrids with the old guy and his new teenage crush?

Awesome!

And, thing is, it sounds like a joke but it was genuinely creepy. Some well shot scenes with the (alien) ants and a really great show down between a praying mantis and an ant that’s fucking with the air conditioning (because when the temperature gets about 90, the computers won’t work. of course.)

Alligator = huge

If there’s one thing sewer alligators love to eat, it’s genetically mutated puppies. And the villains in this movie provide plenty of them as they scoop pets off the street and perform experimental surgeries on them, dumping their bodies in the sewer. 

Another movie I thought was going to be awful (in that fun way) and actually ended up being genuinely scary (sometimes). The film seems to accomplish this by showing brief flashes of alligator jaws hiding in the background instead of constantly zeroing in on a prey.

From a generic standpoint, the most delightful thing for me to see in this film is the scientist babe that, obviously, does it with the hero after hours of alligator hunting.

Jaws = not so boring

This is the third time I’ve seen Jaws and I’m finally willing to admit that it’s not as boring as I originally thought. Sure, there are some slow parts that have far too much to do with big game hunting, but seeing it on the big screen with a really clear print was an experience I never thought I’d never have, and I’m actually glad I did. Plus, it’s sort of a no-brainer for an Animals Attacking Humans marathon.

Did you know Lee Marvin was first choice to play the Robert Shaw part? He said he’d “rather go fishing” (according to IMDB). Too bad, I think that would have been awesome. Lee Marvin is walking sex, even at that age.

Day of the Animals = Jaws on crack

About 5 minutes into Day of the Animals - around the 47th time Leslie Nielson called Christopher George “Hot Shot” - I realized this was a movie you have to let kind of wash over you until you get to the serious killing. As Jesse, the host of Midnite for Maniacs pointed out, DOTA was really concerned with character development. In other words: they took their fucking time.

But when it got there, this movie really shined. As some man at the silent film festival remarked on seeing the promotional poster for this event proclaimed: “Leslie Nielson wrestles a bear? And she’s topless!” (he meant Leslie Nielson, not the bear. See the funny part is that he thought Leslie was a woman…see!…eh…) Not only does Leslie Nielson wrestle a bear, but he spears someone, tries to rape the dead guy’s girlfriend, pushes a grandma, and punches her 12-year-old grandson, all amidst thunder and lightning. 

Moral of the story? Take it easy on the hairspray, the ozone might deplete and every single animal (including Leslie Nielson) will want blood.

Piranha II: The Spawning = God awful

Weird tagline, because it actually wasn’t a vacation at all. There was a cop, his estranged wife, their kid, a military dude trying to clear his conscience, some dynamite fishermen, a doctor and some red-headed gold digger, two bitches on a house boat, and a whole bunch of other forgettable but really tan people that all seem to live on the island.

I hear tell (IMDB) that James Cameron, the credited director, had little to do with this movie. He was there for all the shooting, but this dude named Assonitis (sounds like an awful disease, har har) wouldn’t let him see the dailies. He also wasn’t allowed to have anything to do with editing. In fact, he snuck into the editing room and cut his own version, only to have Assonitis destroy it.

Despite all the drama, Cameron still says Piranha 2 is the best flying piranha movie ever made.

Let’s put it this way: I’d rather watching Piranha 2: The Spawning than Mama Mia any day.

A little trip down memory back-alley-trailer-park-Compton (where I spent a year of my childhood and which, subsequently, gives me mega-street cred):

I’m just as excited as everyone else about the new Batman movie. I can’t see it Friday because I’m lazy, Saturday because there’s an ANIMAL ATTACKING HUMANS MOVIE MARATHON, but I’ll for sure see it first thing Sunday morning. Hurray. But here’s the deal: the Joker? There are so many crazy villains to choose from and they have to choose the Joker to face for the four hundreth time?

...the silly nilly.

Yeah yeah yeah. Heath Ledger is dead. How dare you deface his last role! etc.

All I’m saying is the reason Batman Begins was so rad was because they experimented with different villains, namely - my second favorite villain - Scarecrow. Using a villain that has already been done - and been done right - just seems a little boring to me.

So why not bring back a villain that has barely been done?

