h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

galaxy babe.. i always felt the new starsky and hutch film was a bit of a spoof, maybe a tribute too, but definitely a send up....

it wasn't brilliant but enjoyable and i was a big fan back then so sentimental for me and yes david soul did have a hit with that song.. he was my 2nd big crush after clint eastwood as the man with no name, and then some time after the david soul[hutch] obsession came along the ian dury obsession... don't get much different, and if i was to choose between starsky or hutch now it would be starsky.. funny how much our tastes change.. anyway david soul was a relentless wife beater, face of an angel and devil in disguise

we've been busy this easter break.. we saw BLADES OF GLORY easter sun if you liked DODGEBALL you'll like this film.. reminded me a lot of it.. maybe not quite as good as dodgeball but still good entertainment.. i'd give it 8/10.. its a good laugh just don't take it seriously..

today we saw 300...not as good as the hype suggested, i'd give it 7/10... we felt there was too much evidence of digital mastery but i guess thats the way things are going... apparently HE had heard that the sixpacks were digitally enhanced.. i felt that they also makeup enhanced, almost painted on, clever use of shaders..lol

i'm sure some of those actors had genuine six packs but not the whole lot, and there were scenes where the 'makeup' failed and i saw paunchyness.. and yes i was looking closely the cheats!!!

I saw "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" tonight - good job I'm a Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet fan, I can't imagine anyone else [non-fans of Carrey/Winslet] liking italthough I had a headache by the end of itthen turned over to BBC1 by accident (wanted the BBC24 news) and found I'd missed half-an-hour of new stuff on The Carpenters

Saw Office Space the other night. Occasionaly very funny and entertaining enough, though a tragic waste of talent from the bad guy from American Gothic and Dr. Cox from Scrubs.

And I believe I've found the source of the phrase "ass-clown".

Sorry, small aside here,

>Persia = Today's Iran<

And about four or five other countries beside. Besides, it was the Shah of *Persia* that the Iranians kicked out for the long haired old looney from Paris. Methinks their protestations are too much.

I also seriously doubt '300' was written as anything to do with the present middle-eastern situation. The original Graphic novel is gettinhg on for ten years old now and predates even 9/11 (For Miller's feelings on that, you'd do better to read his somewhat odd Dark Knight Strikes Back, which was held up for over a year due to script wrangles). I think it far more likely that Miller was

1) fascinated by the story itself, for it's own sake
2) interested by the graphic possibilities and the iconography involved
3) Maybe interested in how it took some pretty undemocratic, unpleasant people to save the small flame of democracy that was ancient Greece.

Certainly, his earliest mention of The Hot Gates was in an early volume of his Sin City series, so I think it had been at the back of his mind for some time.

For a more historically accurate account, including the sacrifice of the 10, 000 others who fought there, check out Steven Pressfield's 'Gates of Fire'.

/aside/

Browsing YouTube's selection of 300 trailers and clips you regularly find comments like the following:

'i seen the movie it rocks,persians are so gay and weak even saddam killed 2 million persians lol dont cry persians ush is coming for your gay ass soon hahaha'



That's directly copy-pasted. There are posts talking about the Turks and the Muslims even though Thermopylae happened way before either. It's being used to make up a load of nationalistic rubbish by both East and West. It worries me, frankly. It's a childish film, and childish films should be watched childishly and then treated maturely by acknowledging how childish they are.

Then theres 'my ancestors were Celts who whipped the Romans ass. But Saprtans were bad ass. They used group battle techniques to dish out the punishment, but individually Spartans where not ass effective.'

And: 'haha my ancestors were Spartans and if the Celts would be wipped if they fought the Spartans cause u know that the Spartans were the best warriors the world has ever known i'm saying this not 2 b racist just i 2 let you know'.

It basically comes down to a weird sort of historical jingoism. People seem to assume the world is basically the same as it was then. I mean: 'my ancestors were Celts'. If you go back far enough my ancestors were African. Does that mean I feel a patriotic affiliation with African countries. Of course not. That's why I think 'loyalty to one's country' is a pretty foolish idea. OK, I'll stop ranting now .

