300

[Chest Rockwell]

But beyond generating remarkable images of ancient violence, Miller is proud to bring "300" to the big screen because he said it is the culmination of a lifetime of interest in the story — which he admitted influenced his career from an early age.

"I was 7 years old when I first came across the story, and it set the course for my entire creative life," he said. "I was a little boy sitting in the theater, and I turned to my big brother and said, 'Are the good guys losing?' That affected me at 7 — I imagine any kid [who sees '300'] is going to be affected as well."

The fight scene in the alley at the end of The Big Fat Kill ("Sometimes it's where you choose to fight" or something like that) was a pretty obvious allusion to Thermopylae.

[RegularKarate]

I just saw this and it's about what I was expecting... VERY nerdy and a LOT of slow-motion.

It's enjoyable and everything (might have enjoyed it more if I hadn't been watching movies 24 hours straight), but it's pretty much just a formula of Speech-stylized battle -speech -stylized battle... and at lot of the battle scenes are very similar to the Lord of the Rings battle scenes, just with more blood (the gore was pretty impressive though).

I can't decide if it was a "meh plus" or a "good minus"... I guess I'm leaning toward the latter... the geeks loved it though.

[modage]

i can't believe you went to butt-numb-a-thon.   

more details (on everything) please.

[MacGuffin]

International Trailer

[MacGuffin]

World Exclusive: New 300 Artwork!
Feast your eyes on tasty posters here
Source: Empire Online

It's 2007, and 300 still isn't out, and frankly we're getting antsy. But to tide us over as we wait for this epic tale of abs and biceps – er, Greeks and Persians – we've found some spiffy new one-sheet posters for the film, exclusively for you on Empire.

Feast your eyes on three of the main characters – Gerard Butler's Leonidas, King of the Spartans, who launches a desperate effort to stop an army of 250,000 with a force of 300; Rodrigo Santoro's chain-attired Xerxes, the Persian Emperor; and Lena Headey's feisty and firey Queen Gorgo, Leonidas' wife and herself part of the war effort. And as if that weren't enough, you also get a glimpse of one of the film's crazy Persian warriors, the gigantic chained "über-Immortal", the scariest member of Xerxes' personal guard, the 10,000 Immortals.

[pete]

too done.

[polkablues]

They put my thoughts on the poster, but they didn't credit me...   

[Ravi]

They put my thoughts on the poster, but they didn't credit me...   

"You will not enjoy this" or "coming soon?"

[MacGuffin]

An epic battle is pumped up
Director Zack Snyder doesn't hesitate to go over the top.
Source: Los Angeles Times

IN telling the tale of the ancient Battle of Thermopylae — an epic confrontation in 480 B.C. in which King Leonidas leads an army of just 300 Spartans against the massive Persian hordes of self-proclaimed god-king Xerxes — director Zack Snyder went big, operatic big.

Rather than taking on the pitch of a dusty tutorial, "300" is a fevered hissy-fit of a movie that operates somewhere between outrageous and demented. Snyder, who co-wrote the screenplay with Kurt Johnstad and Michael B. Gordon based on the graphic novel by Frank Miller and Lynn Varley, says he had no intention of making a History Channel version of the battle.

"I feel a certain responsibility toward the heroic message of the story, but that doesn't mean that the fun of the movie should be lost," Snyder says. "That's just what I'm drawn to aesthetically. I like the relentlessness and over-the-top nature of the graphic novel. So the pace and design, that hysterical weirdness, come from that."

Like the Robert Rodriguez version of Miller's "Sin City," the distinctive look of "300," which opens March 9, uses actors on spare sets altered digitally in post-production. Only one shot in the entire movie — horses traveling across the countryside — was actually filmed outside, and even then the dirt flying from the horses' hoofs was digitally enhanced.

Gerard Butler, who plays Leonidas, and the other actors playing the Spartan army trained rigorously to appear in fantastic shape. The Spartan uniform, true to Miller if not history, consists of little more than sandals, a cape and a small pair of leather briefs. Viewed from a certain perspective, and if one overlooks the Mel Gibson-like slaughter and severed heads, "300" is quite the beefcake movie.

