It was a good movie

despite the obvious.

Movie reviews of Bad Crusader movies

One more URL from Mediev-L, this one of a student's reviews of more movies about the Crusades than I ever dreamed existed. Especially on "the female side of fighting." (the reviews revolve around the idea of examining the role of women in the Crusades)

Jonah Goldberg gets one right!!!!

And is funny to boot.*

He reviews the movie "Valentine's Day." It's short so here it is in its entirety (just so you don't have to go to "The Corner":

No I won't be seeing it, unless some rogue CIA squad, acting on bad intel, mistakes me for an al-Qaeda sleeper agent, kidnaps me, and drags me to the theater on the assumption that exposure to the film is the fastest way to break me.

But, I am fascinated with the fundamental stupidity of films like this. They work on the assumption that super-successful, funny, kind, well-adjusted, and hot-as-magma women can't find dates. I watched a clip on one of the talk shows where Jessica Biel — Queen of Planet Smoking Hot — is wigging out because no one will ask her out.

Meanwhile, these movies assume that absurdly handsome, super-sensitive rich and successful dudes, who love their dogs and mothers, do carpentry for orphans in their spare time but who're still manly enough to punch out jerks who threaten the honor of women, have a really hard time in the dating department, too.

Yes, I know movies are fantasies blah blah blah. But you wouldn't cast a filipino midget in the role of Indiana Jones. And yet these movies cast beautiful people — I mean crazy, designed in an East German lab beautiful people — in roles that only make sense for the basically normal looking. In the play Frankie and Johnny, the female lead was played by Kathy Bates. In the movie, Michelle Pfeiffer got the role. And Pfeiffer couldn't do better than an ex-con short-order cook in a low-rent diner.

Frankly, I find the plot of Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel more plausible.

This by the way I found on Matt Yglesias - I was not actually reading the Corner. Don't do that any more. I always thought that out of an act of filial piety Jonah was out to make his mother look good in comparison.

*gad, I'm so embarrassed - I never thought I'd write such words.

.

'300' - the Spartans open in Central Asia!

Yesterday I watched the old epic "300 Spartans", the movie that inspired Frank Miller to do his comic novel '300.' For those of you with sharp eyes and a good memory you may have noticed some visual cues from the movie in Miller's artwork, e.g. the helmet worn by the Persian herald in the comic, and worn by the deformed traitor in the movie. It got me thinking that, despite some very real qualms I have about '300' - e.g. its use of dark skin and physical deformities as emblems of evil - , it is an exciting, high energy romp that gets close to what the ancient Greeks might have appreciated.

Yet not everyone is happy. The Iranian government for example, which points out that it is insulting to the greater Iranian nation. In fact, it is insulting to all Central Asians (I can't say they don't have a point) since the Iranian Empire used to rule Central Asia. So much so that they are trying to get countries like Uzbekistan (and probably Tajikistan and all the other Stans) to ban it.

So far the Uzbeks, who don't like Iranians very much any way, are holding firm to their new found freedom to watch any damn piece of Western trash they want!

Good for them.

[though the Iranians DO have a point]

"300" - and the Hard Right

Perhaps I should have phrased that a little differently, considering how some of Andrew Sullivan's readers have interpreted '300'. [and btw, thanks Elliot, and Anactoria!] But have you begun to wonder what real men, the burly men of the Right Wing would make of this flick? I mean the John Wayne/Gary Cooper type?

Well, just check out this sharply observant review by a Hollywood writer writing under the name David Kahane on National Review Online. It even mentions Wayne and Cooper, pining for a simpler time when you knew who your enemies were. First notice that the first three paragraphs make no sense at all unless you assume, like, say, Dan Simmons, that our enemies consist of the entire Muslim population of the planet, plain and simple. Here is an example of
the prose of this review:

The Spartans mock the god-king Xerxes (whose traveling throne resembles a particularly louche Brazilian gay-pride carnival float), mow down his armored “immortal” holy warriors clad is nothing but red cloaks, loincloths, and sandals, and generally give their last full measure to defend Greek civilization against superstition and tyranny. Where are the liberal Spartan voices raised in protest against this blatant homophobia, xenophobia, and racism?

You might note from that last line that Mr Kahane has no idea about the homoerotic appeal of the Spartans, nor that gay men aren't all queens. But, let that pass. Just read the review and see what you think.

All I'll say about it is that Kahane is certainly no poseur.

"Pan's Labyrinth"

Saturday I took Carmen and Clovis down to the big Twin City to see Pan's Labyrinth. All three of us loved it (and all three of us despised the fact that the giant mega cinema we saw it in wouldn't even bother to clean up the garbage between shows). Most of the popular movies the mega cinema was showing had Rotten Tomatoes ratings of single digits (e.g. Norbit). The more exotic fare, like Pan's Labyrinth and The Queen has respectively 96% and 98%. I'm not sure what that means exactly but it was striking.

As for Pan's Labyrinth, obviously most reviewers liked it. So when you find one, you naturally wonder what it was that this one reviewer found so negative, or what unusual insight they brought to it. Or simply, why?

Courtesy of Claw of the Conciliator, here is one very negative review of it by Barbara Nicolosi. If you have the time, please read it and see what you think. Let us know. It seems to involve politics, but I'll wait to hear from anyone who has seen the movie and/or reads the review before writing anything else about it. My immediate response is found on Claw's post - and after readinig the review again, seeing the movie, and thinking about the comments on Claw's page, I still would stand by that reaction. But - see for yourself.