...the slut.

Poison Ivy has long been my favorite villain. Which makes absolutely no sense. When I was a kid I was always a big fan of male super-heroes, or girls who resembled male super-heroes. I spent my time pretending I was Bravestar and, for a month, the Tin Man. Rainbow Bright made an appearance…

...the stud.

...the softie.

...the cutie.

…but none were so important to me as Batman, Robin, and Poison Ivy.

I’d like to pretend that the reason I liked her so much was because she was an environmentalist and a man-hater, but I think I just liked her because she had cool looking green eyes. I also liked her outfit because it reminded me of Peter Pan, another androgynous fictional character I loved.

The role has been attempted by Uma Thurman, but we all remember what a disaster that movie was. I say give Nicole Kidman another shot. She’s got the height and the legs and her previous Batman adventure was so incredibly lame I can’t even believe it. She’s cool. Because for every Days of Thunder there’s a Dogville. And a Dark Knight 2?

So, anyway, Poison Ivy is cool, but I never wanted to dress up as her. I hate tights.

...the idiot.

This post was a part of Big Mike’s Movie Blog Batman blogathon:

i stole this title from a recent blog-post wordpress told me about when i logged in. (do you think it’s interesting that wordpress’s own spellchecker doesn’t recognize wordpress as a word? or spellchecker, for that matter. maybe it’s supposed to be hyphenated. spell-checker.) i think this blog-post’s (the one you’re reading right now) sister blog-post (the one i stole the title from) was about the end of comic books conventions. i think i’m using conventions in a more general sense, but doomed in it’s comic book sense. speaking of stolen titles, check out this.

that's a lie

but not totally a lie. like it’s real in the way that north by northwest is a real movie, but definitely not real in the way the trailer is promoting it. for instance, 98% of the movie is shot in a studio including scenes supposedly taking place in the woods outside of mount rushmore. that means that nearly everything we see is fake. but really, when you think about it, that’s the case with every movie ever since they’re all technical reproductions. and one of the best things about hitchcock is the way he’s always pointing out the artifice in all his films.

it's reminds me of the house in body double

let me mention a couple of my favorite jokes from north by northwest besides the part where cary grant gets punched in the face by the cop and the part where he’s looking at mount rushmore.

1. there’s this part were eva saint shoots grant in some lobby. she pulls out her gun, but before she shoots, this kid in the background plugs his ears. before she shoots. a mistake, right? a couple minutes later there’s a radio broadcast about the shooting which quotes a ten-year old boy saying that there was a lot of shouting before the gun was fired which would explain why he was plugging his ears before the gun went off. that’s a joke no one is going to notice. i only noticed the kid plugging his ears because my roommate noticed it and couldn’t help laughing. and if we wouldn’t have rewound it to make sure the kid actually plugs his ears before the shooting, we never would have made the connection to the kid quoted in the 15 second radio broadcast later in the show.

2. the ending. from hanging on the edge of mt rushmore to being pulled up into bed to a train going through a tunnel in under 5 seconds. the end.

Days like these remind me how much I’m going to miss San Francisco. Scott and I volunteered at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival and saw two pretty fantastic movies with really incredible live accompaniment. Basically we had to be festival bouncers for about 20 minutes and then we got to sit in the balcony (what we were informed were traditionally the most expensive tickets in the silent era: more leg room and best acoustics) and watch the movies for free. 

Here are some perks about volunteering at the silent film festival:

*Meeting interesting people. This man named Kyle told us all about the aforementioned balcony seats. Scott’s favorite film history professor (Ms. Scott, eerily enough) talked with us about our theses. And my San Francisco mega-crush Jesse (he hosts the Midnites for Maniacs events at the Castro) was really nice and funny and cute and interesting as usual. And now I can actually say that from personal experience…

*The Castro Theatre. This place is incredible. Check out this ceiling:

*Free Free Free! Usually the Castro is a little too expensive for me. I always go to the Midnites for Maniacs because I get to see three films for the price of one (and this upcoming weekend: FIVE!) but last weekend I skipped Lawrence of Arabia because I just don’t have that kind of money. Volunteering allows me to see awesome movies without the guilt.

