Happy 600th post!

Holy shit. 600? Really? That sounds kind of significant. I should do something. Something movie related. Hmm...what could I do that would be interesting and celebrate my 600th post properly? A review you say? Nah. Too cliche. You'd be expecting me to do a review. What's that? I never do reviews anymore? Who invited you? I'm done taking questions from the press.

I have some hobbies. Hobbies that are not movie related. I read. I'm learning to play the ukulele. And I play with my cameras. Well, one of my cameras, I like to use for making time lapse videos. I find it fun to do. And, as an added bonus, once it's taking pictures, I can take my short attention span and go do something else. Like read! Or play the ukulele! Woo!


For some reason, I thought it would be a good idea to do a time lapse video of my apartment tonight. Ok, I'm lying. It was an idea for sure, I just don't know that it was a good one. Anyways, I took almost 800 pictures. And cleaned. And did normal stuff. Is it an interesting video? Eh. It is, however, set to music. And THAT I find hilarious!



Admittedly, the music is the work of Tyler Bates from the 300 score, which I feel is used in a parodic manner and allowed as fair use. Perhaps my interpretation is wrong, I suppose YouTube will let me know.

Milla, what happened? You used to make such good movies...

I really wanted to do something special for my 300th post. Why? I don't know, it seemed like a good idea at the time. Boy was I wrong.

I decided I wanted to see a brand new movie. Something at the old cinema. Something I could overpay for and watch among strangers. And, since I was in Atlanta, and away from my dvd player at home, it seemed like a reasonable plan to go up to Atlantic Station to see Resident Evil: Extinction.

What a piece of shit.*

No, I'm serious. Total garbage.

Look, I really liked the first movie. I thought that it had some really good moments and worked well as a zombie movie. And then came the sequel. Which, I enjoyed. It was a good action movie, I wished they'd done more with the zombies, but Nemesis was cool. The third one though, I just can't explain.

It's at this point that I would normally give a rundown of what happened. The problem here is that...well, NOTHING happened. For 95 minutes, no one did anything, and nothing was accomplished. This was supposed to be Milla's last turn as Alice, the genetically mutated zombie killer, and they left the whoel thing wide open for a fourth movie starring Milla.

"What's going on here? I have no idea..."

I'm going to give you a bit of a spoiler here. Alice's blood is the key to curing the T virus outbreak, and at one point she is in a facility with everything she needs to make the cure, so what does she do? Does she make a cure? Who the fuck knows! They never tell us. She raises an army of Alice clones to go after the CEO of Umbrella. End of movie. That's it.

The movie exists almost entirely to kill everyone off. Carlos and LJ return and are a part of Claire's convoy, cruising around the desert aimlessly. They're looking for supplies, but have no base, and no destination. Until Alice comes along with a journal from a dead guy who claims that their might be safety in Alaska. They go to Vegas looking for gas, at which point everyone dies. Well, most everyone. Well, most everyone except for the people who had just been killed by the zombie crows.

Oh, and Alice has mind powers.

Things just happen for no reason. Nothing is explained. And in what should be the closing act of your saga, nothing is wrapped up. The movie itself is an exercise in futility. There is nothing to become emotionally invested in. It's a group of entirely one dimensional characters. There is no real conflict in the movie. And there is nothing for them to do. I'd say it was the epitome of banality if I knew what banal** meant.

Rather than showing any real action, director Russell Mulcahy uses quick edits to give the appearance of action. This is a lazy technique used by incompetent directors everywhere. It's a way for implying action when you are incapable of actually showing anything. It's a cheap trick.

And good old Paul WS Anderson goes on, once again, to show what a fucking hack he is. The only thing he's worse at than writing seems to be directing. So, I guess it could have been worse. Can someone please tell me why Hollywood keeps letting this guy work?

The upside of the entire experience was seeing the trailers for Iron Man and 30 Days of Night. Both of which look pretty fucking sweet.

Resident Evil: Extinction gets 3 zombies swarming around the compound until the fence is blown wide open and the mysteriously decide to stay out of the compound of their own volition out of 10. And, I'd like to add a simple plea...please stop. Let this be the last movie. I don't think I can take much more.

