March 9, 2007
Film Friday: This...Is...STARTER! (For 10)
Torontoist officially can’t wait for the first home renovation programme to have its interior designer kick open a door to an empty room and scream "This…Is…SPARTAN!" referencing this week’s biggest release, 300. On the topic of 300, we link you to the best review ever featured on the otherwise not-particularly-good Ain’t It Cool News. Neill Cumpston enthuses, "If you watch this movie and go into a Taco Bell, and say to the cashier, 'I need some extra sauce packets' guess what? You’re getting twenty sauce packets because your face will punch him in the brain."
Says it all, really. (Thanks to Justin for the link.)
Anyway, now we’ve used up our one good joke of the week (the "Spartan" thing up there) it obviously makes sense to mention the World of Comedy Film Festival. Almost completely composed of shorts, it starts tonight with A Feast of Comedy Shorts, which includes, excellently, an Aardman Animation, at 7 p.m. The solo feature is I Will Avenge You, Iago, tomorrow at the same time. All screenings are at Innis Town Hall, 2 Sussex.
If comical shorts don’t suit you, then perhaps the special screening of this year’s Oscar-nominated documentary shorts at the Bloor Cinema (506 Bloor West) on Saturday afternoon, 12:15 p.m. might. The screening includes winner The Blood of Yingzhou District. If you’re more interested in a feature-length doc, the Royal (608 College) starts A Crude Awakening: Oilcrash tonight at 7 p.m. They follow it with Fabián Bielinsky’s drama El Aura at 9 p.m.
The NFB is continuing to show screenings for International Women’s Week, too. Check out the website for details.
If nothing suits, there is, of course, always Cinematheque Ontario, continuing their excellent season of Russian sci-fi, including, of course, Solaris on Monday at 6:30 p.m. screening, as ever, at Jackman Hall (317 Dundas West)
On general release, well, other than 300, of course, there’s Starter for 10, which we recommend you avoid having seen it at TIFF 2006. "Chock-full of every possible student cliché, and has a rather forced plot," we said. The Namesake, directed by Monsoon Wedding’s Mira Nair and starring Kal Penn, also played at TIFF and we should have gone to see that instead, even though it’s suffered mixed reviews. Eye’s Jason Anderson considers it "shapeless, overextended and dull," but NOW’s Glenn Sumi argues, "you won't want it to end."
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For the record, 300 is a terrible movie, an unabashed ovation for American aggression that attempts to serve as a rallying cry for an attack on Iran; as such, it's essentially an irony-free and even more racist version of Team America. (One character even remarks that "Freedom isn't free.")
And these are actual roles listed in the cast credits:
That said, the makeup and creature effects are spectacularI don't think many people will be going to see 300 for much else other than the make up and effects (although, maybe also the dudity.)
I believe the actual line is "This is Sparta!" as in the citystate of Sparta, not the adjective derived therefrom.
That's the joke!
Am I the only one who thoroughly enjoyed 300? Action, monsters, nudity, screaming, blood, guts, and gore? All set to a kick-ass soundtrack? I'll take it!
I always enjoy good puns on Torontoist.
Frank Miller's 300 was first published as a five-part series in 1998. The dialogue (except for the film-only Gorgo subplot) is lifted directly from the comics. Who was invading Iran then? Clinton?
Well, I'm not really familiar with the original graphic novels, but for the record Clinton did launch a strike against Iraq in 1998 (although I doubt that's relevant). What is relevant is that Snyder was certainly aware of the context in which he was making his film and into which it would be released. Which is not to say that any conservative ideology was necessarily conscious on his part, but it's present nonetheless.
I wanted to be able to interpret the movie as either a satire or an inversion (such that the Western Spartans represented "freedom fighters" or "terrorists" defending themselves against the march of a Middle Eastern imperialism), but I found the film to really discourage those readings. Ironically, its subversive aesthetics seemed to work in the service of the dominant ideology and not against it.
I'd write more if I weren't running out to Cinematheque now.
If you were familiar with the graphic novel, we wouldn't be having this discussion. Director Zack Snyder added a B-story about Leonidas' wife and political intrigues back at home. As I mentioned above, all of the main character dialogue was lifted directly from the graphic novel. It if was significantly adapted (say to be far less representative of Spartan martial values), it wouldn't be Frank Miller's 300 anymore, it would be someone else's.
Beyond all that, what are canny Hollywood producers supposed to do? Wait until their movie ideas are completely incapable of being tied to any contentious domestic or foreign affairs, and then release them? That sounds like a recipe for blockbuster profits, all right.
But it's the "B-story about Leonidas' wife and political intrigues back at home" that has the most obvious parallels to current and recent events! I fully expected Gorgo to brandish a vial of anthrax during her speech to the governing council.
The most convincing argument I've seen against a current-events reading is John Harkness's review in the new Now:
It's an interesting line of inquiry, but Snyder says he wasn't thinking about Bush while making the film. Having heard the director's commentary on his remake of Dawn Of The Dead, I don't think he's someone who thinks deeply about this sort of thing.
That NYT article, by the way, is here. And it seems that A.O. Scott's review from last Friday makes the same Team America comparison that I did. AlterNet takes it several steps further than I would, however, by actually condemning as right-wing anyone who loves the film.
Sometmies a cigar is just a cigar, Jonathan. Any right/left angles are entirely in the mind of individual audience members.
You don't seem to have any trouble sorting it out as an "unabashed ovation for American aggression that attempts to serve as a rallying cry for an attack on Iran" but are now backtracking to say that maybe the director didn't think too hard before cranking it out.
I think Snyder knew exactly what he was doing -- making a fun movie for adults -- and a lot of people (right or left) are reading their own political agendas into it. He is pretty blatant about his intentions to other interviewers, but I suppose the New York Times was not listening too carefully.
Sorry for the confusion, but "blockquote" doesn't seemed to have worked the way I wanted it to, even though it looked fine in the preview.
The paragraph beginning with "It's an interesting..." and ending with "...sort of thing" is actually a continuation of the quote from Harkness's review; my point was that what he wrote was "the most convincing argument I've seen against a current-events reading." And after looking at that SuicideGirls interview you linked to, it does seem more plausible that Snyder is too aloof to comprehend the politics of his own film.
Anyone who makes a movie about a Western army fighting against Iran in ancient times without considering the contemporary implications is an idiot, regardless of how closely they followed their source material. I haven't seen this movie, but every review I've read has mentioned its troubling politics and homophobia. I think explaining all that highly problematic ideology away by calling the film simply "a fun movie for adults" is actually kinda dangerous.