*Power!!! Being a bouncer means you get to make a lot of people really mad. I love that.

Les Deux Timides (Rene Clair, 1928 )
The first film of the day is somewhat famous for its innovative use of split screens. The editing was superb. The split screens sort of flow seamlessly into the narrative and the characters look like they are interacting with each other unknowingly through space. 

An abusive husband spins a yarn about how he really treats his wife.

I think the most refreshing thing about this film compared to other silents I’ve seen is the fact that it’s French and escapes the silly conventions of the American Production Code. Oh my God! A married couple shown in bed with the implication of upcoming sex? Scandalous! 

So many good, subtle jokes. The story follows a lawyer who defends a domestic abuser poorly and sends him to jail for the maximum sentence (a whole three months). Two years later the lawyer and the abuser fall in love with the same woman. Wackiness ensues. The timid lawyer finally “gets some cojones” (as sexist people and some awesome people say) and stands up to the abuser, ending in a pretty hilarious slap fight.

Mikael (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1924)

I love Dreyer. And I feel like I can say that having only seen two of his films because I feel like the two films of his I’ve seen (The Passion of Joan of Arc and Ordet) have been two of the most influencial in all of my experience with film. Dreyer seems to be able to combine drama and spirituality in ways that completely boggle me. Paul Schrader has this to say about my man Dreyer: “Throughout Dreyer’s films and his writings about film there runs a consistent thread of ambiguity: whether art should express the Transcendent or the person (fictional character or film-maker) who experiences the Transcendent; whether the Transcendent is an outer reality or an inner reality” (Transcendental Style in Film, 112). 

Mikael is Dreyer’s take on the style called Kammerspielfilm (chamber play films). This style of filmmaking is intended to be more intimate, simple and symoblic. Again, Schrader: “Complex psychological states were revealed through meticulous staging, an insinuating manner, weight, deeply-felt gestures, and a ponderous slowness” (114-115.)

This certainly describes Mikael, a love triangle themed drama with homosexual undertones. The fact that everything remains symbolic and yet just under the surface was impressive to me. For example, the main character, a painter who has become attached to the young man who poses for him, continually refers to Mikael as a son, but the real relationship between the painter and Mikael is fairly obvious. Again, a gay drama from 1924? I love countries that aren’t the U.S.!

The film looks beautiful, takes its time, and in the end is a successful, moving tragedy. But not quite the same kind of tragedy of this little gem:

Your eyes are not deceiving you, that is a soft focus on John Travolta. And a dog with a feather in its mouth.

billy wilder. can that guy even make a bad movie? wait. what i meant to ask is this: can that guy make anything other than excellent movies?

clarifications on the question:
(1) i think it’s rhetorical,
(2) i’m using excellent in the same way bill and ted use it,
(3) i understand and firmly believe that the qualification of an excellent for a movie is a matter of personal taste,
(4) an excellent movie, imo, is one that blows me away,
(5) i haven’t developed an aesthetic or theoretical framework for movies that blow me away because those movies that do blow me away can seemingly be so different from like star wars: episode 3 to the passion of joan of arc,
(6) even though billy wilder has made films in like ten different genres, every film i’ve seen by him has blown me away,
(7) kiss me, stupid was no exception.

one of my favorite things about wilder is he knows how to pack in the jokes.  i mean that’s a three-way love seat.  and kim novak is actually a prostitute pretending to be that other guys wife so that when dean martin has sex with her he’ll have to buy one of that guy’s songs.  and his wife doesn’t know about any of this.  and he wears a beethoven sweatshirt for half the movie.  and has a schubert and bach sweatshirt in his closet.  because he’s a piano teacher.  and the whole thing takes place in climax nevada.  in fact, half of the movie is terribly funny sex jokes, but thinly disguised sex jokes since it is the early sixties and everyone is still uptight about all that.  and dean martin is hilarious.  he plays himself and he’s always drunk and is addicted to sex.  if he doesn’t get laid, his head just doesn’t feel right in the morning.  (that’s funny.)

i could go on and on and on listing all the jokes, but you should just watch it.

