I'm NOT Seeing 323 This Weekend

In case you were wondering, that's 300 plus 23.  I like Jim Carrey, and I like Frank Miller, but that would be a bit much for a weekend.

 

Yes, I did get that from Wil Wheaton.  Yeah, that's the former Star Trek guy .  I'm a geek.  I read him regularly.

 

Now on to the entertainment: I have a friend who does quite a bit of writing for a living.  Well, maybe not for a living, perhaps it's more part of what she does, along with sleep, eat, engage her brain, and make her best attempt to have a good time, tempered with casual conformity to what she considers to be rational society norms.  This is all a roundabout way of saying that she wrote this well-considered review of Frank Miller's 300, which sacked a theater near you recently.

 

Frank Miller's Hot Gates
by Carol Borden

Only the hard. Only the strong. A feeling's been gnawing deep inside me
for a while. A feeling that maybe Frank Miller's hypermasculine
antiheros and faceless, breast-thrusting women are exactly what they
seem, not just sketchy parody. After reading 300, Miller's 1998 account
of the Spartans at Thermopylae, I don't have any doubt: Miller means it.
His aesthetic is fascist.

Fascism isn't all jackboots and Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS. Sometimes it's
well-hung Spartans toting big spears. In this case, 300 is beautiful
with art worthy of a picture book. Lynn Varley's goauche-like washes and
thick spatters of rain, blood and ash are lovely. Some panels look like
ukiyo-e woodcuts, and Miller demonstrates a fluid line reminiscent of
Will Eisner.

 

That's in the Cultural Gutter.  I imagine it will eventually show up on my blog roll, since posts like that remind me of why I like to blog sometimes.

I think she write good.