"Frank was so specific about rendering this concept of the Spartans, if it was up to him they would have been completely naked with their cape and sword and shield. Clearly, that's not practical, even I know that's not practical."

But he doesn't think the costumes, or lack of them, will be a distraction. "I think halfway through the movie you forget they are in these bikinis because that's just their outfit," Snyder says. "Their outfit is they're naked. At the end, when Leonidas faces off with Xerxes, it's basically two guys in bikinis, but at that point, hopefully, you've given yourself over to the movie."

[MacGuffin]

[Ghostboy]

I really didn't like this at all. I might have actually hated it. I almost walked out of it, it was so bad and boring.

I love that first trailer, though. It's a million times more exciting than the movie. The only thing it doesn't have is the extreme gore and nipples. Which aren't nearly enough to save the movie, so in the end, you're not missing much.

[matt35mm]

I really didn't like this at all. I might have actually hated it. I almost walked out of it, it was so bad and boring.

I love that first trailer, though. It's a million times more exciting than the movie. The only thing it doesn't have is the extreme gore and nipples. Which aren't nearly enough to save the movie, so in the end, you're not missing much.

But it's currently at 100% at Rotten Tomatoes...

YOU'RE CONTRADICTING FACTS!

[RegularKarate]

No he's not... he didn't like it, I didn't like it, and the only other person that I've spoken to who saw it also hated it.

These is facts.

[MacGuffin]

Giving '300' movie a comic-book grandeur
Director Zack Snyder mixes tricks to create a comic-book grandeur for '300' on the screen.
Source: Los Angeles Times

A pack of tourists and a museum docent fanned out in front of "Leonidas at Thermopylae" in the Louvre a few months ago. Spotting Jacques-Louis David's 1814 oil painting of a buff, naked warrior king preparing to lead 300 Spartan troops into battle, a cheerful young American said: "Awesome. I just made a movie of this."

"Really?" said the docent. "... what does it look like?"

The young man shrugged and smiled. "It basically looks like this."

"Well, those men are all naked," the docent said after a long pause.

"Yeah," the man replied. "That's kind of what the Spartans were all about."

Zack Snyder is something of an expert after spending years creating his own audaciously loud, fast-paced cinematic painting of the Spartans' tale, "300," a $60-million live-action adaptation of Frank Miller and Lynn Varley's 1999 graphic novel.

Snyder has visualized thousands of permutations of the overmatched Greek force that held off hoards of advancing Persians in 480 BC, fighting to the death for their freedom and inspiring the resistance of their countrymen. And for "300," he's developed an inventive visual vocabulary, shooting on film and using a bevy of fancy camera, lighting and sonic tricks drawn from his work in commercials to bring his actors, filmed against neutral bluescreen, to bold life in a moody CGI world.

In his second at-bat directing a big studio picture, Snyder, 40, could have tossed off a clanking sword-and-sandals epic, its comic book heroes encased in an impenetrable wall of visual effects. At worst, as far as the studio was concerned, Snyder, whose first film was "Dawn of the Dead," might have pulled off a passable hybrid of "Troy" and "Sin City," which both performed solidly at the box office.

But "300," which opens Friday in regular theaters and in Imax, seems to defy the conventions of stiff and airless bluescreen movies in which muted performances belie pretend environments. The rule on Snyder's sets was that anything the actors touched had to be real — the stone paths they walked on, the elaborate litter that carries Xerxes, the Persian king. Instead of playing strictly to imaginary foils, they had more tangible environments to ground their performances. Battles were staged with swords and shields.

Snyder samples from high and low culture — everything from the masterworks of Greek antiquity to Super Bowl beer ads. But it was Miller's bold silhouetted frames and Varley's firelit colors in the pages of "300" that Snyder and his cast and crew seem to have tattooed on the backs of their eyelids. In the more than three months of prep, 60 days of shooting on bluescreen sets in Montreal and year-and-a-half in postproduction, it was broad visual references, as opposed to words, that informed the creative intent of the movie.