Russian Ark reminded me of this one time I went to The Louvre and saw Tom Delonge with a camcorder, shooting video of every painting he passed. At the time I was all like, “That’s stupid. What, he’s going to go back and watch all of that footage later?” Well, maybe he really likes Rembrandt but is too cheap to buy the book of his paintings from the gift shop. Maybe he has trouble sleeping - and doesn’t own a copy of any Tarkovsky films - and so he makes his own sleep-enduser movies. Or, maybe he was inspired by this little film:

In a nut shell, Russian Ark is about the history of Russia and how that fits into the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg. In a thinly constructed attempt at plot, there is a man who has perhaps recently died, who encounters “The European” (based on some guy named Marquis de Custine, a man I hadn’t heard of until I read the Wikipedia entry on the movie. every time they referred to the guy as the “Marquis” I thought they were talking about the Marquis de Sade. It goes without saying that I was sort of expecting a crazier ending…) and they proceed to move through the rooms, each representing a different period of Russian history.

Not being a Russian history afficianado (I know nothing about it), Russian Ark was hard for me to follow. I perked up when I heard names like Mikhail or Anastasia, but most everything I learned about Russian I learned from cartoons, and turns out that cold death-trap of a country isn’t so popular with Disney. That’s not to say that you must know Russian history well in order to enjoy the movie, as has been suggested in many reviews. I think a general knowledge of art provides enough of a base. 

However, I know a little about the art in the Heritage Museum (I was especially excited to see some sculptures by Canova) and I didn’t really enjoy the film. Everyone talks about how the movie is boring, but I submit that it is not boring enough. The character named “The European” is constantly talking, making noises like a distressed Anime character. He grunts and groans and says “mhmm” throughout the entire film, making Russian Ark far too noisy.

I think the choice of shooting in one take is amazing (a bit of a gimick, but still amazing). I think the design of the piece is incredible, and the coordination of it all is astounding. That said, it would have been much more interesting if they had been just a bit braver, abandoning the chatty narrators who feel the need to explain everything incessantly, and moving through the rooms without guidance. It seems to me they are going for a Wings of Desire kind of effect, but only as a way to try to keep people entertained. Their chief concern is obviously the camera and they would have done better to step back and let the camera do all the talking.

Overall, not a horrible hour and a half. It certainly didn’t deserve to be on my top five films I never wanted to see, but I’m also not that excited that I finally saw it. I think Russian Ark might be a film I forget by next week (unless I use it as a way to explain cinematography in intro classes, which is where I first encountered the film). Whether that is my fault for being uninformed, or the filmmaker’s fault for being caught by typical narrative techniques is up for grabs.

So I know there is probably no one else that reads this blog that cares about graphic novel adaptations as much as I do right now. I don’t know…maybe there are a few of you out there who are film-masochists and really enjoy watching fairly awful movies just to pick them apart….if so, we should meet, because I get really bored watching Sin City by myself for the fifteenth time. For those of you who maybe only read the graphic novel once and maybe saw the movie about .5 times (about as much as that movie deserved), this post will take us through the gender role horror that is V for Vendetta.

Reading the graphic novel V for Vendetta, I was pretty disturbed by the flat and masochistic character of Evey. We first see Evey at 16-years-old, getting dressed up for her first night as a prostitute. For whatever reason (the novel doesn’t specify) Evey is unable to support herself through a day job and so takes to the streets in a very immature and naive way. Perhaps jobless Evey is supposed to convince us how the system has failed. Living in this Big Brother-like society, Evey must resort to child prostitution in order to afford her tiny apartment? This sort of poverty, however, is never discussed in relation to any of the other characters, who are mostly upper-middle class Londoners with their own flats. The night when we first meet Evey she is roaming the streets, being everything but sexy when she asks someone if they would like to “um…sleep with…um…[her].” It is clear that she is nervous, but it’s also clear that she has no plan of action and no street smarts. She immediately gets herself into trouble with government officials and this is when V must jump in to save her.

Contrast this with the portrayal of Evey in the film version of V for Vendetta. Here Evey seems to be an on-the-ball PA for one of the most popular television programs in the country. She quickly manipulates her way through her setting, proving her familiarity with her surroundings and the ease with which she performs at her job. Her apartment is still tiny, but it is not barren and she seems comfortable with her place in society. It is when going to a “friends house” (what later turns out to be her boss’s home) that she is cornered by the government agent. Evey still has to be rescued by V, but in this case she was completely in charge of her situation before the government intervened.

