300

So I have two friends (can you believe that?) who appear to be on opposite sides of the fence when it comes to the upcoming movie by Frank Miller (comic book writing legend and director of the fantastic movie/graphic novel Sin City, which I've talked about before) called "300."

In the historical "last stand" Battle of Thermopylae, King Leonidas of Sparta led 300 of his troops against the massive Persian army of Xerxes. Although they fought to the death, their selfless, loyal act united Greece against the bigger war against Xerxes.

Mike, who is even more of a history nutter then I am (at least when it comes to historical battles), thinks it's a bastardization of the historical importance of this event. And it was important. During a recent rousing and drunken (can you believe that?) Christmas party at our humble abode, we got onto the topic of history and how we no longer as a people learn from (or remember for that matter) what happened in the past. At some point during my drunken schpeel I made a comment to the effect that certain events throughout history changed the entire course of human history. This was one of them.

Steven, who is also a history buff, thinks it looks flat out awesome. After seeing the trailers for the first time today, I tend to agree. It's ironic because Mike first told me about this movie two days ago, which was the first time I'd even heard about it. As Mike was explaining to me that it was going to be done in the same visual style as Sin City, I agreed with him. It didnt' seem right that Miller (who I admire) was going to spin it like Sin City.

Then I saw the trailers at the official website - and drooled. Check them out for yourself here. The fact that King Leonidas is being played by Gerard Butler, the soon to be "Next Big Thing" when it comes to period piece action stars, helps immensely. The guy is the new Russel Crow, Mel Gibson... you get the idea. He's a good looking guy. hey, I'm confident enough in my masculinity to say a thing like that!

Anywho... I say that because a few weeks back Fran and I saw a movie called Beowulf & Grendel, a movie based on the epic poem, Beowulf, about a medieval Norse hero's (Beowulf) battle against a murderous troll named Grendel (my dog before our spoiled Alaskan Mal Osa was named Grendel becasue of this story). Butler played the role of Beowulf to perfection. If you haven't seen this little heard of movie, and liked Gladiator, Braveheart, Troy, Kingdom of Heaven or The 13th Warrior... you owe it to yourself to see this one.

Since we're on the topic of history... Fran and I have been watching the first season of HBO's
graphic series, Rome. Boy what an eye opener, but boy is it good! Talk about a brutal time! The creators pride themselves on historical accuracy though. In fact, the DVD has an interesting feature that allows you to turn on historical notes that pop up during the course of each episode to give you more detail about what's going on. We got through seven episodes before I realized it was available, and that's only because Renee (another one of my friends, if you can believe that) told me about it. We were trying to catch up for the Season 2 premier (which will be the final season) on Sunday the 14th, but not now. We're going to wait until it comes out DVD so we watch it with the history feature turned on.