Much of the action unfolds in bold tableaux under the stormy skies of battle and aftermath — the dust of an attack, smoke of a burning village. The reds of capes and blood are the only colors that cut through in silhouetted backgrounds. Austere rocks and an angry Aegean Sea below offset the brutal violence and almost inhuman discipline of the outnumbered Spartans in battle.

Gerard Butler, who stars as King Leonidas, signed on after watching a four-minute Snyder test shot. During production Butler spent hours in the art department studying artistic renderings and referring back to the graphic novel, he said. "I knew I would never again come across a hero quite as masculine, powerful or uncompromising," Butler said. "When you read the graphic novel you see every pose the king has is such a position of strength and power.... I pushed for this stylized movement from the novel when you see us all walking together, leaning forward and marching like a machine."

Miller, who co-directed "Sin City," has spoken effusively about Snyder's "300" adaptation ever since a teaser debuted at Comic-Con last summer — it was played three times in succession for rapturous comics fans in the crowd. Miller has said it's not that Snyder faithfully copied every last detail in his novel, it's that he tapped into a similar mythic scope. Snyder nailed the visual ideal of an oral history told over hundreds of years by firelight.

"Very accurate, detailed figures walking around in battle is boring," Miller said. "The most important thing was to strip them down to helmets and red capes.... Spartans move like lightning. Reality be damned."

But reality did intrude slightly as the studio and filmmakers considered the contemporary resonance of the film. "There was a huge sensitivity about East versus West with the studio," Snyder said. "They said, 'Is there any way we could not call [the bad guys] Persians? Would that be cool if we called them Zoroastrians?' "

In the seven years he worked on the film, he said, "the politics caught up with us. I've had people ask me if Xerxes or Leonidas is George W. Bush. I say, 'Great. Awesome. If it inspires you to think about the current geopolitical situation, cool.' "

Achieving the vision

IT may be easiest to talk about Snyder's visuals in "300" in broad strokes, said Larry Fong, the director's classmate at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena and his longtime cinematographer. For those involved in the production, especially Snyder, the three most common adjectives used to describe "300" are "cool," "awesome" and "amazing" — which don't go a long way in conveying specifics.

In that regard, Fong said he had yet to read a description that conveyed his sense of the look and tone of the movie. "The other day someone on the Internet said it looks 'antique.' That's pretty good. Actually, we were going for something so unique and original and amazing that nobody has invented words for it," he joked. "I'm sure when Leonardo was laying around on his back working on the Sistine Chapel his patrons weren't like, 'We're paying you a lot of money here, pal. What do you mean 'heavenly and angelic'?"

Truth be told, Fong explained, everyone from studio heads to production assistants was slightly boggled by Snyder's vision. "It's not that we didn't have faith, it's just sort of alchemical what he pulled off. I don't think any one person knew, but each person had a piece of the puzzle. It's Zack who saw the puzzle the whole time from a distance."

A few of the key ingredients in Snyder's secret cinematic sauce: thousands of hours of visual tests, shooting on film and shooting everything lighted as if it were golden hour, overcast or under shimmery moonlight.

Although high-definition video has become a de rigueur medium for bluescreen shoots — for one thing, film has to laboriously be scanned into the digital realm — Fong shot film because Snyder relies heavily on variable speed lensing, which new digital cinematography cameras aren't so great at yet.

"I'm glad we didn't shoot in HD," Fong said. "When you think period, you think film, which is funny because in ancient Greece there was no film. But for us, the cinematic experience was informed by film artifacts. We wanted the film grain to show."

Snyder at play

IN a dazzling battle sequence, heavily influenced by Snyder and Fong's work in commercials, the two used a camera technique known as a "lens morph" or a "nested zoom." Basically, three Arriflex cameras were mounted with a wide, a medium and a macro lens that ran at 150 frames per second. When cut together, the action shot moves blazingly fast, in an extreme change of perspective that isn't created purely by either cutting or zooming. "Using two techniques at once is all part of the weirdness," Fong said.

High adrenaline visuals were then underscored by a bold soundtrack.

