Standing outdoors. Then: don't see 300
Having spent almost no time online this week, I kind of binged today. There was a moment this evening… I was fetching some juice from the fridge… when instead of reaching out to grasp the fridge door-handle, my hand moved semi-consciously as though to mouse-click a notional ‘open’ button on the fridge. The cognitive dissonance was unsettling to say the least. So I immediately went for a long walk outdoors.
I stood under a tree at the edge of a field and watched a small group of cows. They were, like myself, standing around doing very little. Unlike myself, they were very occasionally taking mouthfuls of vegetation and slowly chewing them. For my part, I ate a portion of heavily-vinegared chips from the village chip-shop. It turned out to be an excellent antidote to information-overload.
Taste of grass, and vinegar
Broader horizons
Later, myself and a cousin went to see 300. I feel compelled to say the following; please don’t waste your money. It’s an awful film! It has enough redeeming features — just about — to keep you sitting in the cinema once you’ve paid your money. Though having said that, I’d possibly have walked out if I’d been on my own. At the time I wasn’t to know that my cousin was thinking exactly the same thing.
Redeeming features… it is occasionally very pleasing to the eye. But so is MTV, and I don’t want to pay a tenner to watch two solid hours of that. Hmmmm… OK, redeeming feature then.
Because beyond that, it’s a bunch of unlikeable and interchangeable half-naked body-builders shouting “We’re Fucking Hard, We Are!” Occasionally the King of Sparta gives a speech to his men in a style that veers oddly between Genghis Khan and the President of America as played by Harrison Ford.
With some judicious editing, 300 would make a fantastic six minute video for a Rammstein track.
UPDATE: Via Ken MacLeod, check out this review of 300.
Well, I quite liked it…
April 4th, 2007 | 3:48pm
by david
You didn’t really, did you David? How could anyone like that turgid piece of crap?
April 25th, 2007 | 4:56pm
by Jim
It passed the time… I suppose I’m just a sucker for big stupid action movies. Though the “didn’t you spill my pint?” dialogue was pretty funny at times too: that bit at the start where Spartan No.1 pushes the Persian emissaries down the unfeasibly deep and dark and obviously Health & Safety regulations-flouting well yelling “This is Sparta!” for instance. I didn’t understand the bit wih the big bad wolf either… All those manly chests and dinky little costumes…I dunno, maybe it just spoke to the repressed Village People fan inside me. And I thought the end credits were rather stylishly done.
I mean come on, it wasn’t exactly Triumph of the Will (it wasn’t that good for a start) And it was adapted from a Frank Miller comic so you could hardly expect subtlety.
And just to prove I don’t *only* go to see high-octane crap in my local multiplex I’ve just been to see Curse of the Golden Flower which was eye-dazzlingly great cinema. Colours, costumes, acting, action (now I mention it, there *was* a big battle scene at the end too and everything but it was quality entertainment and sometimes that’s all you want from a film…)
April 30th, 2007 | 4:32pm
by david