Why 300 Will be the BEST PICTURE
OF 2007 and perhaps IN THE HISTORY OF MANKIND: Reasons 10-1
March 9, 2007
Here it is, the article you’ve all been waiting for. While
I was confined to my death bed for approximately one month and
unable to write, and then had to celebrate my birthday, and then
had serious procrastinating, I’m back with the final 10
reasons why 300 will rock your world.
10. The trailer features a sepia-tone shot of a mother and her
son standing in a field of wheat. Does that ring a bell? That’s
right – Gladiator featured a nearly identical scene. Any
movie that rips stuff off directly from Gladiator is bound to
have at least a few good scenes.
9. The movie has some great one liners. When told the arrows of
the thousand nations of the Persian empire will blot out the sun,
one of the Spartans wittily replies, “Then we will fight
in the shade.” Of course, because of the badassness of the
movie, they actually do. Other standouts include “Spartans,
tonight we dine in hell!” and “THIS IS SPARTA!”
What these lines may lack in biting, James Bond style wit, they
more than make up for in both volume and manliness.
8. There are going to be bad guys with awful deformities. In one
scene in the trailer, they show a guy with some huge lump sticking
out of his chest and weird colored skin. I’m guessing that
it takes more than one Spartan to kill that guy. Even better,
there’s a guy who appears to have two chainsaws for arms.
I imagine he was sent back from the future to kill King Leonidas
so that the Persians wouldn’t suffer so many casualties.
Clearly this plot failed.
7. Adam Forman was involved with the production of this movie.
I think that this link says it all: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2474851/
Forman, I didn’t know you were such a make-up expert.
6. The body count for this movie will be absurd. I think that
over a hundred
people die in the trailer alone, and historical records indicate
we are in for at least 10,000 dead, and quite probably more. Movies
are the opposite of real wars – higher body counts make
people love them more.
5. This movie is historically accurate. Instead of just being
made up from
someone’s boring imagination, like Gladiator was, it details
stuff that really happened. The battle of Thermopylae was a real
battle between the Spartans and the Persians, and 300 men really
did stand against the entire Persian army. I’m sure there
were also really rhinoceroses, elephants, and creatures with chainsaw
arms, too. As a matter of fact I think it may be a documentary.
4. There is no dialogue in this movie spoken at a normal volume.
Every single line is yelled at the top of the character’s
lungs. This is because everything being said is of vital import,
and the characters want to make sure even the Persians at the
very back of that 1 million person pack can hear. All this yelling
is sure to jack the audience up and keep us on the edge of our
seats.
3. If the trailer is any indication, the entire movie was shot
in slow motion. Think of all the great slow motion sequences from
movies in the past: the staircase shootout in The Untouchables;
the bullet dodging sequence in The Matrix; the climactic scene
in Dodgeball. All of those scenes are immortalized in the pantheon
of great movie moments. 300 takes this to its logical conclusion
– everything will be in slow motion, so every second of
the movie will be an instant classic.
2. The movie is filled with references to freedom. In the trailer
we get such gems as “Instead ask yourself, what should a
free man do?” & “We will stand and fight! A new
age has begun. An age of freedom! And all will know that 300 Spartans
gave their last breath to defend it!” This puts it firmly
in the tradition of a movie like Braveheart, another relentless
manly and awesome movie. Also, unlike Democrats, I am a good American,
and I love freedom and the idea of dying to defend it. Every true
American in the country will love this film; the rest will be
deported.
FREEEEDOMMMMMM!!!!
1. And the number one reason….the subject matter. This may
seem anticlimactic, but let’s be serious for a moment here.
The movie is about three hundred soldiers who held a pass against
one million enemy soldiers. It was simply the greatest military
stand of all time. Even though the Spartans eventually fell, it
was because they were betrayed, not because they were simply overpowered.
If I were asked to come up with one thing to watch a movie about,
I would even think of this, because it’s simply too incomprehensible.
Fortunately, smarter people than me make movies, and one of them
was smart enough to pick the best possible topic for a film.
I hope everyone enjoys seeing 300 tonight. If you don’t,
it probably means that you are a failure as a person and your
parents don’t love you.
Why
300 Will be the BEST PICTURE OF 2007 and perhaps IN THE HISTORY
OF MANKIND
January 10, 2007
I usually save my Oscar Predictions until the nominees are announced,
but when the awards ceremony rolls around in 2008, I am already
confident about what film will win in the “Best Picture”
category. Sure, I don’t know every movie that will come
out in 2007, but I don’t need to in order to know that 300
will be better than every single one of them put together. I don’t
know if you’ve seen the trailer for this movie, but if you
haven’t, you need to crawl out from under whatever rock
you live under and watch it on IMDB. Just make sure you’re
in private when you do it because this movie gives every red blooded
male on the planet a rock hard boner.