Well, have you seen the comments in general on YouTube, most of them seem as if they were written by Beavis and Butthead. People can always cram some kind of message into a movie or book that isn´t there, some people make careers out of it. Small army fights opression from vast empire with many troops and superior military equipment. If that was an analogy I´d say America wouldn´t have the role of Sparta.

No, but they'd rewrite it afterward so they did.

Precisely. I think people are missing the important point that when you look at underdog wars against superpowers, it's the old cliché: one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.

>>fascinated by the story itself, for it's own sake<<

Miller has said in an interview how he made 300 simply because the story has always fascinated him - the graphic novel and film were simply because of this fascination.

I saw 300 the day it came out and I loved it. The script and acting were pretty trashy but graphically it was simply awesome, it set a new standard for the combination of CGI and live action. It makes me laugh that people even talk about the plot or acting

i'm a celt [welsh right down the line] and i'm an old battle axe
so 300 analysers, was the persian king anywhere near an accurate description in that he felt he was divine.. i remember crazy emporer caligula doing the divinity thing too...

and whoeever described him as a 7ft transvestite was spot on but was the persian king really that freaky..

Miller came in for a lot of flak for his portrayal of Xerxes, which is probably nowhere near accurate. His response was something along the lines of 'well, it's a comic, I wanted a good visual, I thought he looked kinda glam/sexy. Sue me.'

As the idea of a God-Emperor, not new to the Persians, but certainly they believed it.

Oh, and just so we're clear, the day we start adopting YouTube comments as represenatative of *anything* then we are all doomed.

I'm not sure whether the Persian High King was seen as a God-King. As far as I know (I might be wrong) he wasn't believed to have divine powers. Although I think he might have been referred to as a God-King in the sense that he was the 'ruler of the world'. The point is, he wasn't believed to be divine.

I'm not sure that it makes a lot of difference either way. The average member of the Persian 'armed forces' was so far removed from Xerxes in station that he may as well have been a Martian as far as they were concerned.

It certainly doesn't overly reflect on the accuracy or otherwise of the movie, to be honest, or what Miller was trying to say in his original story.

I watched '300' last week and I basically enjoyed it. Why? Because I expected a film about a big David/Goliath style battle and the movie did what it said on the tin. I got a big battle. The effects were great; the plot was minimal; my wife got to see some naked Butler butt. Ideal. Personally, as a StarGate fan, Xerxes just came across like a Goa'uld, gravel-filled voice and delusions of godhood included.

I watched 'The Departed' the previous week - while it had a pile of acting talent and a plot with potential, I found the story overally drawn out and discovered no empathy with any of the characters whatsoever, thus depriving me of any interest in what happened to them. The final five minutes served only to remind me just how much time I had wasted watching the whole thing...

Watched the last 30 minutes of 'Toy Story 2' yesterday - and I loved it...



The Apprentice

'The Departed' was nice enough but there wasn't anything in there that made me say "wow, that was something really special". I thought Leonardo diCaprio was good. And that's coming from someone is certainly is *not* a great fan (Titanic *shudders*).

Couldn't think of a better smiley to sum up my feelings about 'Titanic' .

I saw Borat last night on DVD. I did this because I'd heard that it was "side-splittingly funny", "just when you think he can't take it any further...he does!" etc etc.

Well, they must have cut those bits from the DVD. I chuckled a couple of times, but that was about it. Maybe you need to be sat in a cinema full of like-minded individuals to find it rip-roaringly funny, or maybe they *have* cut all those bits out now.

Anyway (as you can probably tell) I din't think much of it.

RF

"the old cliché: one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter."

Good point. King George III surely looked at the American Revolutionaries as terrorists ... didn't wear bright coats and march in straight lines, hid behind trees and shot, etc.

Of course, now we have our own Amercian autocratic George. From Wikipedia:

"The rest of the 1700s were marked by bureaucratic bungling, which led to denunciations of George III by the Whigs as an autocrat in the manner of Charles I. Lord Bute (who had probably been appointed only because of his agreement with George's views on royal power) resigned in 1763, allowing the Whigs to return to power."

Change George III to "W", Whigs to Democrats, and appointee Bute to Attorney General Gonzalez (or any number of W's political appointees), and you have ... now.

Life is not one damn thing after another, its the same damn thing over and over.