"When you watch this movie, it should be loud. It should hurt your ears," Snyder said.

He moved into a casual air guitar pose. "There's some chaanannt chanannt — you know, some hard guitary bits." Then he craned his head back into half-yodel, half-ululation pose. "There's also yunhyunhyunh, like sing-y kind of stuff." Suddenly self-conscious, he said, "That's me describing it to [composer] Tyler Bates. Not pretty at all."

The movie's sonic moments envelop the picture in atmospherics that don't come with a closed bluescreen stage. Those postproduction sounds were drummed up by supervising sound editor Scott Hecker. "We developed the atmosphere as we got into the soundtrack," Hecker said. "We incorporated more ocean winds and tonal material that helps bring locations to life. With production recordings from bluescreen shoots, you can hear the size of the room. We had to bring in a vast canyon feel to broaden the scope of the sound."

The frosting on "300's" cake was a "super-contrasty, silvery bleach bypass" digital intermediate master — basically a Photoshop-like adjustment of color and contrast. That process was overseen by Company 3's Stefan Sonnenfeld, who, like Fong, said he was already getting calls from producers asking him to replicate the film's look.

"This is Zack's style," Sonnenfeld said, who has worked with Snyder on commercials since 1992. "It's the fight choreography, the actors' performances, Larry's lighting, the emotional interactions, the silhouetted compositions.... This is what Zack was destined to do. We're all like, 'Wow, Zack. You have finally found the playground to fulfill your dreams.' "

[modage]

Miller's Tales: Frank Miller talks about the differences between his original comic ''300'' and Zack Snyder's film -- and hints at a sequel
Source: EW

He redefined the Caped Crusader for an entire generation of comic-book lovers with Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. His Sin City graphic novels put a whole new visual spin on noir-flavored fiction. And in the late '90s, seminal comic-book artist and writer Frank Miller created 300, a retelling of how a small group of Spartan soldiers stood up against a vastly larger Persian army in 480 B.C. Miller had seen the 1962 film about this doomed last stand, The 300 Spartans, as a 5-year-old kid, and it triggered a lifelong obsession with the story. Now he's seen his own comics-medium version of the Battle of Thermopylae turned into a movie, opening on March 9. We caught up with Miller for a chat about Spartan ideology and why 300's warriors are practically naked.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: You injured yourself recently. What happened?
FRANK MILLER: I slipped on some black ice and landed about as badly as you can. I busted my leg and my hip. The hip's the worst part. But I'm in recovery, working my way up to a cane now.

Did you have to miss a lot of 300-related events while recuperating?
The real heartbreaker was the opening [of the movie] in February in Berlin [at the Berlin Film Festival]. There were other things I had to decline, too, because I wanted to be in shape for the L.A. premiere [on March 5]. I'm only now starting to be able to give interviews. Otherwise you would've heard somebody who was on all kinds of painkillers, sounding like a complete moron. I might've gone wandering off talking about funny little things that were dancing by me as I spoke.

What fascinated you about the Thermopylae story?
All the great cultures have at least one of these little jewels of [war] history, a story where you see a tiny contingent of men, or even one man, achieve a remarkable a victory, if only one of morale, against a tremendous horde. There's the Alamo, Horatius at the bridge, the 47 Ronin, Masada.

What sort of dance went into the early development of 300 as a movie?
I can only speak from my own perspective, because there were a lot of unseen battles that people like Gianni Nunnari and Mark Canton went through behind the scenes. [Nunnari and Canton are among nearly a dozen producers and executive producers on 300; the list also includes Bernie Goldmann, Jeffrey Silver, and director Zack Snyder's wife, Debbie Snyder.] Gianni is persuasive and utterly relentless. He was determined to make this movie. I own [the controlling rights to] 300, same as I do with Sin City. So the movie couldn't be done without my go-ahead. At the time, I hadn't yet gotten involved with the Sin City movie. And I was very, very skeptical of moviemaking in general. I was afraid my babies would turn into nice little movies with happy endings. As I think you know, happy endings aren't my specialty.