In order to celebrate the fact that it comes out in about 2 months,
I will be offering my top 20 reasons why this movie will be so
great. Of course, I could do the top 20 million reasons, but then
no one would bother to read it and that would be a huge waste
of time. Today I offer you reasons 20-11; expect reasons 10-1
one month before the movie hits theatres.
20. It has a Nine Inch Nails song in the trailer. Now, I am
not a rabid Nine Inch Nails fan, nor do I particularly dislike
them, but some people say they’re pretty great. I’ll
just assume that the same people who think Nine Inch Nails are
good also like extreme violence and great movies.
19. It’s Frank Miller’s 300. This means that Frank
Miller was involved with the project. I don’t know if you
saw the last movie with Frank Miller’s name on it, but I
did, and it oozed manliness. Sin City had an outstanding cast,
tons of ridiculous violence, hot girls, and nudity. In other words,
everything anyone could be looking for in a movie. It even had
a love story for the ladies in the audience. If Sin City is any
indication, 300 will be the tits.
18. This movie has some sweet beards. Gerard Butler, who plays
King Leonidas (aka Mr. Original Badass), grew a totally awesome
beard. It is thick and sumptuous without being wild or out of
control. As you all probably know, beards are awesome, and this
movie might be worth seeing for his alone.
Check out that beard!
17. At the beginning of the very first long promotional trailer,
the voiceover says
something about how at birth a Spartan baby is examined carefully,
and then discarded if it possesses any defects. I think that America
would be a much healthier, fitter nation if we adopted this policy,
and any movie that endorses it has real potential, as well as
being courageous for going against social norms.
16. This movie has ridiculous facemasks. If you saw Kingdom
of Heaven you know that characters with facemasks are pretty hardcore.
This movie has a ton of them! In the trailer there are shots of
whole lines of troops, all with facemasks. This movie will take
the badass-ness of Kingdom of Heaven and multiply it by like 1000.
It’s going to be great.
15. Every great action movie needs fires and explosions. Since
this movie is set before fire was invented, you might think it
wouldn’t have any. Well my friend, you would be horribly
wrong. In the trailer there is fire all over the place, smashing
off people’s shields and stuff. I didn’t even know
shields could stop fire, but that just shows how remarkable the
Spartans were. Working fire into this movie earns it substantial
points in my book.
14. Even the bad guys in this movie rule. In a lot of movies
the bad guys are major pussies, or idiots, or totally detestable,
like Gary Oldman in The Professional. But the bad guys in this
movie are, to quote the trailer, “THE THOUSAND NATIONS OF
THE PERSIAN EMPIRE.” You may not know anything about Persians,
because in recent times they have been placed with Iranians, who
are way less cool. According to my knowledge of Persians, which
comes primarily from the Prince of Persia line of videogames,
they are capable of running along walls, jumping really well,
swordfighting, and controlling time. You know a movie is going
to change the world when even the bad guys are that extreme.
A typical Persian from the time frame of 300
13. This movie is filled with rippling, muscular, sweaty male
bodies. Everyone enjoys watching good looking people. Not only
will straight guys like this movie for the action and tremendous
amounts of testosterone it exudes, gay guys and chicks will like
watching all the manly hotness plastered all over the screen.
We all saw how the homoerotic theme worked for Brokeback Mountain,
so 300 is really covering all its bases. Good thinking!
12. 300 is about a few Spartans fighting a lot of Persians.
You would think for the movie to have an appropriate running time,
it would be exclusively action from start to finish. But somehow
they managed to work in chicks. The trailer includes numerous
women, even one dancing provocatively! Fitting in chicks to a
movie that is already filled with war and violence is a guaranteed
way to draw a bigger audience.
11. The movie includes wild animals. There’s a wolf that
a kid has to fight early on, and we all know wolves are amazing
animals, but it gets better! There is also a bunch of rhinoceroses
that run around the battlefield and gore dudes. Somehow I doubt
that there were really rhinoceroses at the battle of Thermopylae,
but that’s what artistic license is for. Nothing adds intensity
to a large scale ancient battle like gigantic creatures running
rampant, slaughtering people left and right and leaving nothing
but destruction in their wake.
The rest of the countdown will be released in about one month.
Don’t get too anxious from all the suspense!
Why Hoosiers is the Best
Sports Movie Ever Made
January 1, 2007
When Jake first recruited me as a columnist for
the new, improved, and expensive lets-krong.com, I was thrilled.
Nateshots had the pictures, Curranstat had the great content,
but Lets-Krong always provided something offbeat, a slightly different
take on things.
