Braveheart? Go Tell the Spartans!

As expected, soon after my quasi-depressed entry of a couple of days ago, things have turned, if not entirely for the better, then certainly in a direction other than utter wretchedness. Thus, I've had time to both do what I have to do for work, as well as marvel at the colossal lack of sense exemplified by Mel Gibson, who, so soon after being accused of anti-Semitism after being taken into custody for driving under the influence of alcohol, can't bring himself to make amends with any degree of certainty or coherence. It's not as if the entire world is waiting with bated for an apology that spans the wide theological differences between similarly montheistic religions. We're just interested in seeing if Mel can offer an apology that makes sense.

Mel, of course, doesn't help at all, what with sparkling examples of definitive intent such as: "What I need to do to heal myself and to be assuring and allay the fears of others and to heal them if they had any heart wounds from something I may have said." Or, one could always hold out hope that Mel spews out more gems such as the following observation regarding his falling back into the clutches of alcoholism: "Years go by, you're fine. And then all of a sudden in a heartbeat, in an instant, on an impulse, somebody shoves a glass of Mescal in front of your nose, and says, 'It's from Oaxaca'. And it's burning its way through your esophagus, and you go, 'Oh, man, what did I do that for? I can't put the toothpaste back in the tube.'"

I went through the panoply of websites that I visit regularly, and found an interesting link in the videos section of Fark. For avid readers of historical fiction, very few authors could hope to equal Steven Pressfield's epic retelling of the Battle of Thermopylae, Gates of Fire. When Hollywood (in the person of Bruce Willis) failed to come to terms with Mr. Pressfield regarding a film treatment of the said novel, Hollywood (in the person of director Zack Snyder), wisely turned to comic book legend Frank Miller, who had already received much critical praise for his graphic novel on the Battle of Thermopylae, 300.

I'm sort of interested as to how this movie plays out. On the one hand, it makes sense to ask someone used to dealing with a predominantly visual medium to assist the transition of an epic story to the big screen, and Frank Miller, whose stark reimagination of the Batman mythos inspired Tim Burton's first two Batman films, and to a certain extent, Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins, is an old hand at the particular kind of deft storytelling that lends itself easily to cinema. On the other hand, if Miller's role as executive producer on the film consisted largely of selecting a vacation home in the Caribbean and checking every two hours as to whether "The check's in the mail, right?" then this version of Thermopylae may be considered dead in the water.

Anyway, you can find the trailer to 300 here. Enjoy!

Photo Credits:
Picture of Leonidas comes courtesy of WorstPreviews