Reply #5: Won't "300" eventually rank up there with "Triumph of the Will"

[whistle]

...as being one of the top propaganda films of all time? Right wingers must have both in their DVD collections

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'300' Flick Is Ready-Made for the Right-Wing Crowd

What's your favourite movie?

Someday soon, you may ask a new acquaintance that question, and just maybe -- because it takes all kinds -- your new friend will reply, "My favourite movie is 300."

If this happens, back away slowly. Your new friend probably kills cats for fun. Worse -- your new friend may be George W. Bush. Director Zack Snyder's new dramatization of the epic Spartan stand at Thermopylae will probably go down real well at the White House, and wherever disturbed young people massacre hundreds in violent video games. Others should exercise discretion.

This is a historical epic, but its real history is not so much ancient Greek as recent comic book. 300 is another film taken from the work of graphic novel auteur Frank Miller, following very much in the CGI tradition of last year's Miller-inspired Sin City. Nothing in 300 is natural -- not a ray of honest sunlight falls on a single frame of the movie. Like Sin City and the execrable Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, 300 was filmed entirely in front of blue screens and subsequently built around the actors digitally.

Pretty dumb

It's certainly better than Sky Captain, visually at least. 300 has an undeniable beauty, a burnished look intended to evoke the mythic. Think of the dream scenes in Gladiator and imagine a whole movie of that. Don't imagine much else, because you'll be disappointed.

Someday, somebody is going to make one of these comic book movies that isn't quite so depressingly comic book. Not this time. 300 is an adolescent wet dream to its very core, a homoerotic paean to half-naked Greeks and their bloody, thrusting swords. And to make all the Chippendales-style posing more palatable for the young straight male target audience, there's a little bit of rough doggie-style hetero sex too.

The plot -- don't blink now -- is this: 300 brave Spartans, led by the heroic Leonidas (Gerard Butler), guard a pass against the Persian hordes commanded by King Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro). There's a small bit of politics thrown in, and the aforementioned boinking (featuring Lena Headey as Queen Gorgo). But it's mostly just the glorious, sexual thrill of slow-motion violence and orgasmic geysers of spurting blood. Really. Such unabashed tributes to slaughter are usually delivered with a wink in slasher films, but 300 does not know how to wink. It is deadly serious in the way that so often provokes giggles. <more>

http://www.alternet.org/movies/49029/?comments=view&cID=614487&pID=614485

As for Triumph of the Will, here is a refresher:

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Triumph of the Will (German: Triumph des Willens) is a propaganda film by the German filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl. It chronicles the 1934 Nazi Party Congress in Nuremberg. The film contains excerpts from speeches given by various Nazi leaders at the Congress, including portions of speeches by Adolf Hitler, interspersed with footage of massed party members. Hitler commissioned the film and served as an unofficial executive producer; his name appears in the opening credits. The overriding theme of the film is the return of Germany as a great power, with Hitler as the True German Leader who will bring glory to the nation.

Triumph of the Will was released in 1935 and rapidly became one of the best-known examples of propaganda in film history. Riefenstahl's techniques, such as moving cameras, the use of telephoto lenses to create a distorted perspective, aerial photography, and revolutionary approach to the use of music and cinematography, have earned Triumph recognition as one of the greatest propaganda films in history. Riefenstahl won several awards, not only in Germany but also in the United States, France, Sweden, and other countries. The film was popular in the Third Reich<1> and elsewhere, and has continued to influence movies, documentaries, and commercials to this day, even as it raises the question over the dividing line between art and morality.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triumph_of_the_Will