300.

"In the era of media clutter, film marketers increasingly welcome controversy as a way to get attention for their more provocative fare," writes Michael Cieply in the New York Times. The latest debate: 300 "could be construed as a thinly veiled polemic against the Bush administration, or be seen by others as slyly supporting it."

Matt Singer at IFC News: "[E]ven though 300's visual style moves beyond simply looking good into a stylishness and pictorial beauty rarely equaled in genre pictures, its dumbness overwhelms its prettiness. If battle footage can be beautiful, some of it in 300 certainly is, but, oh how stupid everything surrounding it is."

Updated through 3/9.

Jeff Dawson in the London Times: "Civilisation v barbarism; democracy v tyranny; Europe fending off the Middle East: themes especially pertinent today. 'It really must have been kind of a wonder,' muses the celebrated graphic artist Frank Miller. 'Huge forces were massed, and with such focus, that you could take one three-day battle and draw from it a tapestry for the forces that have shaped the world ever since.' 'Thank Thermopylae for your Starbucks,' adds the director, Zack Snyder, tongue planted firmly in cheek."

Brendon Connelly has news of Snyder's next project.

Dave Itzkoff gets a few quick words with Miller for New York.

Earlier: "Berlinale Dispatch. 300."

Update, 3/6: François Peneaud and Joe Palmer at AfterElton: "Frank Miller and 300's Assault on the Gay Past." Via John Coulthart.

Update, 3/7: "As an early entry in the canon of virtual movies, 300 hints at the way that elements of theater can encroach on the virtual realm," writes Eric Kohn in the New York Press. "The next major advancement in combining computer effects with live action, James Cameron's sci-fi epic Avatar, doesn't quite follow in the footsteps of 300: Budgeted at $200 million, the essence of Avatar bears a closer relationship to the preexisting blockbuster paradigm. It's the smaller projects that will demonstrate the viability of virtual movies."

"Long ago there reigned a clan of Speedo-wearing militaristic psychopaths called the Spartans," begins Nathan Lee's fun read in the Voice. "At once homophobic and homoerotic, 300 is finally, and hilariously, just hysterical."

Online viewing tip. David Poland; that first line? Aaron Hillis would break into variations of the same tune throughout the second half of the Berlinale.

Updates, 3/8: Scott Weinberg at Cinematical: "Visually arresting and wildly cut together, 300 is (despite its well-earned R-rating) precisely the kind of movie that turns 14-year-old boys into ravenous movie geeks."

"Divorced from Miller, is 300 a movie?" wonders Annie Frisbie at Zoom In Online.

"If 300, the new battle epic based on the graphic novel by Frank Miller and Lynne Varley, had been made in Germany in the mid-1930s, it would be studied today alongside The Eternal Jew as a textbook example of how race-baiting fantasy and nationalist myth can serve as an incitement to total war," writes Dana Stevens in Slate.

Stephanie Zacharek in Salon: "Miller's 300 pictures leap off the page; on the movie screen, they roll over and play dead."

Michael Koresky at Reverse Shot: "The racial and political tangle that is 300 is indicative of a muddled culture, one which flaunts political incorrectness as a badge of honor. Postmodern? Try postmortem. Aesthetically and politically, we need 300 like a hole in the head."

Updates, 3/9: "300 is about as violent as Apocalypto and twice as stupid," declares AO Scott in the New York Times.

Andy Klein in the LA CityBeat: "To cut this mess up into postcards and wall calendars would be to lose nothing."

Posted by dwhudson at March 5, 2007 12:18 PM