As the reality of having to write my first article set in, my
initial excitement faded quickly. I was putting myself on the
line, I realized, and not for any small-time rag like the Colgate
Maroon-News; this is the real deal, this is Lets-Krong. I sought
out Jake for advice on format, subject matter, any sort of guidelines
to point me in the right direction, but he wanted it left wide
open. The problem with total freedom is that it often carries
with it total responsibility.
I wracked my brain for ideas about what to write. I talked to
our other columnist, Adam Forman, to see what he was doing, and
he said just some autobiographical piece, background information,
that sort of thing. In many cases I think this is appropriate
for someone starting out as a writer for a new publication; a
sort of friendly introduction to your audience, a firm handshake,
good eye contact, an approachable smile.
That's my kind of handshake!
But let’s be realistic. The majority of people who will
be reading Lets-Krong at its debut already know me. You know where
I’m from, what I’ve done, and what my personality
is like. A brief history of my running career might be topical,
but it would also be both boring and embarrassing. So that was
out.
I briefly considered a personal political manifesto. Anyone who
knows me is aware of my political opinions but I think a smaller
percentage understand why I think the way I do. However, not only
does this cause the same problems as any other personal history
subject, it’s also boring. Furthermore, I decided that while
I’ll eventually manage to alienate my readership, the first
article is not the place to do it.
A series of other ideas ran through my head. I could do a Letsrun
message board year-in-review piece, but everyone who will be reading
this probably also reads Letsrun, rendering that redundant. I
could do an analysis of the three different student (now graduate)
created and run websites, perhaps exploring their history and
evolution, but Curran already covered that, in a more creative
way than would have occurred to me, in his “The
Three New Next Gen Websites/Consoles” article. Despite
the friendly rivalry between the three sites, I’m not ready
to go head-to-head with Curran yet.
My inspiration
I turned to other columnists for inspiration. I read stuff by
Rick Reilly, Fareed Zakaria, Lester Bangs, and of course Bill
Simmons. While I had already ruled out the subject matter of these
writers, I thought perhaps something in their approach or way
of writing might set the gears turning in my own brain. When I
sat down at my computer, visions of my imminent glory danced before
my eyes. When I looked at the Word document, I didn’t see
a blank white space; I saw myself in a tux, accepting my Pulizter,
thanking God and my family and Jake Krong for the opportunity.
After watching this scene unfold for about fifteen minutes, I
was snapped for my reverie by my younger brother asking what I
was doing. Proud of my accomplishments for the afternoon, I decided
to take a well deserved break to play some Prince of Persia on
my Gamecube. The cursor was still blinking, lonely in the vast
emptiness of the open document.
As my December 28th deadline loomed nearer, like David Bowie
I began feeling Under Pressure. Let’s be honest, I had been
working my butt off on this thing; I spent at least fifteen minutes
a day thinking about it and I had nothing to show for all my blood
sweat and tears. But like many writers and journalists, I do my
best work when it’s crunch time. I really put my nose to
the grindstone: I went for a run, watched a movie I had gotten
from Netflix, read a Don DeLillo novel I got for Christmas, watched
3 or 4 episodes of House; I mean, I was a total wreck, pushing
myself to the limits of human endurance.
I decided to go to my younger brother’s basketball game
that evening to take my mind off my work. While I watched his
team’s inspiring march to defeat, I finally found my muse.
People who read Lets-Krong are running fans, of course; but most
of them are also sports fans more generally. And as everyone knows,
as long as there have been sports, there have been sports movies,
and of course, the best of these movies is Hoosiers. That’s
it; I had my article. I would sing the praises of the classic
film, list off its many Academy Awards, show how superior it is
compared to its primary competitors. Perhaps it wouldn’t
be a modern literary headstone, but then again, perhaps it would.
I rushed home after the game, vaguely surprised to find that
my open Word document was still blank, the article not having
written itself since I came up with the idea. After slaving over
the piece for a good five minutes, one of my friends called. I
went to hang out at his house, and the deadline sailed by despite
my best efforts. I only slept 8 or 9 hours that night, haunted
by a slight twinge of guilt.
The next day I endeavored seriously to write. I knew Jake was
counting on me, and I am the kind of person who lets others down
only after a few minutes of grave consideration. I sat down, and
with great reluctance, began to type. I found, as is so often
the case with writer’s block, I just had to start writing
to break it. The more I wrote, the more came to me, and soon words
were springing on their own, unbidden, from my nail-bitten fingers.
The prose was lyrical, my points indisputable, my logic impeccable,
my argument well-constructed and cohesive. It was all coming together,
just as I had seriously doubted it would.
And sure enough, when my task was finished and I stepped back
to admire what I had done, I had indeed accomplished my goal.
I had both pulled through for Jake and my fledgling readership,
and managed to avoid writing the article I had planned entirely.
Mission successful. |
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