*In all fairness, I reacted the same way after seeing Episode 3 for the first time. I now love it.
**I know what it means.

Go tell the Spartans, passerby, that here, by Spartan law, we lie

I actually went to the theater to see a movie! I know, I say that every time I do this, don't I? It's getting repetitive, isn't it? Shit. Well, I don't know how else to start this off. I guess I'm sort of a one trick pony in that regard. You know what? Fuck it. I just won't say anything.

Nothing.

Not one word.

...

...

Okay! You win! I'll tell you about it. I went to see Zack Snyder's adaptation of Frank Miller's graphic novel 300. It's the story of the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC, when 300 Spartan soldiers faced off against the might of King Xerxes's Persian army. An army that numbered close to one million.

The story itself is told from the perspective of a Spartan soldier, his name was not Faramir, it was just the same actor. His Spartan name was Dilios which sounds like a white guy trying to speak in some sort of misappropriated urban slang. Dilios was at the battle. He saw everything first hand. And it is through his remaining eye that everything is explained.

Spartans are trained for battle from birth. It's what they do. They are not blacksmiths. They are not farmers. They do not sell slurpees at the 7-11. They fight. Everything in their culture is about the glory of battle. They are led by King Leonidas. It was Leonidas who toldthe emissary of Xerces that the Spartans would not sumbit to the Persians. It was Leonidas who killed the emissary instead of letting him inform Xerxes.

Leonidas was bound by law to visit an Oracle to seek favor in battle, and when it was not given, it was Leonidas who decided to take 300 men and fight the Persians anyways, in violation of Spartan law. He claims that the 300 men are his personal bodyguards and he's just going out for a walk. And boy do the politicians look stupid when they realize what's really going on...and that's when Balki shows up with a plan...wait, no. That was a rerun of Perfect Strangers. Sorry about that. I got confused. Man, wasn't that show hilarious though! Don't be ridiculous! Ha! Classic, man. Classic.

The Spartans head for the Hot Gates. A narrow pass where numbers won't matter. A place where 300 men could stand up to an army a million soldiers strong. They set up camp and soon begin it's defense.

They fight. It's a brutal and violent battle, even by brutal and violent battle standards. It makes Braveheart look like a Merchant Ivory movie. Actually, that should have been the tagline for the movie. Can you see that on the posters?

Hey! Where are you guys going?

The Spartans manage to defeat the first wave of fighting, and then the second. It's at this point that Xerxes meets with Leonidas to salute his valor and offer him various rewards for his surrender. Xerxes offers him rule of all of Greece, power, money, a brand new convertible and whatever is behind door number 3, all he has to do is kneel.

Dammit! This is SO going in my livejournal!

I think it goes without saying that Leonidas won't kneel. As a result, Xerxes sends in his special forces, The Immortals. The Spartans want to know if it's true, or just a clever nickname. Well, thanks to the gates...The Immortals don't fare any better.

Look at me! I'm tough! Grr!

The battles continue until the inevitable final showdown between the Spartans and Xerxes. One last battle with the odds completely against the Spartans. Surround by the Persian armies on all sides and no help coming.

300 is, from a technical standpoint, a pretty amazing thing. Shot almost entirely on blue screen, it feels like a comic book jumping off of the page. Snyder makes great use of varying the speed of motion during the battles to really complete the effect. Everything comes to a standstill on screen just for a split second to frame it in your mind.

Admittedly, 300 is not 100% historically accurate. It's a movie. It's not supposed to be 100% historically accurate. It's supposed to be more entertaining than real history. It's Frank Miller's version of history. More than that, it's Dilios' version. The story is told from his perspective. He's retelling it. He's trying to embolden the allied Greek troops before the Battle or Plataea.

The only thing I'm left wondering is shuld I buy this when the DVD comes out? I mean, I know I'd like to check out an making of type stuff, and commentaries of course, but is it something that I'll really want to watch again. I mean, we just finished a week of my favorite movies. Does this compare? Not really. It was enjoyable and pretty engrossing, but it's kind of like, okay, I've seen it, now what? 7 and a half canopies of arrows raining down on you out of 10.