The two Eveys representation itself is radically different. Evey in the book is given blonde hair, a youthful, but distressed face, and every indication that she is worried most of the time (the mature graphic novel’s version of the squiggle line). Evey in the film is played by Natalie Portman, and Portman’s star power offers a lot to Evey’s representation. Harvard grad, fluent in Hebrew, takes pretty smart-sassy roles, hot, hott, hawt! (I love Natalie Portman so much). Adding what we know about Portman as a star to what we know about Evey as a character, Evey becomes more complex, but still problematic.

In the behind the scenes doc on the DVD, the director of V, James McTeigue, actually comes right out and says that they wanted to Evey’s character smarter and less of an obvious pawn of V (a fact I’m sure made Alan Moore even pissier about his novel being made into a film without his current permission). I think they succeed. In addition to the aforementioned details, the way Evey treats her imprisonment, torture, and subsequent reeducation in the film is much more nuanced than her reaction in the novel. In the film Evey is confused, she’s angry that V didn’t trust her, that he changed her personality without her permission, and that - obviously - he tortured her. At the same time, she seems to be oddly attracted to him, or at least to appreciate what he has “done to her.” So while there seems to be a suggestion that Evey is manipulated into loving V through torture, there also seems to be a condemnation, or at least an examination of, these feelings. After V reveals to Evey that he was her torturer, she leaves for an unclear period of time, significantly keeping her head shaved and owning her new attitude. In the novel Evey is distraught by her torture, but soon (within frames) thanks V for teaching her. She stays in his mansion and continues to support him until their big day. 

The reasons for this shift in gender representation is still a little unclear to me. I think most importantly is the fact that audiences change rather radically from novel to screen. The comics community is generally pretty closed. Even graphic novels like V for Vendetta that reach out to a wider audience than traditional comics (a few older readers and female readers, though these two groups are still in the minority) a majority of the readers are young men. Trying to satisfying a larger film audience that will include many more women might explain some of the changes. 

There is also the time lapse between the novel and the film to account for. Written in 1982, the representations of women in novels and films were often struggling. For those of us born before 1990, we sometimes forget that 1982 was 26 years ago. And some of you old fogies might forget how long that is: it’s over a quarter of a century! A lot can change gender-wise in 25 years.

So I’m still playing with these ideas about gender shifts in V for Vendetta. I would really appreciate comments from those of you who have seen the movie or read the comic book. The thesis process isn’t going quite as quickly as I’d hoped, and your comments who help me a lot. Even if you don’t know what V for Vendetta is I’d love to hear from you. Comments are the best part about blogging.

Of all the graphic novel adaptations to date, 300 is the most poetic and subtle.

Weighing in at a deserved $210,592,590 gross, 300 has kept delightful teenage fan boys entertained for hours. And with so much of the movie in slow motion, that’s pretty awesome.

Here are some things I love about 300:

5. Just about as right-wing as I like it. Just about. It would have been way better if they could have made those bad guys look just a little more Arabic. Some people just don’t quite catch that Persians are pretty much the same thing as Iraqis.

But at least they give each other back rubs. That’s cute.

4. That female character is so complex and well-developed. Like, she totally prostitutes herself to help her husband’s doomed war. I bet George wishes Laura would go to bat for him like that.

3. Aforementioned slow motion. I think it is approximately 85% of the film that is shot in slow motion. Play the whole thing at a regular speed, and remove all the shots we see from 23 angles, and 300 is actually 18.4 minutes long.

2. Muscles!!! I don’t even care at all that their stomachs are defined through makeup, those bods is hawt.

1. Fake British accents. How delightful. There’s nothing I love more.

I also really appreciate the fact that they cover up all those nasty parts we see way too much of in the graphic novel version of the narrative (peni. sick.) but we still get to see a lot of the hot parts (titties!).

Hey everybody, join in on the Bizarro Blog-A-Thon fun over at lazyeyetheatre.blogspot.com.