What won you over?
I met Zack Snyder. We met for, it couldn't have been over an hour. It was like we were separated at birth. He understood every historical reference I made, and added a few of his own that startled me. He seemed to know an awful lot about this sequence in history. It turns out we shared the same favorite historian, Victor Davis Hanson. I realized, I'm dealing with a kindred soul here. So I did the only sensible thing, which was to say yes.

What was your actual involvement?
I took an exec producer title and kibitzed on the script. I had talks with Zack. And then one day I just said, Well, you're heading toward production here — this is your movie now. By that time I'd become a director [on Sin City], and I realized the last thing Zack needed was more democracy in the process. The closer he could get to the wonderful situation I had on Sin City, the better. After that, it became me seeing various cuts of scenes, and coming to the set once, during a big battle scene, and generally not doing a lot of work. There should be no confusion between 300 and Sin City in that way: 300 is Zack's movie.

So that's why your name doesn't appear as part of the title of 300, the way it was for Frank Miller's Sin City?
I would only want a possessive [credit] if I was much more thoroughly responsible. Possessives are always tricky anyway. The idea of a director just snagging a possessive was an exception that the [Directors] Guild made for Alfred Hitchcock. Now they're all snagging it.

300 is largely faithful to your material. But it takes the character of Queen Gorgo, who only appears in a couple of panels in your version, and gives her a major subplot with a character called Theron, an evil politician. What did you think of that addition?
At first I very much disagreed with it. My main comment was, ''This is a boys' movie. Let it be that.'' The story itself, in historical terms, really didn't involve her all that much, from most accounts. But Zack had his reasons. He wanted to show that King Leonidas was fighting for something, by giving him a romantic aspect and by lingering in Sparta a little bit.

You make the Spartans pretty idealistic, if bloodthirsty, as does the movie. How close is that to historical reality?
The Spartans were a paradoxical people. They were the biggest slave owners in Greece. But at the same time, Spartan women had an unusual level of rights. It's a paradox that they were a bunch of people who in many ways were fascist, but they were the bulwark against the fall of democracy. The closest comparison you can draw in terms of our own military today is to think of the red-caped Spartans as being like our special-ops forces. They're these almost superhuman characters with a tremendous warrior ethic, who were unquesionably the best fighters in Greece. I didn't want to render Sparta in overly accurate terms, because ultimately I do want you to root for the Spartans. I couldn't show them being quite as cruel as they were. I made them as cruel as I thought a modern audience could stand.

Where did you hold back?
Well, I have King Leonidas very gently tell Ephialtes, the hunchback, that they can't use him [as a soldier], because of his deformity. It would be much more clasically Spartan if Leonidas laughed and kicked him off the cliff.

That's pretty hard-ass.
They were a hard people. But the trick with this sort of thing is to transplant you into a different mindset than you're used to. The important thing is, they made a huge sacrifice. While Athens dithered, and while much of Greece cowered — and even much of Sparta did — there's King Leonidas breaking all the rules, saying, Okay, I'll go fight the invading Persian army by myself. Except ''by himself'' meant going with 300 bodyguards.

The Spartan soldiers are practically naked in your version of combat: helmets knocked off, no body armor. How accurate is that?
The inaccuracies, almost all of them, are intentional. I took those chest plates and leather skirts off of them for a reason. I wanted these guys to move and I wanted 'em to look good. I knocked their helmets off a fair amount, partly so you can recognize who the characters are. Spartans, in full regalia, were almost indistinguishable except at a very close angle. Another liberty I took was, they all had plumes, but I only gave a plume to Leonidas, to make him stand out and identify him as a king. I was looking for more an evocation than a history lesson. The best result I can hope for is that if the movie excites someone, they'll go explore the histories themselves. Because the histories are endlessly fascinating.

Has there been any talk of creating a sequel if 300 does well?
There is another story that would make a perfect bookend to this. I know what it would be. It's at the earliest stages. But I ain't gonna go into it now.

Would it show the larger battle that Greece took up against the Persians, after Thermopylae?
Oh, no. It takes place 10 years later. That's all I'm saying. I can't speak out of school. [Producer] Mark Canton will beat me up.